I’m Katherine Loftus, your friendly campus Digimentor and (slightly) unhinged video creator!

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Digimentor WiFi Video – IOS

This was the first video I ever made for the LifeatLeedsConservatoire page. In fact, it was the first time I’d ever edited something like this so I had a huge roadblock in front of me. I used my iPad and Splice’s free trial video editing software. Luckily I understood the graphics as I’d done digital art and graphic design in the past, I just had to figure out the video aspect. With the frustration with learning something new, accidentally choosing a challenging style of video, and the deadline I was getting closer and closer to, it was definitely a stressful learning experience, but I’m very glad I did it. This video was my first journey in to making videos and I modelled it after the type of YouTube videos I enjoy and the graphics that they use. Going forward, however, I realized that the type of content I was making (short informative videos) would benefit more from following trends of that genre (like TikToks or Reels).

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Badge Video – Yippee!

For this project, Digimentors were tasked to create a video promoting the Badge Hunt as part of the start-of-term festivities. Using my perhaps unhealthy knowledge of online trends, I decided to make a silly goofy video because I figured it may catch more students attention than a strictly informative one. I used things that were popular on TikTok at the time (the “POV” trend, the generated voice over, the sped up video, and the silly sound) and applied them to a video about badges, on which I got a lot of positive feedback. I wanted my video to make people giggle, but also wonder “What is a Badge and why is she ‘Yippee’-ing so hard about them?”. From this project I learned to use trends and staples from content I enjoyed myself to promote other things. I also learned how to use Tiktok’s video creating software as I had never tried it before and found I could do a surprising amount of editing on it. I really enjoyed making this video and, though it was incredibly silly, I feel the ridiculousness of it made it more eye-catching and memorable.

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Badge Video – Secret Stairwell (reflection)

This video was made because of the badge promotion task mentioned above. For this badge (Secretstairwell) I wanted to do something mysterious to match the badge name. I decided to use the VoiceOver effect like in the previous video, as it’s very on trend and draws peoples attention. I also added a spooky music clip in the background to hopefully intrigue people scrolling past it. As well as the music I decided to use “Did you know?” in hopes that people would stop to see what the fun fact would be. This video was a bit less easy for me as I wasn’t as familiar with making a (slightly) less silly-goofy video. However, I still think it turned out okay, I experimented a lot with sound effects before scrapping them in favour of a more low-key background music option as I felt sound effects were too overwhelming for such a short video. I very much enjoyed the creative freedom these projects provided as we were simply told to “make a video about badges” and allowed to do whatever we felt like! These videos were very fun and engaging to make. I got to build my knowledge of analysing and utilising trends in my own content creation and build the videos with editing tools I was unfamiliar with.

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Assignment Brief Informational Video – Get Josh’d

This brief was probably my favorite one to make (in competition with the Badges – Yippee video) simply because it’s such a silly idea. This video was born due to the Josh Hutcherson – Whistle trend that was dominating TikTok at the time. The trend was just the resurfacing of a 2014 FanCam edit of Josh Hutcherson, specifically the image I used in the video, with the song Whistle by Flo Rida. I was seeing this everywhere and I thought it would be very funny to take on the persona of a Digimentor trying earnestly to remind people to check their assignment briefs, but is also obsessed with that one image of Josh (first name basis?). Just something I thought was funny: I have been recognized multiple times for this video. Students will hear my accent and ask, “Did you do the Josh Hutcherson video for LCon?” which, I think, is the single best thing I could be recognized for. Overall, this video was very well received and it taught me to use my social media obsession so gain the attention of my demographic. For example, a video of someone just going over the assignment brief might not catch someones eye, but getting Josh’d by the Leeds Conservatoire official Instagram?? They’ll never forget it.

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Printer Informational Video

This video was just to inform students on where the Conservatoire printers were and how to use them. For this video I had trouble thinking of ways to make it interesting and enjoyable to watch. I eventually landed on creating interest through sound effects and voice overs and cheesy jokes. When editing the video it was making me giggle so I hoped it would make the audience giggle as well. This certainly isn’t my best video in regards to grabbing attention, but it is informative and silly. While it’s not the best video I’ve made, I think it still does a good job of getting information across and making the learning experience enjoyable.

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Digimentor AI Guidance Video

This video was challenging for me as well, but I decided to lean into the feeling of unease that tends to arise with discussions of AI technology, even though the topic of this video is basically just guidelines for academic usage. With this in mind, I then decided to use AI generated images using the Bing image generating tool. This was a challenge as I’d never generated images using an AI generator before and it took many tries to get it to the image I wanted. I am not entirely happy with this video as I think it needed more detail to the visuals. However, like the printer video, I think it did it’s job of getting information across and making it interesting.

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Life Posts

Below are all the life posts I’ve written discussing various topics to inform students.

Writing articles is certainly not my strong suit, I tend to have trouble with formal writing in general, so writing these pieces for Life was a bit of a struggle for me. I quickly ran out of ways to present the information and had to really think about how to make it interesting and understandable. Though the blurbs gave me a bit of trouble initially, I am glad I did them as it helped build my writing skill and my confidence in my work.

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Feedback on the Platform:

Pros!

To start off, I do really like this platform and I much prefer it to myPortfolio. The way you make and place blocks is more intuitive and the layout is far easier to understand. I also like that it’s easier to embed videos and to upload pictures and ALSO that it’s easy to then edit those things. I really enjoy the presets for adding text next to / on / around images. I am also a huge fan of the ability to embed Spotify links directly into the site.

Cons!

One thing I do think could benefit the site is more graphic design options. To my knowledge (unless I’ve missed something) there’s little to no way to make banners, buttons, or graphics without using the preset patterns, and even then you cannot edit the colors. I have also noticed that there is no way to change the font or size of the text apart from the Heading setting. Overall, I think the site would benefit from ways to make the content more interesting and personalised without having to work around the system. I also think students with weaker technology skills would largely benefit from some templates to choose from, preferably with an appealing layout (similar to how Canva has many templates to choose from).

Miscellaneous:

• I accessed this site on both Chrome and Safari (laptop) and they both functioned perfectly well on both.
• I can foresee students having a difficult time initially getting the hang of this site, and will probably need help with embedding and layout.
• I can also foresee students having a difficulty determining word count for this platform as that is an important part of many assignments.

The Name

While I think Show is a good name, I think it may be too common a word to use fluidly. I was considering two options, those being:

• Expo
• Exhibit

My personal favourite is Expo as its very easy to spell and students are likely to remember it.

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