entertainmentjunkie

ANNOUNCEMENT: Moving to new blog

Karen Datangel — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:06:25 +0000

I had a wonderful time maintaining and posting in this blog during the last semester for my Digital Newsgathering class, and I thank you all for reading and commenting, but with the semester long over, this blog will no longer be active.

Instead, please bookmark and visit my new and improved entertainment/pop culture blog at Baby You’ll Be Famous!

Thank you,
Karen Datangel

Investigation into the Fro-Yo Trend – Final Thoughts

Karen Datangel — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:08:37 +0000

I have very mixed feelings about how my final project came out. Being able to pick out my own topic, going into the frozen yogurt shops and capturing photos and interviews, and editing the video and slideshow were fun and interesting experiences, and allowed me to be creative as well as utilize and apply my skills as a journalist.

However, I admittedly feel more disappointed than pleased. I don’t think I executed this project and the reporting of it as well as I could have. My biggest problems were time management and not being able to follow up with sources. I left a lot of things at the last minute, and it was hard to juggle this project with work and other reporting assignments for my other classes. I do think I edited the photo/audio slideshow and video very well, but I think I could’ve taken more pictures inside more shops and interview a wider variety of people. As I mentioned a couple of entries ago, it’s important for people taking this class to be persistent and not be afraid to get in people’s faces. Unfortunately, I think I did let my fear get to me. Otherwise, I would’ve been able to talk to more sources for the video and slideshow. Also, I couldn’t even finish my text story – that’s my own fault. However, I also blame the weather – the past couple of weeks have been very cold and rainy, so it was hard to find busy shops to capture action and find customers to interview.

If I could do this project over again, I would’ve called the shops prior to coming in and let them know that I was doing a project for a class. Just coming in and asking them if I could take pictures and videos on the spot was very inconvenient, as many of the workers mentioned copyright issues and they had to talk to their managers beforehand. I certainly wish I was able to let them know sooner, as well as follow up with the ones I had already talked to during the reporting process. I also wish I had asked my subjects better and more insightful questions. As I looked back on the video, I realized that I could’ve asked them more (Additional questions have escaped my mind now, but I do feel that my reporting could have been more thorough).

Despite my mishaps and not working as hard as I could have, I enjoyed the learning experience.

Investigation into the Fro-Yo Trend – Week #3

Karen Datangel — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 10:35:19 +0000

I enjoyed the production part of this project the most because it allowed for some creative freedom. For this project, however, I kept it simple. I slightly edited the video interviews, then stitched them together with simple transitions using both the FlipShare software and Windows Movie Maker. I also added a title, credits, and overlay text explaining who my subjects were. If I could have edited the videos differently, I think I would’ve cut my own voice out and just let the subjects’ answers speak for themselves, like what’s done for television broadcasts. Another idea that just came to me was maybe editing the video to group similar answers together, so the viewer would be seeing the different subjects rather than just waiting for one subject to finish talking.

The most difficult part of making the slideshow was figuring out what audio to use. It’s difficult to do natural sound for frozen yogurt shops, and I didn’t want to do sound bites because I thought it’d be repetitive since I did video interviews. Therefore, I went with music. I went to Jamendo, which contains Creative Commons licensed music and did a search for ambient, instrumental, trance, acoustic, and jazz music. I thought those genres would help recreate the relaxing feeling one would get when walking into a frozen yogurt shop. But I ended up with a jazz piece called “Opposites” by pianist Pablo Pavan, and I think that still fit with my slideshow because in my text story, I quoted from an article that said frozen yogurt was a very sophisticated food. Jazz is definitely a sophisticated genre of music. The next challenge was editing the music. The song was an eight-minute piece and I had to take the most fitting part of the song and cut it down to about a minute-and-a-half. I found it in the middle section – it was too soft for me at both ends. Even with the challenges, I think the photos and the audio went well together.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, capturing photos was difficult, but nothing was ever said about taking pictures of the stores’ exteriors, so I went ahead and did that, as well as got snapshots of frozen yogurt in cups. Although Jennifer, the cashier at Tuttimelon, was kind enough to call the store’s manager to get permission for me to take photos inside and film footage for my video, I still had problems going up to customers and ask THEM permission to take their pictures. I felt like I worked well with what I had, and I enjoyed taking pictures of things from different angles.

