Google+

Again, it has been quite some time between posts and I've come to grips with the fact that personal blogs hold little to no interest for anybody else besides close friends and family (and even then I'm not so sure it's interesting!).

However, if you aren't on Google+ already, get on it! Tell me (email me: skparker1500@gmail.com) and I'll send you an invitation! It is beautiful! Much simpler than Facebook, much more customizable, and is free of harrassment (has anybody else had their FB profile hacked? Or is it just me?). Granted, when you make something idiot-proof, they create a better idiot, and I'm sure Google+ will have it's flaws in the near future, but so far it's been incredible.

Seriously. Get on it. I love it.

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It's been awhile...is blogging obsolete?

So, a ton of stuff has happened in the past month and I've had such an incredible experience! Between spending two weeks in England and finally graduating from college, my life has been interesting and wonderful!

However, fewer and fewer people seem to be using blogs in favor of Facebook and Twitter, which are faster and easier to use (at least when it comes to visuals!). Hm...

Having said that, if you'd like to see pictures from my trip or my graduation, check them out on Facebook and see what I've been up to via Twitter - SusanKParker

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Sitting is Killing Us....Uh oh....

I've been meaning to do an update about my trip to England and I will soon, but in the meantime, here is something a bit horrifying to realize....

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

Landing in London

Nothing too exciting initially, but you can get the gist of our personalities from these pictures...

And how big our plane was!!

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Updated Demo Reel

Madison Independent Drumline

A huge, huge congratulations to Madison Independent Drumline for walking away with the Gold World Champions medal this past weekend at WGI World Finals in Dayton, Ohio!!

A bit of a Cinderella story, MID started back in November 2010 with 20-30 members, a few instruments, a tech or two, and ran off hopes and dreams. But thanks to a strong support system and a solid plan, it grew to be 44 members strong and very successful.

I'm proud to say that I was with this ensemble from the start and it would be my first and last year with the program as I age out at 22. I'm so glad I got to help build the program from the bottom up and I made some of the most amazing friends in the world, and in the end, that's what truly matters. Even if we had lost, it would have still been a very successful season.

I love you all and will always remember you and cherish this season and the time we spent together.

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Demo Reel

Here is my demo reel as of April 2011.

Social Media Marketing Conference

This past Monday I attended the Social Media Marketing Conference with 3 colleagues of mine. It was hosted by SkillPath Seminars and we learned quite a lot. For anybody interested in attending, I wanted to highlight some of the things I learned:

- A company’s fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter are over 50% more likely to become a regular customer.

- People in general are much more likely to share their poor experiences online than they are their positive ones.

- Google is now a verb.

- If you can’t be found online, potential customers will seek out your competitors because they can be found.

- You only have 2-5 seconds to capture a reader’s attention.

- Any posts online (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) only have a life of 2 days before becoming old.

Located in the gorgeous Sheraton City Centre Hotel in Indianapolis, we were given a choice between following Track 1: You’ve decided to jump into the world of social media – now what? and Track 2: Step up your social media presence: Network, promote, share… and profit! I followed Track 2, which included these sessions:

1) Cool tools and how to use them to grow your business
2) Mistakes rookies make…but you don’t have to
3) The art of writing for a social audience
4) Managing your on-line reputation
5) Monitoring what people are saying about you on-line – in 15 minutes a day

I would elaborate on my experience throughout each session but I must keep this brief. If you ever get the opportunity to attend one of these conferences, I guarantee you’ll enjoy yourself fully and leave knowing so much more about the world of social media.

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Documentary Premiere!

Click on the image to view it larger.

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Last Semester!

It's so exciting to think that I graduate in just 4 months!!

My IS is nearly complete and ready for submission to the library (for the school's record). I've been submitting it to film festivals and will be presenting it at the conference in April at Butler University. I'm also going to officially premiere it on Hanover's Family Day on March 26th at 2pm. And everyone is welcome to attend! Click on the link for more information and to register to attend!

Life is just very exciting right now. I'm finishing up my comprehensive paper and will take the oral portion of it in the next few weeks. Assuming I pass everything, I'll be graduating in May after our two week trip to England! My spring term class is Documentary Production and two weeks of it is going to be spent in England, spending time in London, Cambridge, and Stratford Upon Avon. Should be very fun!!

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Rough Cuts: Search and Rescue and Outro

Very Rough Cuts of my documentary!

These are very rough and there are still more on the way that will likely be up later tonight. I greatly appreciate any constructive criticism, so please feel free to email me at skparker1500@gmail.com or private message me on Facebook. Thanks!

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Independent Study Update

Things are beginning to fall into place with my documentary! I still need to iron out my scripts and edit my footage, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Rough cut this week, final cut next week, entire project the week after! Hooray!

Here's something I put together briefly that I can't use in my actual documentary, but I thought it was fun and just had to share!

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Independent Study

For the past two months, I've been working on my independent study. It's a documentary about the relationship between dogs and humans. Specifically, I've spent time with dogs with jobs and their handlers, including seeing eye dogs, police dogs, search and rescue dogs, and show dogs.

It's been quite a lengthy project and I've learned that there are many, many ways that it can be done. So far, I haven't been able to figure out the best way for me, but this is my first whole video project. I'm hoping to eventually enter it into a few festivals and officially present to the campus at some point in January or so. I doubt I'll post the entire thing online, but I hope to post rough cuts of segments for feedback on accuracy and style. Yay!

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Summer Wrap-Up

So, all in all, I had an excellent summer. Many friends were made, wonderful experiences were had, and many memories created.

