Takin’ Care of Business
Kate Mahoney’s current PH project uses technology to extend the reach of a poet’s words.
When I come into Poets House, I take up a post in the AV room or, as I’ve started to hear it affectionately dubbed, “the cave.” Here I’ve been importing the videos and recordings taken at all the events and readings from this past year and editing them in iMovie. Once I edit any video, I post it online, specifically onto Poets House’s page on Blip TV.
This process has been eye-opening and great for increasing my exposure to video editing strategies (and undoubtedly, to events I sadly missed this year). Truth be told, I have never seriously worked on movie editing programs and don’t edit my own videos, let alone post them online. And although I did take a multimedia class for half a year in high school, this project did initially feel a bit like foreign ground.
On another note, it is also a project that calls for, if not screams for, a tremendously patient individual so I feel well-suited to it in more ways than I initially believed. The amount of time it takes for one video to be completely established on Blip TV is (I would estimate) around an hour and a half. Time must be allowed for the video to be imported into iMovie, edited, exported from iMovie, and then finally uploaded onto Blip.
Needless to say, producing something that others can watch and that is somewhat tangible is rewarding. And to think I’ve had a little hand in bringing Poets House up-to-speed and into the virtual world is exciting.
-Kate Mahoney
