Mission 3: Methodology Research

Creating the Story Map

Using the article :  Woman Crashes Into Drunk Driver’s Car, Preventing A Couple With Baby From Being Hit  as well as using  the Facebook post by the City of Phoenix Police Department as our main resources; we explained a little bit about  the journey of the Betancourt family prior to the road incident as well as the incident itself. There were other interviews, events and witnesses (some not even mentioned in the article). However, we really wanted to condense it down to the important parts and people involved:

•  The Betancourt family (victim)
•  Ernesto Otanez Oveso ( drunk driver)
• Shannon Vivar  (the woman crashing into Ernesto's car).  

Here's a snippet of the story-map:

In addition to that,  we included screenshots of google maps around the general area of where the accident occurred. We also wanted to make sure that the story map was mainly factual and the information was true. Our group included a bibliography underneath the summary  of all the articles we used during our research. Although, we couldn't help but notice that in two different articles about the incident, the age of the child was different. This shows how accuracy of information is sometimes overlooked for the means of getting the content out in the open as soon as possible. 

For our adaption we weren't concerned with referencing because the story is our own. We obviously changed a lot of aspects of the story, but the message of bravery remains. The location, time, characters and the event itself is not the same.  Here's a summary of our idea: 

Location: Cavan, Ireland
Time: Early in the morning
Characters involved in the accident:

• Sherlin O'Reilly (Livia): 18 years old, student
• Christina Murphy (Wiktoria): 40 years old, bartender
• Megan O'Sullivan (Me): 32 years old, unemployed (fired)

Incident: Sherlin distractedly crosses the street on Main Street Cavan, Megan, being a few meters behind her notices a car travelling over speed limit. Fearing, Sherlin would get hit, Megan pushes sherlin out of the road. The car abruptly stops and Christina comes out. 

Below you'll find the full story-map for our end-product: 

Click here to open the story-map on a new tab. 

Creating the Info-graphic

Initially we created a few drafts of the Info-graphic using Adobe spark. Below you'll see two samples testing  out the application and experimenting with layout, color, font and other elements to achieve our desired result: a serious factual info-graphic on road incidents.

Attempt #1: Experimenting with Abobe Spark. Although with the figure on the left, it feels like we're promoting drunk driving 😆

Attempt #2: Progress made with delivery of mood and information.

Attempt #3: Final Outcome

For the last info-graphic we used an online graphic editor Canva. The information was collected on a Portuguese website known as Pordata. 

Creating the Video

Out of the entire project, the video naturally took the longest to make. 

Adding scenes with titles, text with information on digital journalism and images with the logos was the easy part.  

Recording the interview was the largest piece of the cake. Before we could even begin filming we needed to have some questions and answers already written. We individually made up our own questions and answers, that way it would be easier for us to look straight at the camera and avoid taking peeks at our copies - aloowing us to act the scene out naturally. 

The interview was recorded using Wiktoria's phone. Her phone was placed on a mini - tripod to avoid camera shake. The interview was taken in three separate videos between each of us. That way, most mistakes/pauses would be easily avoided or cut out.  

Seperating the audio from the video recording itself was a tricky but necessary step. It took a while for us to surf Youtube until we found out how it was done. This gave us the freedom to manipulate the audio sounds and add special effects such as fade ins/ fade outs to complement the music that would come up next. The background music selected is Sneeky Creeky - Press the Lounge Button on Yummy Sounds. When everything was tied to gether and transitions were added, we were still 20 seconds short from 5 minutes. Thankfully we managed to add the real footage of the road incident by copying the link of the Facebook and pasting  it in getfvid.com. With the bibliography running at the end, we managed to finish at exactly 5 minutes!