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Delaney Lewellyn

CIBACS

April 27, 2020

Senior Project Written Report

Implementation

The Senior project I chose to complete was the creation of two blogs. The first blog,

Under Pressure Swim Blog, was made with the purpose of to explain Kaatsu band-based swim

drills. The second blog, Under Pressure Recovery Blog, had the purpose to show how Kaatsu

bands could heal an injury, prevent muscle injuries, and strengthen muscles at a faster rate. The Commented [DL1]: Research

steps used to complete this project consisted of creating the blog, pre-film production, the

filming process, writing up scripts, completing audio recordings, editing the videos, the

uploading and exporting process, writing text entries, organizing all the material, and designing

social media accounts.

This being the first time creating a blog, I anticipated it being difficult. However, this

turned out to be one of the easier tasks. Since I am a bit of a perfectionist, designing the blog was

infuriating. I kept questioning myself on what colors and designs I should use, along with how

to format all the information. Not a single idea seemed to stay, and everything I tried just seemed

to turn into a mess. All the layout and colors I came up with were answered with hatred. One

day I started to randomly insert a variety of colors into the blog. I ended up finding a water

design background that I thought could be put into good use, with the blog being about swim

drills. The other issue I faced was what color would work best with the water design. All the

colors I tried to match looked terrible or were barely visible, that was until I stepped across this

unique shade of red. For some reason this color stuck out to me. Due to it being the only other
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color that looked good, my blog became based off those two colors, red and blue. Another

problem I had with the blog was the background where all the posts went. I wanted it to change

the color, but the site would not allow me to change it from white. After looking back at the

color scheme a few times, red, white, and blue look well together. I also did not understand how

the blog set up would look like. Once I completed uploading all my information onto the blog, I

was able to find a way to keep the information organized. All the documents or videos were

their own blog post. Before being uploaded there was an option to categorize each post. Taking

that into consideration, I was able to categorize the text entries from the video posts.

The first couple of times that I had to set up the equipment for filming, it was difficult.

This was one of the first times I had ever used a tripod and filmed professionally. The research I

had conducted only seemed to give me more confusion, so I had no clue which angles to film, or

which way would be the best to oversee this process. In the end, the filming and use of tripod

became easier for me to use the longer it was used. The tripod I did use first started off as my

coach’s because I was not able to receive my own until Christmas time. Besides the usage of the

tripods, finding the best areas of lighting was also difficult. Some of the more unique angles I

wished to film were extremely difficult considering how dark the footage came out. Using flash

mode or a flashlight did not seem to work either. Once daylight savings happened in November,

this issue almost fully dissolved with only a few issues here and there. These issues include

shadows and some darkness, since the practices I filmed were held in the morning, 5:30-6:30.

The next step that occurs is the filming of the drills. Most of the filming was done

handheld. From the end of November to the end of January, I was out of commission for serval

different reasons, the removal of my wisdom teeth and having broken my elbow. During that

time period, I would still attend these morning swim practices. Instead of setting up the tripod to
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film, I just filmed handheld, since I was unable to get in the water myself. I got similar results;

the slight difference was that I was able to take video footage in unique places, resulting in

strange angles. I tried to keep in mind what views would be the easiest to understand. Trying to

find the best ways to set up filming stations in the area given that was able to catch underwater,

bird’s eye view, and side profiles of the drill. I thought capturing the back-side view would be

interesting until I found out it was against swim regulations to post videos of swimmers’ rear

ends. Even though that was not what I had in mind, this way of filming was considered indecent,

so I had to switch up my methods a bit differently.

For every drill, a script was created. This script was to be used for me to read off of for

the audio recordings. Creating these scripts could have easily taken me a single day, because I

was able to complete ten of them in one day. Unfortunately, after the first script writing I was

deciding how I should go about completing the events. The order I went off of for that specific

script was; write the script, record audio, edit video, upload to YouTube, place on blog, publish

the post, finish. That placement of tasks did not end up working for me. I ended up changing

the order to complete all the scripts in one day, the audio recording the next, one day dedicated to

the video edits, and one day dedicated to uploading the video to YouTube and placing them onto

the blogs. This way worked better because it gave me a clear-cut way of doing things.

