I am currently finishing up the editing of the Edward Buchanan interview. It was a long and exciting journey for this one! Many changes have been made, countless hours of swapping this, swapping that, deleting this, adding that.

Soon will you all see what a great person Edward is and how CCAD played a role in his future.

While we’re on the topic of editing, let me tell you a little about it!

Editing is the most important aspect of the video process. If you just post the raw footage, it is terribly boring, uneventful, and long. An editors job is basically the same job as a storyteller (or a magician). He or she needs to cut down the video and make it a proper pace, put nice music to it, put images and video on top of the video to hide the cuts, etc.

The editor of almost every single documentary and interview cuts the video down to a small amount from hours or even DAYS worth of footage. The viewer doesn’t notice this because of the editors skill at hiding it.

The interviewee comes to secretly respect the editor upon viewing the final product. The interviewee might be a stutterer, might say “uhhh” a lot, might cough here and there, or whatever. The editor will take those out, and make him sound like a gentleman and a scholar.

Not to say everyone does those things when they are interviewed, but you’d be surprised as to how many do.

I would bet a whole lot that those interviews with the president on CNN and what not weren’t just ONE take. Sometimes they are, yes, but everyone makes mistakes, and it’s the media editor’s job to hide that.

Do you watch the news and say “wow, that was edited really well”.  Nope.

Do you watch basketball games on tv and say that? Didn’t think so.

I suggest you take a harder look at the editing next time you watch something, it can be really interesting what you’ll catch.

I hope you don’t catch any errors in the Ed interview though. And you won’t, because I edited it.

Now that the trip to NYC is over and our time there is a memory, I have been reflecting on how this whole journey started.

My involvement with this project happened right as I was getting ready to graduate, which made the last three months incredibly crazy. From figuring out subway routes to deciding which color shirt does not make me look like a giant pumpkin on screen, the process has been an interesting one. Never did I think that in my career I would be sent to New York to interview people—Matt Lauer style.

Last time I was in New York, I was a senior in high school, and I went to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. While doing all the tourist things that you normally do in New York, I started to wish that I could have experienced the city on a more cultural level. That is exactly what I wanted this trip to be for Alex and I, an immersion into the NYC art and design community.

Beautiful Street we came across.

I also hoped to get some time to explore the city. As a photographer, I was excited to get some super-sweet shots and capture the texture and beauty of this awesome metropolis.

Having graduated from CCAD with a major in Advertising & Graphic Design and minors in Photography and Copywriting, this trip is what I have spent the last four years working toward. Check out some of my work at www.lifebulbdesign.com, and you will see the things that inspire me and the work that I have created.

The concept for the project began in early March with the idea of heading to different places throughout the world to find  CCAD alumni. We wanted to capture their journey, find out what makes them tick, how they picked the path they did, and how CCAD set them up for that success. These questions would drive the interviews and be the main focus of the videos we captured.

Working with Resource Interactive (RI)  the CCAD team hatched an idea and figured out a plan. We did some mock interviews and then started to prepare for our interview with 2010 CCAD Fashion Icon Award winner Edward Buchanan, creator of Sansovino 6. While he was in town accepting his award at the 2010 Senior Fashion Show, we got to spend

Times Square

some time with him and find out his journey to the Jay-Oh-Bee.

Edward’s interview went great, and we got some awesome footage. At our last meeting with RI, we reviewed the video that Alex had been spending lots of time editing. It was given a big round of applause and will be the first to be posted in the series.

After this, we began planning for NYC. From the money it takes to get there, to the flights and hotel room, there was a lot of planning that went into making the trip run smoothly. My giant, crazy binder of maps and travel logistics saved us from standing in the middle of Times Square looking like tourists and helped us arrive on time for all of our meetings. The only major problem we had was getting lost in China Town, which was an experience in itself.

When I first started to write these blogs, we were just getting ready to travel. Now, we’re back in Columbus, and the editing process has begun.

Reliving these interviews reminds me of not only the fun we had but also the lessons I learned. Meeting these alumni taught me that in order to get the Jay-Oh-Bee, you have to fail, fail again, but continuously believe that what you are doing has a purpose. This is what makes success.

The giant chocolate bunny at Dylan's Candy Bar.

Who else can say they went on a search for a giant chocolate bunny, today?

Any takers?

That’s what I thought.

Well, we did and it was a sweet adventure in uptown NYC that ended with me thinking that my dentist will be disappointed in my sweet tooth.

Why did I go on this delicious journey? It all started this morning when we visited our friend Rosanne Percivalle, winner of the 2010 Alumni Award for Excellence.

Her work, featured throughout the country, may be familiar to you if you have visited Dylan’s Candy Bar and walked up the candy filled resin steps or had your picture taken with the giant chocolate bunny or perhaps visited the Whole Foods Market on Bowery and looked up at the timeline mural she created and designed.

It's alive! (no, not really)

We stopped by her studio/home/office today and she gave us a full tour of her amazing workspace. Her lifelike sculpture of a giant iguana scared me so bad when I first arrived and thought it was real. Finding out it was art, gave my heart a rest.

We then traveled uptown to Central Park and the amazing Apple store that everyone kept telling us about. It was pretty sweet and was a buzz of activity. After our pit stop at the candy bar and filling our souvenirs with all our favorite types of gummy bears we headed to Times Square.

This was Alex’s first experience in the heart of Manhattan. Needless to say I had to pull him out of the street a couple times as he kept trying to get the perfect money shot, before getting hit by a cab.

We then took a jaunt to meet James Alicea a 1992 graduate of CCAD. After traveling on the fastest ear-popping elevator of my life we arrived at Rocawear.

James Alicea at Rocawear

We were taken to the T-Shirt display room, which had an amazing view of downtown and the Statue of Liberty in the distance. The shirt designs on the wall were kickin’. We soon found out that most were the handy work of James and he even shared his sketches with us of some of the original artwork.

It was  very interesting to find out that James finds himself most nights sleeping on his couch. Why is this? Well, he never makes it to bed because he is so busy keeping up with all of the companies he works with & inspired by his passion for drawing, typography and cultural relevance he sees no need to sleep.

By the time this goes live, James, Alex & I will be enjoying some great food from Camaradas & enjoying the lovely weather here in NYC.