Extracurricular Projects

A lot of people may stop after they finish schoolwork or required materials but I often find myself wanting to create and do more. Sometimes class work can get tiresome and boring so finding something you actually enjoy creating and doing is very important. Recently I have created a few different side projects not associated with school that I have been really proud of and would like to share.

My first project I created last week after watching a few parody videos online. After the announced hiatus of a great sitcom called Community there has been an outpouring of fan made videos showcasing how special this show really is. My friend and I stumbled on a video where a user created the opening credits for Community yet in the style of another great show called Parks and Recreation. We then realized that it would be interesting to see Community’s credits in the style of Arrested Development, a show that like Community had cult fans and network scheduling problems in its third and final season.

A few minutes after this discussion I went right to work seeing if this was doable. After playing around in Photoshop about if I could do it, all of the sudden it was all I could think about. For the next two days every free minute I had I would work on this credit sequence. I first created all the images in Photoshop by using pictures of the cast from online. Then I put them all into Final Cut and animated the slides to move and change at the exact same time the original credits changed. Next came adding the videos included on the slides. Finally I had to figure out how to make moving arrows, circles, and the hanging pictures. I then just sat down and tried different things and used trial and error to problem solve these things for myself. Two days later I was done and posted it online. In 48 hours I nearly had 2000 views and now as I write it has over 4000. I am very proud of the outcome and how I may finding people I don’t even know post it themselves on sites like Twitter and Tumblr! To view my video click here and to see the original I based it on click here.

Another side project I have been involved in is called Dual Redundancy. Dual Redundancy is an entertainment and television podcast my friend Mike and I created and host every week. On the show we have different segments where we discuss the week in entertainment. These include “In and Out Points” where we jump in and out of the week’s big headlines and “The Flashback” where we highlight a great new episode of a show from the last week. We also give movie reviews and have done a variety of theme episodes. These have included an Emmy prediction episode and another where we revealed the list of the top ten TV characters from the last ten years. For the latter podcast we created a survey and asked our listeners for their votes. We received over 100 votes before we closed voting! We are still going strong and have created ten episodes so far.

If interested in learning more about Dual Redundancy you can find us all over the Internet. We have a Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube page where you can find out about the latest episodes, contribute content for the show, and even participate in contests. Most importantly you can subscribe and listen to our show on iTunes or download it to your MP3 player.