Dual Hall Councils team up for ‘May the Fourth’ event

By: Isabella Cary

I began the slideshow with an extreme close-up of a cup of frozen yogurt because I wanted to convey that this was more about what the event was about. While this was a Star Wars event, there was not much Star Wars happening outside of the lightsaber-making and music, so I sought to emphasize the food, which became the main event. After that, I had a picture of Donavan Perea, the interviewee for my entire slideshow and the one speaking over 90% of it. This was to ensure that people could put a face to the voice of those actively working on this event and to describe its activities and process. Next, I cut to a picture of Anya Kraunz, another student working on the event from Nelson Hall Council, to show that there was a lot of preparation and that it took many people to arrange and set up the event that day. After, I went for a couple of photos showing the people attending (Charlotte Janney and June Nye) and helping out with the event, starting with a lightsaber that was built by Charlotte Janney. As Donavan talked about the caterers, I made sure to include a shot of the Yogurtland bag, showing the Frozen Yogurt they provided for this event. The bubble shots were included in the slideshow as a way to break up the other images, and I sought to show that people were playing with bubbles the entire time, outside of the Star Wars things and the food.

The photos of the food were added to show that everyone was having a nice time and that a steady stream of people kept coming to take the Frozen Yogurt as word spread that it was free in the Nagel Courtyard. I wanted to include the photo of Anya Kraunz eating Frozen Yogurt and speaking to someone off-screen, as I wanted to show that the people working on the event were also enjoying themselves and that it was fun for everyone. Kona Ice was also present at the event, and it seemed to attract more people than even the Frozen Yogurt, so I added a picture of the truck itself. As a fun extra, I set down my camera and took a photo of myself in character, as I was the most Star Wars-dressed person there, and I wanted to have a low depth of field image of someone there in Star Wars attire. Lightsaber battles started toward the end of the event, and I captured Charlotte Janney and Ty Anderson battling first, which eventually turned into Charlotte Janney and Dylan Morrison fighting it out, since I wanted to include some motion shots in my images. Finally, I concluded with a picture of an empty cup to signal that the slideshow was over, contrasting with the full cup at the beginning.

For this slideshow, I chose to photograph what I did to capture every aspect of the event, from food to action to interpersonal conversations. For example, I chose to show Anya Kraunz setting up the event, as at the time, Donavan was speaking about the planning and set up for it, since it took a while for them to do so. Another example is the pictures of the lightsaber battle between Charlotte Janney and Ty Anderson, since I wanted to incorporate movement into my shots while also showing the things people who weren’t eating ice cream were doing specifically. Finally, there were a lot of pictures of people speaking to each other, which demonstrated the sheer number of conversations that went on during the four hours of the event and how it brought people together under their shared love of Star Wars (or Frozen Yogurt). Regarding the slideshow order, I kept it the same because I wanted to match (approximately) what was shown on screen with what Donavan Perea said during the interview. There were a few moments in what he was saying, like the planning stages or the food catering, that I noticed I could match up well with pictures of those setting-up moments, or the bag where Yogurtland had stored the food they were serving. Overall, my aim for the order was to make it feel visually natural and interesting, and to be relevant to the interview in a way that would help people really understand the feelings and tones at the event.

Audio and text were easier to integrate than I had originally planned, and I knew from the start that I did not want to overthink any of it. I chose the music, the funky jams, as I wanted to keep it upbeat, as was the tone of the evening. I had some plans to integrate more dramatic Star Wars-adjacent music to the slideshow, though after searching through the Premiere catalogs, I realized that there was not too much that would complement the photo well (especially since so many of them have absolutely nothing to do with Star Wars). Text-wise, I chose to incorporate a “May the 4th Kona & Froyo” text box at the beginning because I wanted to do something different from the headline already attached to the video on the website and on YouTube. I spent a few hours fiddling with text size, placement, and font before I found something easy to read, with clean lines and very easy to integrate. Using this, I made sure to include everyone’s names who were in the photos as they came up, rather than writing descriptions, since I felt that would be redundant and difficult to read while Donavan is speaking in one’s ears. The audio of the interview with Donavan Perea was a process of trial and error, since I knew I did not want it to be one continuous video of him talking––the break is very helpful––and I wanted to bring the music back in at a higher volume at some point during the end portion of the video.

In general, looking back on the project, I felt that what absolutely worked was just how well the photos lined up with what Donavan was saying in the audio, especially starting with that full cup of froyo and ending on the empty one to sort of tie the whole thing together. Matching up shots like Anya setting up or the Yogurtland bag right when he brought those things up gave the video a really natural flow, and keeping the text to just names meant people could actually look at the pictures without getting too distracted from his voice. Still, I definitely ran into some walls, mostly because the event was way more about free food and hanging out than it was about Star Wars, meaning my original plan to use sci-fi music (Star Wars-adjacent) wasn’t appropriate and felt very awkward next to pictures of people blowing bubbles. I had to pivot to those funkier tracks to match the actual mood, and chopping Donovan’s interview took a ton of back-and-forth editing, so it didn’t sound like a flat, boring wall of talking. This experience taught me that you just have to roll with whatever is actually happening in front of your camera instead of forcing a specific idea. When choosing the photos, I wanted images that felt alive, like the motion of a lightsaber fight or real conversations, and I cut out any repetitive shots of the food line that didn’t add anything new. Next time, I will absolutely keep the same timeline structure and clean text choices, but I will try to record some video of the event, like when they were fighting with the lightsabers or when conversations were at their peak, to make the audio feel a lot less sterile.