I got to cuddle with a manatee :)Visited the Mote Aquarium with Mom and DadAlso visited the Ringling museums with Mom and Dad
Celebrated 4th of July with some new friendsVisited Lido and Siesta Key Beaches oftenOften...Learned camera operations on several different types of camerasSpent a lot of time with the Florida Highway Patrol, on the ground and in the airPlayed with new action cameras (that we attached to the wing of this plane)Witnessed K9 Unit training and spent a lot of time with friends made within the unitsGained more respect for the highway and the troopers that protect usEnjoyed my condo and wonderful neighborsSpent some time with Courtney on her vacation on Anna MariaMade a close friend, Arelan, or Ray, if you preferOffice-mom PattyProducer Don, who taught me so much. Not only about the field of film making, but about myself and life in general.

I had such a fantastic time and I look forward to visiting again and possibly moving to the area after graduation! Thank you to all who supported me this summer!

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Two Weeks Notice

So, it's been awhile since I've posted and it's getting to be near the end of the summer. I've had a fantastic time so far and I hope to gain more experience in the next two weeks before coming home!

I've been keeping busy at work, doing research on a few concepts that are being tossed around in our brainstorming sessions. Adam's concept is animal abuse, specifically dog fighting, so I've been doing a lot of research on that, which makes me a bit emotional. But the idea is that there are people out there who want to stop it all from happening, which is comforting.

A concept that I've come up with and researched is cyber bullying. It's only in the past few years that this type of bullying has been significant, resulting in many teens being forced to move to a different school or go into therapy, and in some extreme cases, has led to suicide and suicide attempts.

Besides work, I've been playing around with my fancy new camera and have made some progress on my independent study! This past weekend I conducted four interviews; three with blind individuals training with a new guide dog, and one interview with the dog trainer. Very interesting stuff and it has me even more excited about the work I'm doing! More information to come.

So I have to leave soon, which will be sad, but I'm excited to see all my friends again. I'm also super excited to see my dogs! OMG it has been far too long without a corgi in my lap!! I can talk to my friends and family on the phone or via video-chat and they can even visit, but I have no interaction with my dogs unless it's in person! I miss my babies, but I get to see them soon!

Congratulations to everyone at the Western Reserve Specialty! I miss everyone!!

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August!? When did that happen?

The summer has just been flying by and it's been so fun. I've kept busy with work and church and Law & Order SVU episodes. :-) God bless Netflix.

Salt & Light just hired another producer, Adam, who is just awesome. Very intelligent and has a lot of great ideas. I'm looking forward to working with him. We'll be scheduling for some more shoots here in the next few weeks before I head home and I'm pumped!

Before I leave, I'll also be doing some interviews with people for my own benefit: looking into my independent study about human/canine relationships. My friend and her mom took me to Southeastern Guide Dogs a few weeks back and I'm planning on going back and talking to some of the trainers. And, I have friends in the Florida Highway Patrol! Next week or so I'll be driving down to West Palm (or Miami, haven't decided) to hang out with a few of the K9 units! I'm so excited.

I'm especially pumped because I'll get to see this dog again:

I'm keeping busy and loving it and I hope I get to come back!

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Summer's halfway over! Ahhh!!

So, right now I'm continuing work on the ShelterBox promo piece and I've been given the opportunity to write the story/treatment for it! It's been very exciting. I'm actually able to apply some of the things learned from broadcasting!! Who knew? Hahaha...

As for my independent study: I made contact with Southeastern Guide Dogs and I will hopefully have an interview with them in the near future. I'd be interviewing one of the dog trainers and *hopefully* one of the "graduates," aka a blind person who's been matched with their dog. I'm still waiting to hear back from the K9 units in Miami, and hopefully I'll get to go back for a day and spend some time with them again. Now, even though I show dogs myself, I want to get a perspective from someone who shows their dogs more regularly. Hm.

Not too much to say. Enjoying life!

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Information Overload

So, my ears have stopped ringing and I'm back to researching, cataloging, and capturing footage. We are beginning to focus a bit on a project about ShelterBox. It is a non-profit organization that essentially stuffs all of the necessities for a family into a large green box! I can't share pictures yet because they are copyrighted, but you can see some images from the website here. They've done incredible things for so many countries including Haiti and Brazil, where their people were forced out of their home because of a natural disaster.

I say overload because ShelterBox has given us so much footage and plenty of pictures to sift through. I'm attempting to download them all (from a remote server) and, no joke, my computer estimates that it will take 10 DAYS+ to download it all. It's only 5 gigs too...my laptop could download 5 gigs in 3-4 hours. Man.

It's a rainy and hot day, which is a bit odd! But I plan on taking advantage of it and catching up on sleep!

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"Hi everyone, you can call me the manatee!" - Jim Gaffigan, comedian

It's been awhile. Sorry about that! I've been busy with work, church, and family. In fact, my parents were just here. That was nice- not having to pay for anything! Mom and I spent some time on Lido Beach and I got to pet a wild manatee! Check it out!

Okay, so I don't have pictures of it. But it was a bit of a short notice, and I wasn't about to run out of the water to grab my camera! You'll just have to trust me. But he looked something like this one, who we saw at the Mote aquarium.
The best part was that he acted just like one of my dogs. He swam straight up to us, bumped into me, and rolled over so I could rub his belly. Such a sweet creature.

The next few pictures are from the Ringling Circus Museum.

And last week, Courtney Crutcher and her family were vacationing on Anna Maria Island, so I got to hang out with them too! It was fun to see some familiar faces!

I suppose I could do a brief update on what I'm doing at work; for the past week and likely most of this week, I've been responsible for collecting and sorting sound effects and music pieces for the Florida Highway Patrol piece. Salt & Light has a few libraries that they already own to sort through, and they add up to about 38-40,000 individual sounds. It's a lot of listening, but it's been an interesting experience to learn and think about how many sounds do go into professional video media. Many sounds are subtle and hardly noticed unless listened for.

That's all I have time for now but hopefully I'll have some more time to share more soon!

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