The audio recordings were done after the script writing. These were a bit more difficult

to complete because even though I had what to say right in front of me, I would mess up

somehow. Whether it be by messing up the words, forgetting words, or just blanking out

completely, the audio recording took longer than I predicted. Some of my mess ups can be found

on (Ref to vlog #1).

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Many of my challenges from this project come from video editing. I had never really

done any video editing before, so I was confused with what was handed to me. After watching

tutorial videos and playing around with the all the different effects, I was able to determine

which effects work for my project. The effects I tended to use the most were the stabilization of

a shaky camera, slowing the speed of the video, and cropping the video to match that of the rest

of the footage or to use to the cropping to zoom in on swimmers. What I had trouble finding out

was how to remove the sound of the previous videos, how to add the audio recording into the

videos, and how to remove part of the previous video. Some points the audio recording would

cut out when editing the footage. Figuring out how that happened and how to fix it was a huge

challenge I had to face. After some trial and error, I learned all that I could do in that instance

was to delete the current audio and then added it after the footage was completely edited.

The process of exporting, uploading, adding the videos to the website took an extremely

long time. I was able to finish each video within a reasonable time, but I think the exporting

process to even longer than creating the video. After exporting the file to my computer from the

video editing software, I tried to directly place it onto the blog. Multiple tries failed, until the

last option was left, upload the video to YouTube first. This process took an extremely long

time. For example, some videos took over an hour before they were posted on YouTube. When

I was finally able to place the now YouTube video onto the blog, it worked. The issue that

involved the video being too large of size was now fixed.

The text entries were the next step to be completed. These entries consisted of personal

experiences with the drills. In the Under Pressure Recovery Blog, I explained how the Kaatsu

band arm and leg workouts helped heal my broken elbow at a faster rate. They also shared how
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the bands prevent injuries and strengthens a person's muscles. These text entries took a relatively

short time to complete once I was sat down and started working on them.

Organization was a key needed for this project, especially for me. If I am not organized,

I cannot concentrate, making all my work turn out not as great as it should. Once I was able to

finish a segment of footage for a drill, I uploaded it onto my OneDrive account. I would then

correctly label the drill so that when ready to edit, I would know which videos to select. Besides

the video footage folder, there were many more created on this account. Others consisted of

audio recordings, scripts, text entries, edited videos, calls, text messages, emails, meetings, notes

that had been taken, pictures based around this project, vlogs, and time-lapse videos.

The social media accounts were created at a relatively fast rate. The two platforms that

were going to be used included Instagram and Facebook, since they are popular among

businesses. The Instagram account worked according to plan, all the videos uploaded and there

were no issues. The Facebook account on the other hand had major issues. The major one being

that is terminated my account and would not let me sign back in or create another account for it.

Since I was not familiar with this social media platform and all my attempts to fix the issue

failed, I just went with only using an Instagram account. The items placed on the social media

account included the link to the blog, a picture of the blog’s front page, and a short snippet of all

the videos included on the blog.

Evaluate the Outcome

Coming into my Senior year, I understood that this project was supposed to be completed

and how stressful or enjoyable it could be depending on the project idea. The first thought that

came to my head was that I did not think I had anything that I enjoyed doing that much that

would make this project less stressful for me. That was until I was introduced to the idea of
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creating a Kaatsu band drill blog focused on swimming. The idea did not originally come from

me, but from my swim coach. After hearing about this idea, I felt some connection to the idea,

piquing my interest that I might not feel as stressful doing it. Thanks to the little push, Under

Pressure Swim Blog was born. When going through the process of this project, I became

injured, with a broken elbow, which led to an extension of the blog, Under Pressure Recovery

Blog. Completing this project allowed me to showcase my creativity through video editing and

blog design, expand my knowledge on almost every aspect of this project, and help further open

my eyes to different tasks and opportunities. My project was both a failure and a success. I

failed at the idea of time conception (time management). On the other hand, I was able to

succeed in creating a blog that had multiple different teaching and learning styles, such as video,

script, text, and voice. I was also able to succeed through my learning stretch: expand

knowledge on video editing, learn how to write and create scripts and text entries, figure out how

to create and manage a blog, and improve on my writing skills.

