3/17/2010 - Visits by Hillary Cohen Freeman and David Bergeland

Shannon

In the last two weeks we have had two absolutely terrific people come to our Edible English/Multimedia class. Hillary Cohen Freeman, who is an excellent certified Anusara yoga teacher and a photographer, came on March 1. I have to say she is a free spirited, down to earth person. Hillary had a lot to say and kept my attention the whole interview. It was interesting to me to learn that through yoga and many trips to India, Hillary said she found spiritually who she was deep down inside. I enjoyed some of her quotes. For instance, “The most personal thing you can feel is ultimately shared by everyone” or “Opportunity is not easy. It is a challenge.” I went home and thought about my age and how maybe I should start to really look deep inside myself and find me, find who I really am.

The other incredible guest we had come to our class was David Bergeland. He is a superb journalist. David has worked for a lot of news paper and knows many notable tips to get things done efficiently when working with audio. He showed us how to make an hour long interview into an impressive 2-minute slideshow. We learned about lighting and where the best position for lighting the talent, and where the microphone show be when we are interviewing someone. I enjoyed all of the slideshows he put together and all the information about Audacity, the program about which he taught us some tricks and tips. Hopefully, when I do my final project I can go back in my notes and try to put a professional touch on my slide show. I am going to try to take some pictures with good lighting to make my presentation pop and see what I can accomplish with the tools I have learned.

I think the more experience my class gets with interviewing respected people, the more we will get comfortable with how we speak in public, how to interact with certain people and how to get great information out of people so that we get great and interesting material out of our own interviews.