Whoa! The end of the semester is here! I would like you to think about all the different things we have done since the start of the year.
What were the things that you liked the most?
What were the things that you didn't like?
What were the things that you had trouble doing?
Why to all three questions?
What suggestions do you have to improve the class?

Finishing the How To Video

Today is the day your How To video is due. Remember you do not turn in the project, you turn in the finished video. They are not the same thing!! In order to put your video together you start with the audio narration you recorded and then match each picture to the place in the audio you start talking about it. Then you add titles and credits to the front and end respectively. After saving as video you put the video file into my 9th hour folder.
Most of you have a lot of work to do today because you have been wasting time in class. There is only one week left in the semester and next week you are going to be making one last short video assignment. So you had better get it together and quit wasting time.
How is your How To video doing?

Putting it All Together

Now that you have your pictures and your narration it is time to put them together. If we were "dubbing" into a video you would start by loading the video and then dropping the sound file into the appropriate place. But we are actually going to do this the other way around. We are going to start with the narration file and then move to where you want the 1st picture and drop it in. Then you move the where you need the 2nd picture and drop that one in, then the 3rd and so on, and so on, etc. This should be a little easier than true "dubbing" on a video.
How is your How To video coming along?

Making the Images For Your Video

In your "How To" video you have to create images to illustrate your directions. Think about your directions and what you are going to be doing with the images. For example; if you are making an omelet you would have eggs, but you would also have an image cracking open the eggs, mixing the eggs, frying the eggs, etc. Don't forget to include all the pictures you will need.
If you can you can use the same image over again, as long as nothing about the image changes! You should have all your images drawn and cut out before Thanksgiving.
How is your film progressing so far?

Moving On to the Next Task.

Yesterday, you should have finished your newscaster video and your final copy should be turned in. I only know of two of you that actually met that deadline! This truly is not acceptable, because those of you that did not get finished were wasting so much of your time earlier. You can not waste so much time on filming or thinking "Oh, there is plenty of time," when you are not even half way done with your project. Most of you took two and a half weeks to do the first five tasks on a list of fourteen things to do. This is why you were given a checklist, so you could pace yourself!
Your next project is going to be fairly simple, but it will require planning. You are going to create a movie and then do an "audio dub" or narration of the movie. You are going to create what I call a CommonCraft movie. This is a movie that uses pictures, normally hand drawn, to illustrate ideas while the narrator explains how something works. They are fairly simple, are easy to fix with basic editting, and then you can read your script into a microphone. The timing between what you say and your images can actually be fixed by simple film cutting.
First, you must choose a subject. Think of a Science concept such as one of Newton's laws; or something from Social Studies like explaining the Battle of Gettysburg; or you can choose how to do something that you can physically do well, such as play soccer, and explain that. Take the time to look at an example from CommonCraft (I recommend the zombie or the election ones).
Keep in mind that people actually make a living doing these movies and selling them. They are quite effective at teaching something to people.
What do you think about your next assignment? What will you be planning on doing?

Finishing Newscast

By now you have finished making all the parts of your video; your background, your announcer in front of the green screen, your part that goes into the picture-within-a-picture. Hopefully, you have started putting all these together into Adobe Premiere. The Adobe Premiere program can do more things than MovieMaker can, but that makes it more complex. Since you have version 1.0 (version 8.1 is currently out at Best Buy) it can be really buggy, so save often as you work. You also need to remember to keep everything in a folder on your desktop. Once you are finished putting it together, export the movie to your desktop and do the credits and title in MovieMaker. You should have everything finished by next Thursday!!.
How are you doing in getting your video done?

Newscast Cue Cards

Most of you are not really taking the cue cards seriously. The number one reason people are scared to be in front of the camera is that they are scared they will make a mistake and look foolish. The main way people make a mistake? They forget what they are going to say. Thus the cue cards!!
Writing the words on the cue cards helps you remember what to say, as long as you can read them. So it is very important that you write them in letters that are at least three inches tall. The person with the cue cards has to stand behind or beside the camera which means they are not close. If you have to squint to read the card then you look foolish again. You really should have no more that 6-8 words on each card. You also need to write in phrases so that the last word is not on the next card.
How is your movie going?

