Finished.

It's done. After probably about 15-20 hours of editing in iMovie and driving myself crazy to the point where I almost don't want to see the video anymore (that's not true at all because I love it), the movie is finished with a 4:48 runtime.

I'm satisfied with my final product for the Multimedia presentation tomorrow, but I want to continue my work on this project when the class is over. The story could be 25 or 30 or 60 minutes, not just below five. I have so much good audio, video and still pictures that I didn't use, and I want to put all of that material into a larger version of the project to come much later.

It was very frustrating to cut everything down and get rid of some of those great audio and video clips to fit the time frame. I have an amazing clip mid-race of all the water and Gatorade cups dropping to the ground that goes perfectly with my dad talking about the sticky, nastiness of going past all those stations, but it didn't add anything to the story's arc. I wanted the story to start with a bleak outlook on the whole thing, jump into the race and slowly work through the marathon while touching on the building relationship between my dad and I. There's more that I have about injuries, training alone, post-race feelings, and even more sights and sounds from race day that I could have included, but it was too much for a five-minute video. So I slashed and cringed when parts and pieces I loved hit the cutting room floor, but I think it was for the better. I think the story, as it stands now, is a relatively short video of what it was like for my dad and I to train and run the New York City Marathon. And that's what it should be, that was the goal from the get go.

I'm pretty happy with the result, but there's still plenty more writing and multimedia editing to come because there's so much left to do; not for ENGL 721 Multimedia, but for lasting family memories. This project was perfect for this class because I was able to immerse myself in it. I don't want to make it look great for my professor or my classmates; I want it to look great for me, for my dad, for all of my family members. Of course I want Sandy and my classmates to like it too, but the point is that the grade is not the motivator. It's about the memory and what I want the project to look like. I don't think I could have picked another topic and felt the same closeness to the final product. My choice to do a non-fiction video essay instead of the feature journalism video we've watched in this class might have been a skeptical idea at first, but I'm glad it was allowed because I think it's one of the best assignments I've completed in my four years at UNH.