In this audio slideshow, I photographed and filmed Landice Mullins, a freshman figure skater for DU Figure Skating. Mullins is a freshman, high level figure skater who consistently trains and competes both collegiately and in the National Qualifying Series (NQS). In this slideshow, I put together a mix of photographs and videos with the goal of portraying her skating and story as a figure skater. I captured 14 photos and videos of Mullins on the ice and two images of where DU Figure Skating trains in the Ritchie Center. When editing this slideshow, I tried to organize my content in a way that told a story. I organized the clips starting with Mullins’ warmup and gradually led into her more complicated skills. I did this with the intention of the audience feeling like they were at a practice with her. I tried to break up the videos by element, separating the spins from the jumps, in order to showcase the range in Mullins’ skating. Additionally, I tried to incorporate videos and photos evenly to increase engagement. 

While capturing Mullins on the ice, I tried to get still videos and clear action shots. I took photos and videos both from the boards and on the ice. When capturing the videos of her spins, I skated around her in a circle with the goal of capturing how a skater feels when they’re spinning. This is a technique that I have done on my Iphone, but never on a Canon Camera. At first skating on the ice with a camera was a bit intimidating, but as the shoot progressed I got much more confident filming. A majority of my pictures were taken in ‘sports mode,’ in order for me to capture all of Mullins’ skills. Because of this, I had a ton of content to sort through. I picked photographs based on quality, making sure the pictures weren’t too blurry and represented Mullins’ performance well. 

The editing piece of this project definitely challenged me but I learned a lot throughout the process. This was my first time using Adobe Premiere, and after some workshopping and Youtube tutorials, I began the editing process. Once I began this process I slowly got the hang of it and got to see my vision for this slideshow come to life. After adding my interview audio, I decided to incorporate a song in the background. This made the breaks in the interview audio much less awkward and I think it also helped the transitions between the photos and videos feel more natural. To get music legally, I picked the song ‘Butterfly‘ by Patrick Jordan from Youtube’s free library. Picking from this library allowed me to find music that fit my slideshow without having to worry about copyright. When choosing to add text, I wanted to keep it simple so as to not distract from Mullins, her skating, and her storytelling during the interview. I decided to include text of her name at the beginning for an introduction, her skate and blade information on a shot of her skates, and then credits at the end slide. In this case, doing this made the slideshow look much cleaner and didn’t distract from the story. In the future, I definitely plan on making a storyboard before editing. I made one during the editing process to solidify my ideas and it really helped me form my vision for the project. Overall, I’m proud of the story my slideshow tells and the drafting process I endured to create it.