Ordinary Creativity — Chrissy Harless
I choose to do my LEAP assignment on Chrissy Harless, a content creator on youtube who I have followed for a long time. Personally, I enjoy Chrissy’s focus on supporting women owned businesses, but she is known primarily for other content that I think makes her unique. Chrissy has a second channel that focuses on cannabis and CBD related subscription boxes. I choose to focus on this aspect of her content because I think there is a lot of room for interesting interpretations of these videos. Recreational smoking is a controversial topic for many people, and Chrissy does not fit the stereotype of what people who smoke pot usually look and act like, and the lifestyle they typically lead. I enjoyed crating this LEAP video and learning to use screencast-o-matic. There is definitely a learning curve on this software, but I eventually figured out a method that worked well for me. The method I used was recording all the visual elements first and saving those as a video on my computer, then going back and screen recording that video while doing the voiceover. This allowed me to focus on one aspect at a time, and allowed me to do all the talking in one take, so the voiceover flowed better. I had tried to record the video and the audio together as the the tutorial demonstrated a few times, but I found that this lead to a very choppy video. I also found that recording that way messed up my train of thought and that I kept having to re-record sections of the video. I think the method I used in the end was the right method for me. Another struggle I had while making this video was that Chrissy is a smaller creator on YouTube, so she is not really a “public figure”. this means that there are less photos of her on the internet than someone who is more of a celebrity. To get around this, I pulled a lot of pictures and videos directly from her channel page, and only a few from external sources. I also struggled to find visual ways to express some aspects of Chrissy’s content because of this. For example, I wanted to include a picture of her family to show that she focuses on breaking down the stereotype of what stoners are supposed to look like and do. Understanbly, there are no pictures of her husband or children publically accessible online that I could find. This makes sense as she makes content that can be considered controversial, so she wants to protect her family from any public backlash. I choose to mention her family in the audio and not display a picture in the video to respect her wishes to protect the identity of her children and husband. The creative process for making this video was a lot of fun. I enjoyed selecting photos and videos to include and also writing my voiceover. I enjoyed the opportunity to support a content creator that I enjoy, and I also enjoyed to opportunity to delve into a section of her content that I do not usually gravitate towards. Overall, I think this assignment was a great experience and I hope everyone enjoys watching my LEAP video as much as I enjoyed thiers.
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