Time management was extremely important for this project. If I had followed through

with the original timeline I had written out, or created a new one when situation came up, I feel

like I would have been more organized instead of scrambling around for the remaining time left.

As stated, my time management skills were not the best in completing this project. I

procrastinated in the beginning of the project and once I got my injury, I tended to push

everything aside even further. There were some scenarios that led me to do some of my project,

like taking notes on how the recovery was going and how they felt. Besides that, I was led to a

situation of trying to get everything done all at once. Even when I was told countless times to

get it done right away, I thought other things were of more importance. (REF TIMELINE OR

ACTIVITY LOG)
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My knowledge on video editing expanded thanks to the help of YouTube clips,

informative articles, (REF TO RCP) and asking my peers to look over them for advice on

different way to fix or adjust it. Before entering this project, I had zero experience with video

editing. Since I had no knowledge on editing, I watched countless tutorials and ended up playing

around with the editing software. From that, I was able to learn how to crop a vertical video into

a horizonal one, how to zoom in on a specific part of the video, how to lower the brightness, how

to slow down a video, and how to mute the video’s original background noise. I was able to

complete the drill videos because of the research and time I put into figuring out the editing

program. In my opinion they turned out pretty well for a beginner.

Being able to learn how to write the scripts and create text entries were challenging. I

struggled with script writing because I did not understand how to lay it out. When creating

documents on the criteria that must be included in these documents (REF TO SCRIPT

CRITERIA), I was able to focus my mind a bit. What also helped with this experience was fully

understanding the drill and asking my swim coach's help for some explanations, if I was stuck

and confused on a way of explaining some part of a drill (REF TO SCRIPT WRITINGS). On

the other hand, the text entries were a bit easier to make. They were intended to be there for the

audience to connect with a swimmer and their perspective of the drill, how they felt, and how it

helped them overall (REF TO TEXT ENTRIES). Everything would have gone smoothly if only

the swim season had not been cancelled. Implementing how the drill would help with further

growth, using swim meets as an example, was now ruined.

This was my first time ever using a blog format. I have created a website, but I had never

been exposed to or learned anything about a blog. The first step to fixing that was to do some

research on blogs. I then set up a timeline on when I would post videos, when I would edit them,
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etc. (REF TO PREVIOUS TIMELINE). As explained beforehand, I failed the timely manner

situation (REF TO CURRENT TIMELINE) but was able to learn more about blogs and how

they typically are run (REF TO RESOURCE CONSULTED PAGE).

I have always struggled with the skill of writing (REF TO ROUGH DRAFTS) so when

this project idea came up, my immediate response was that I wanted to use it as a guide to help

with improving my writing skills. With the help of my teachers (REF TO CORRECTIONS BY

TEACHERS), quality control partners (REF TO QUALITY CONTROL PARTNER HELP), and

my friends giving me advice, my writing was able to gradually become better than it originally

was.

At first, I heavily disliked the idea of doing this project, but now that it is complete, I am

glad that I have come out with more information than walking into it. This project allowed me to

learn key skills that I may need in the future for a career or hobby of my liking. Through

creating Under Pressure Swim Blog and Under Pressure Recovery Blog, the challenges I faced,

and that satisfaction of each piece completed was enough to make me enjoy it in the end. I was

able to change my ideas and way of thinking rapidly, which was easier to take criticism and

comments to change some aspects, along with becoming better in said skills. Through this

project, I was able to become more confident in my skills, along with getting things done in a

short amount of time. I am extremely proud of myself about the way I was able to change my

mindset drastically throughout the project along with the growth and new information I have

received.