Newscaster Video

We have just started a new video project. This project will involve two different video effects, green screens and a picture-within-a-picture. You will sit at a table and pretend that you are a newscast type host doing a story. Your story can be about the news, sports, music, gossip, whatever you want (providing its appropriate for school).
I have given you a timeline that is on the back of your script page. Try to follow the timeline and get at least one thing done everyday. Do not put things off to the last minute!!
What do you see as being a problem creating this movie? What subject have you chosen to do for your newscast movie?

Return To The Door

After some basic instruction on how to use the camera correctly, we went back and re-shot the scenes for The Door. I'm somewhat pleased by how you took the idea of the movie and changed it to make it your own. I do wish that you had made it a little more suspenseful but it was your first acting job and its hard to act scared or look scary when you are giggling;>.
The people who I have seen doing the basic editing on their movie have done a pretty good job. You have cut out the blurry and unneeded parts, but some of you could have taken some small parts that you cut off and placed them into the parts you left and actually created a better video. Many real movies do this, as a matter of fact, normally that's what happens whenever you see a change in the camera angle.
Some of you have also gone ahead and added you title and credits, which I had planned on doing next week along with sound effects and some basic special effects (mainly for one group's movie.)
This is great and I'm impressed that some of you already knew how to do this!
How do you feel about your movie so far?

Storytelling Alice

This week we took an adventure into creating 3-d animated movies using a downloadable program called Storytelling Alice. Many of you were very confused because you had to identify every single little action and every direction. You also had to tell it exactly how far to move, although I don't think any of you had problems with that.
Creating 3-d animated movies can be very hard, but you should know Alice makes it easy! (Yes it does) After all all of the scences were created by pre-created figures. You didn't have to create your own 3-D figures and objects, all you had to do was tell the program which one and what to do with it. That's the easy part. Creating the figure is even harder.
How did you do on your Alice project? What was the most frustrating problem that you had?

The Door

You've started working on filming with video. I gave you a basic script, you made changes to make the movie yours, and then we started filming. Using the video camera is different from just taking a picture. You are going to find out that editing (trimming out the bad parts) takes some careful work also. If you are careful when you are shooting the video, then editing is a lot easier.

What problems have you run into using the video camera? How is your movie going so far? What character did you make the "hero" run from?

Photostory Finished

Today is the day all of your Photostory projects should be done! Some of you have finished already I know. It was interesting with what you came up with. A few of you actually used your own music instead of what the program could give you. :> I realize having no speakers made it a little hard to do the music part but by the time the next project is due we will have the new computers and their speakers. (YEAH!!).
How did your Photostory project go? Was this too easy? Did you have trouble coming up with an idea?

Photostory Project

This week we started a new project. This time we are actually going to create a video using 15 or 20 pictures. This is a simple process, but we are learning to walk before I let you run. Using Photostory 3 from Microsoft you are to make a video. It can be about you, the school, or something else that you are interested in. You don't have to use the photographs you have taken around the school. You do have to add the following things:

• text to each picture (make sure it shows up easily and it doesn't cover up the picture)
• transitions from picture to picture
• music for a background, if you bring some from home it needs to be in .wav format and you need to follow copyright.

What are you planning to do your project on? How is it going so far?

Taking Pictures

You've had your first chance to go out and take pictures and it went pretty well. There were a few groups that grew too large and, of course, some pictures that didn't turn out well. Surprisingly some of the "bad" pictures actually looked cool. Like you had deliberately done some sort of special effect to them.
Now we are working on some picture editing techniques. I showed you how to crop a photo and also how to remove one person from a photo and put them into a second photo. This last requires some effort to do right because you have to make sure that the person you add has all the old background removed, has been adjusted so they are the right size, and then fits into the picture in a realistic way. We are not going to worry about the shadows for this assignment, but that also can affect your results.

How is you picture editing project going?

Once Again the Start of New Year

A brand new school year and we start a new semester of Video Production. In this class you will learn how to take pictures and video and how to make movies. You will be both behind the camera and in front of the lens! (We have to take pictures of somebody.)

Movies are more than just pointing a camera and hoping something happens. You have to plan out what you are going to do by writing a script and drawing a storyboard. You have to consider what camera angles you are going to use and how close up you want the image. You have to plan how to record the sound, what extra sound effects you will need, how the light affects your image. You have to take your video and edit out all the parts you don't want, put in the sound effects and narration, add the title to the front and credits to the end, and then add music for a sound track. All of these are part of a good quality video.

What do you think you will be creating movies about for the class? Do you have any questions or worries about the class?

Dealing with Special Effects.

