My feature focuses on The Harlem riots of 1964 and its racial connotations. I connected these events to recent events of police brutality to make it more relevant to what society is going through in the matter of race. Cases of police brutality have been in the eye of the hurricane in the past few years and I felt that addressing them in my feature was a good way to capture the attention of my audience.
Preparation Before Creating The Feature
In order to make the Feature I had to interview my peers and faculty from The New School of Social Research. Some of the people I interviewed were Elaine Abelson, Nadia Williams, and Lawrence Hirscheld. The interviews with Elaine and Nadia were really successful, they both gave me a lot of insight on race and the Harlem Riot of 1964. On the other hand, the interview with Mr. Hirscheld was not successful, I asked him questions and I felt that his answers were not related to what I was asking him. I also emailed another professor which according to him was out of the country, but one of his colleague confirm that he was in the country. It was strange that a person I don’t know and asked for helped lied to me instead of saying he couldn’t do it. Overall, I was able to get enough material to create a feature that informs my topic.
After I interviewed Nadia I accidentally deleted her interview and couldn’t use it on my final feature. I was really frustrated because it was a great interview. After that I was talking to my friend about the project and she told me she has an african american friend who did a project about the Harlem Riots in high school. I set up a meeting with her friend and to my surprise her grandfather participated in the riots. Sadly, I was not able to interview her Grandfather, but as an African American she was able to give me a more conscious perspective about the topic. In comparison to Elaine’s interview which I felt it was cold and insensitive about race, her interview felt humane and sensitive.
In my final feature I used Elaine’s and Alexandria’s interviews because they were contradictory and combining them together made my feature more interesting.
At the beginning of this project I was really worried because I have never worked with audio before, but once Malcolm started to explain everything to us working with audio became cleaner.
After Malcolm Explanation I decided to explore Adobe Premiere instead of Pro Tools. I looked up tutorials in order to learn how to use Adobe Premiere.
Tutorials:
These are some of the Tutorials I watched:
Feature Edit
After I put the interviews together and took my voice out of the clips, I closed my computer and stopped working on it. The next day listened to the feature with a fresh mindset. In this revision I encountered many mistakes and things that needed to be cut or improved.
First Edit:
- When she says the outcome of the riot Delete that until she says the outcome of the community. Is from 35 seconds to 43 seconds.
- At 2:49 there are weird sounds in the background that last for 1 second get rid of that.
- At 4:30 there is a voice that comes in is weird.
- There are like hammering sounds throughout try to fix that.
- 4:59- 5:12 delete this.
- 5:59 get rid of that until 6:13.
- Delete from 7:43 to 7:55.
- Around 8:30 there are a lot of weird noises try to improve that.
- Cut at 8:51 to 9:20.
- Cut from 10:36 to 10:45.
Second Edit:
- when she says the outcome of the riot 37 s to 44 s.
- 1:25 to 1 37 delete.
- 2:02 to 2: 21 delete.
- 2:48 to 2:59 delete.
- 3: 30 to 4:41 delete.
- 4:50 to 5:30 delete.
- 5:59- 6:13 delete.
- 6:24- 6:33 delete.
- 6:42- 7:10 delete.
- 7:50- 7:55 delete
- 8:53- 8: 22 delete.
Conclusion
At the beginning of the project I intended to have my interviews play out separately, but with the class critique I realized that it was going to be really boring if I put my feature together that way. At the end, I had to change my ideas and mix the interviews. Mixing the interviews was one of the most challenging aspects of the project because I had to mix them in a way in which they could tell a story. Finally, I felt like I was able to put together a feature that tells the story that I wanted to tell, But I still struggled with the volume of the music.
The feature and the writing assignment are about the same topic ( The Harlem Riots of 1964) and they express similar ideas, but they differ in the use of media and composition. The feature is more interesting because it talks about racism, the riot, and police brutality while the paper is all about the importance of the place and its connection to the event. I have learn more from doing the feature because I was exposed to new tools and also a variety of opinions from people of different racial backgrounds.
Racism is a really controversial topic in today’s society that I believe should be given more importance. We might think that it’s in the past and that people are more accepting in the 21st Century; well that is true to an extend because many people are still discriminating one another based on their color and range of other aspects. In the process of putting this project together I realize that a lot of people are insensitive about race, they seem not to really care about it or simply just ignore it. I believe that as a society we should work together to make people aware of this situation, to inculcate tolerance and respect to those who believe they are superior and discriminate others. If we want to see change we must unite.
