My Week 2 Update

Rolling with the punches

Last week, I created an outline of my month-long project. I’m currently working on creating a video for the Houston Zoo that will help them share their message more prominently on the home page of their website, with the goal of expanding my skills in that area and my general videography knowledge, as well as creating articles and videos that will support my learning journey throughout this process.

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But, unfortunately, this week did not exactly go as planned.

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What I Set Out to Accomplish:

• Create a list of questions to ask zoo guests

• Complete market research

• Record what was learned on a Google sheet

• Analyze data

• Create a Loom video around my knowledge of Google sheets

• Write a blog about market research and its importance

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To begin, the videography expert I talked to in Week 1 advised me to interview zoo employees and add those interviews to the video instead of interviewing guests as market research.

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So on Monday of this week, I reached out to a connection I have at the zoo asking to interview her and other zoo employees for my project.

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On Wednesday she responded by saying that interviews with zoo employees have to be scheduled through the media and PR departments. Unfortunately, the media department was in the middle of shooting a documentary abroad and a quick response time from them seemed unlikely.

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Nevertheless, I reached out to the media and PR team about my project. By Friday of this week, I still hadn’t gotten a response.

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In essence, what I have accomplished so far is having a wrench thrown into my project plan.

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But let me put my negativity aside for a second.

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This Week I Learned

• The importance of being able to adapt quickly.

• That in the future, I should create a generous buffer around time-sensitive projects, especially when dealing with busy professionals.

• Everything can be a learning experience, even setbacks, and failures.

• In the world of videography and film, there are often multiple-step processes for interviewing individuals within organizations.

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The Skills I Used This Week

• Cold emailing

• Time management

• Teaching via writing and video

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Plans for Next Week

I greatly underestimated how much time I lost in the first week of this month and I overestimated how easy it would be to get in contact with zoo employees for interviews. Because of this, I am planning on spending significant time over the weekend finishing as many supporting blogs and videos as I can in hopes that I will be able to conduct interviews the following week. I will also create an extensive plan B for my project in the event that by this time next week, interviews are still not scheduled or completed.

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Next week, I also plan on playing around with Adobe, Canva, and iMovie and learning more about each platform. Overall, I think I am still on track to completing a quality video for the Houston Zoo at the end of this month, although I am disappointed by the direction this project has taken so far.