The newscast movie is our first attempt to deal with adding special effects to a video. Special effects are great because they allow you to do some really cool things, like add a different background making you look like you are somewhere else, or showing an object on your screen that really isn't there. Things like this make your movies look really great.
But, special effects are not easy! Of course, if they were then they wouldn't be special. They can be tricky so you really have to pay attention to what you are doing. In Adobe Premiere you actually have to open a special set of controls for each effect so that the computer knows just what you want to do.
How are you doing with adding your special effects to your newscast movie?

Beta Versions Away.

Well you have tried out that new website, http://xtranormal.com/, and used it (or tried to use it) to make a movie that was stored on the Internet. Most of you had some frustration on this I know. Some things for you to remember.
First, the website is in the beta version. For those of you who do not know a beta version is a version that is being tested prior to a full release. This is why those three extra groups of characters are available at this time instead of just the basic group. It is also one of the reasons you had some of the trouble using it that you did.
Beta versions are put out there to test so that the programmers can have real people use the program and find all the 'bugs' that they missed when they created the program. Then they go in and fix the problems before they do the full release. There are many companies that do this including Microsoft. One of the nice things about Beta versions is that normally they are free to use. This balances out the running into software problems.
Some people like using Beta programs because they are the newest versions. Some people hate them because they can be full of problems, especially on any new features the old version did differently or didn't have. What are your feelings about using beta version software? Have you ever used beta version software before?

"How To" Video

The project we are working on now is quite simple. You are making a how-to video in the same style as CommonCraft.

• You think of something you know how to do, say making a hero sandwich.
• Then, you make a list of every step in the correct order. (This is the part that trips up most people.)
• You plan out the images for the video with a storyboard.
• Either draw or trace those images out in Photoshop and then print them.
• Trace the lines with a marker and but each image out.
• Video each step in the process by setting out the images one step at a time.
• Record your voice saying the steps, one step at a time.
• Edit and put everything together.

Viola the video is done. Very simple, once you start.

Finishing Your Movie

Many of you are still in the process of editing and completing your movie video. If you haven't done it before, it definitely is not as easy as you would think. Many people think they can just point a camera at something and film it and presto they have a good movie. They don't realize that it really takes more to make a good video worth looking at.
To make a quality video you have to cut out the bad parts. Sometimes you have to rearrange pieces of the video so that it makes more sense. A quality video will also include audio work. Sometimes that means adding sound effects, sometimes a voice-over (Where you have a person speaking off camera), and sometimes you have to go back and dub in a person's voice (replace what they said during the filming with a second better quality sound recording of the same words.) Of course, don't forget adding a music sound track in the background, adjusting sound volume, making sure the sounds are the right length, etc.
Then you have making the Title and Credits at the front and beginning of the video. Easy, once you know how, but it does have a correct way it should be done. That is why I gave you the example on the checklist for The Door.
The biggest problem most people run into is remembering to export their movie to the desktop and hand that file into me. If you just give me the project file I can not see anything, the project file relies on all the other files you use to be in the same folder, which I don't have.
What has been your biggest problem doing this video? Remember its due next week!!

Photostory

We have completed our first and simplest project. In this project you took pictures and created a video out of them. You could do this on any theme and one of the ways you can make videos for our later projects. Our next project will be using actual video not snapshots.
You need to think about something you can act out here at school and video (remember the Royal Expectations.) Think about that this weekend and be ready to plan it out in class next week. We are going to discuss writing a script and what makes a good or bad video.
What are some of the things you think make a good video? Not a movie or a film, but a good video.

A New Class, Once Again

Once again it is a new semester and that means we have brand new students in the class again.
If you browse the posts from last semester and last year you will have a better idea of what the class is about. Primarily we take photos and videos and then edit them and put them into projects. I hope you are creative and have the ability to come up with ideas quickly, because that helps a great deal with what we do. Over the semester I will show you how do use different tools to make different videos. If you have a video that you would like to make don't hesitate to ask me about it because I would rather have you create videos that you want to make. I also hope that you are not shy about being if front of the camera because you are going to get your picture and video taken a lot in this class.
Another thing that we are going to need to start right away is I would like to have volunteers go to the basketball games (and later track meets) to take pictures and video. You need to be passing all your classes with no F's on your progress report to do this.
What do you think will be the biggest problem you have in this class? What do you think you will like the most? What would you like to make a video about?