Investigation into the Fro-Yo Trend – Week #2

Karen Datangel — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:03:41 +0000

I think the reporting portion of the project will be the most challenging. I have preliminary research done for a text story and I know which sources to tap for all portions of the project. However, with the recent Bay Area storm and the cold weather, it is difficult to walk into a frozen yogurt shop and capture action in photos and talk to customers! I also encountered a problem when I walked into the shop my best friend used to work at and I talked to the cashier. She said that filming and taking pictures was not allowed. She might have been new and/or clueless because when I walked into another shop, the cashier said it was okay to take pictures. I may try to touch base with the manager at the store in question, otherwise I’m just going to walk in there and hope another cashier will be there to say yes.

For those taking Digital Newsgathering in the spring, I strongly suggest that students take these two pieces of advice -
1. Manage your time wisely. Capturing audio, photos, and video is more time-consuming than most people would realize. Sometimes you might have to reserve an entire day in your schedule in order to do multimedia reporting and putting together all the pieces and polishing the final product. It’s all doable but in order to produce the best work, you have to set aside a lot of time.

2. Don’t be afraid to get into people’s faces. I think all journalists should follow this rule, but if you’re a multimedia journalist, you have to be more assertive and fearless since you have to capture more of another’s essence – their faces, their body language, their work, and basically their entire world. You have to negotiate and communicate with your subjects well about what may be gained or lost if a photo or video of them is shared on the Internet. However, in this case, it’s just for a grade, so let them know and hopefully they’ll be willing to lend some help to you.

Investigation into the FroYo Trend – Week #1

Karen Datangel — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:33:23 +0000

A few things inspired me to cover the frozen yogurt business for my business final project. First and foremost, my best friend held her previous part-time job at Orange Tree, a frozen yogurt shop based in Hawaii. It was originally part of the Tutti Frutti Frozen Yogurt franchise, but the store my friend worked at was bought by Orange Tree. While visiting her during her shifts, I was mesmerized by the comfortable and inviting interior, self-serve system, and variety of delicious and unique flavors and toppings. But I was first introduced to the newest kind of fro-yo before that. On a spring break trip to Los Angeles last year, a friend from USC introduced me to Pinkberry, and I fell in love with a cutely designed cup filled with tarty and creamy frozen yogurt topped with flavorful fruits. Soon I discovered that although Pinkberry did not exist within 20 minutes from me, I could find other cute and hip fro-yo shops almost anywhere that could offer me something similar. And if there wasn’t a shop in any area I’d encounter yet, there would be, according to signs posted in some empty spaces. Finally, an article I stumbled across on at work one day, “S.F. Gets Live Culture from L.A.: Yogurts,” made me more curious about the business aspect of the rise in number of fro-yo shops popping up in the Bay Area. Now I want to address some of my own questions, like why would my friend’s workplace get bought out by another company just months after opening? Why did Cefiore in San Francisco close its doors? Hopefully, I’ll be able to find those answers and more, plus profile some of my favorite fro-yo shops and why each is unique.

I plan to make all of my pieces in this project relate somehow. Hopefully, I’ll be able to use the same audio for both a slideshow and the video portion. For the text story, I’d like to focus on the business and long-ter outlook of local frozen yogurt shops. My audio slideshow would include pictures of the interiors and exteriors, plus workers and customers in action at various frozen yogurt shops around the Bay Area – the audio would include sound bites from the people I interview, and I hope to interview at least one customer, one worker, and a business expert (Like a business professor at the university, or maybe someone in a high position at one of the fro-yo shops). The video would include interviews from the same people, but with new information. I want to ask questions about how business at each particular store is going, what makes their store unique, and their opinion on the long-term outlook of frozen yogurt as a business. I want to ask customers why they enjoy going to particular shops, and why they even eat fro-yo at all. I want to be able to get a consumer’s point of view as well. My graphic would be a map of the fro-yo shops I profile, as well as others that I enjoy or are popular amongst others.

I hope that all the multimedia I include will not only be entertaining and pleasing to the eyes and ears, but also informative about the choices consumers may be able to make and offer insight into what business is actually like for some of these shops. I’m looking forward to rising to the challenge. I anticipate that this will be a very fun project to complete.