Megs:
So yes, I said I was going to update on the awesome-thus-far Semester. So here's what I've been up to:
- Not violaing at AYO. Do I miss some good times? Sure. Do I feel free? HELL YES.
- Watching Glee
- Saying I'll study, but not committing very well
- Making a video.
The Antioxidant Song. from Comvita on Vimeo.
This was project that I pretty much worked on all month. At the beginning of the first Medsci202 of this year, there was a slide up advertising the Comvita Science Challenge.
Mission: make a video explaining the science behind some of Nature's healthiest ingredients. Incentives: first prize $5000, second prize $2000, plus other "Comvita prizes to be won!". And they threw in words like "your creativity!" and so forth. My very first thought was I WANT TO DO THAT.
-Making the Video-This video was a hell of a lot of fun, but no picnic. I stressed (as I tend to do) about a lot of unnecessary things: Wondering for about a week about what they meant by "Nature", "Healthiest", and "Ingredients", riffling through the 'Nutrients' chapter in my old T&D textbook, and considering doing it on 'Vitamin A' and dressing up as a carrot.
This was before I realised that Comvita had actually set the topics for us. Phew!
The topics for 2011 were:
Honey
Propolis
Olive Leaf
Broccoli
Grapes/Grape seeds
Kiwifruit
So all I had to do was agonise over which one to choose from. Yee!
I think I jumped between Honey, Propolis and Olive Leaf several times. I wanted to do something that I had some back-up knowledge about. Medsci203 last year taught me a little about antioxidants, so I decided I'd focus on that.
In the end I went for the olive leaf - both because I found so many articles on it, and for a good friends' namesake! (Hi, Olive :D)
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Other stuff in the process:
I was fully preparing to rock up to my old primary school and taking a fistful of leaves from outside the school ground and, I dunno, make them dance using stopmotion animation or something (you know, like Pingu).
I also spent time during breaks drawing different storyboards. I'd planned this thing with a mug of tea and chucking all these olive leaves in and thought about technical things like Panning and Tracking and Voiceovers with Science Talk
and then I thought OMG THIS IS BORING.
So I decided to tell it in song! And draw everything. I have a bit of a soft spot for rhyming, even though nothing rhymes with Megan. And I <3 drawing.
Sources for inspiration for the Antioxidant Song:DINOSAUR by Ke$ha. Yes, I went there. It's where I got the "spell out the title" idea from.
The Llama Song by Burton Earny Perhaps one of the battiest songs to ever hit the internet and make it as a meme.
Watch the Llama Song!Both of these are crazily catchy and get really annoying to the uptight person after a while. The main thing I was gearing towards was repetitive fun. You might find these on Youtube if you don't know how they go. Look out, sanity.
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Equipment used:
Some budget Mp3 recorder
A PC
Software Programmes used:
Noteworthy Composer This is where the background music came from. I've been acquainted with this for about eight years now. I used to play with this a lot, both arranging and composing instrumental scores. User friendliness is about 8.5/10 if you are music-savvy; with dozens and dozens of instruments 'voices' you can choose from. The files can only be published in .MIDI format, which is a minor drawback - this gives the instruments a very synthetic quality when you play back your composition.**
Wavepad Sound EditorThis is how I merged my singing and the background music. I was SUPER excited when I found Wavepad in March, not least because it had the function to speed up/slow down any Mp3 recordings and change the pitch of my voice. I'm not sure why I liked sounding like a 5-year-old, but I did.
Adobe Photoshop 7.0At home, my best friend and time-killer during high school. Handy, because of, well, drawing. More specifically, drawing in a way that doesn't look as budget as something done on MS paint (with all due respect to MS paint).
Windows Movie Maker. Budget, and kept freezing on me - more and more as the number of images stacked up on my hard drive, but it got the job done (EVENTUALLY). The Antioxidant Song was the first video I ever made, so I followed the words of Sensei Google as I went.
**NOTE: I also used some programme to convert the MIDI to an Mp3 before using Wavepad, but frankly I downloaded and tested so many of these that I can't remember which one I finally ran with. Sorry. If it helps, I found it on Google. In the end though, what mattered was that the synthetic-ness of the music magically vanished, and I had a shiny and pretty backing track :D
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Stupid things I wasted time on:
Thinking I was done with my lyrics, recording, then realizing that perhaps they weren't all that "scientifically correct". The final song is pretty much version 2.5. Before, the lyrics implied that Antioxidants just pop up now and then randomly in the body. Also, I nearly said that "getting [antioxidants] is as easy as drinking a cup of tea." It rhymed with something else.
Recording all the verses separately, without a metronome, and trying to string them together on Wavepad. No, just no. There was just no rhythm and I couldn't get it to work. Had a lot of fun squeakifying my speech but wasted a whole evening on this. In the end I recited three sections of the poem and pasted them together.
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The video was submitted onto Dropbox and I sent my entry in to Comvita. Now all I had to do was wait! The only thing I stressed about at this point in time was that someone had somehow managed to hack into Dropbox and removed the video from my Public Folder, or something glitched and Comvita didn't get my email, or something.
I was relieved to find that they hadn't, when Comvita put up all the entries on Vimeo. Well, my initial stress was gone, but I can tell you watching the other thirteen entries made me spaz, because damn they were GOOD - funny and creative to the max. My favourite one was
A Friendly Vege. I TOTALLY recommend watching this on the Comvita channel. Epic laughs!
Getting into FinalsI got a call on my cellphone during a Medsci202 lecture (look, it came full circle!). Usually I'd turn the thing off but that day I took my phone sprinted towards the back of the lecture theatre. I was so excited to hear from Comvita (and startled by myself for bolting out in a middle of a lecture) that when the lady on the other end said she was from Comvita I forgot to say hi. With my heart pounding I just said, "yes?!". And she must have been expecting something else because she paused before talking.
I still feel bad about forgetting my manners.
Dear Anyone, If I ever not say hi if I'm on the phone with you, I apologise. Sincerely, Megan.
Anyway, what it came down to was that I was invited to the Prizegiving at the Business School. I GOT INTO THE FINALS :D And the rest was all fun and games. I got to meet the other finalists, and also Comvita hired a camera guy to ask the finalists about their opinions. I realized then that I'm kind of video-camera shy but I said a little bit. Yay! Maybe I'll be on TV :D
At the end of the day, I got a bag full of comvita gifts; honey and boxes of skin creams and propolis lozenges and that sort of thing. Though the thing I was happiest about in the whole process was the fact that my friends liked it so much. And I repeat: most amazing and supportive lot EVER. Much love!
And that's how it went.
