Starting a New Semester

Welcome to the Video class. This class involves a lot of fun, taking pictures and video around the school. One thing you have to remember is that this also involves responsibility and trust. If you don't take responsibility for your behavior and meet a certain level of conduct, then I won't be able to trust you to go out and take those pictures, and doing all your filming in the classroom is not as much fun.
You are going to notice as we go through the semester that I have changed some things around from previous semesters. The class is currently going through a redesigning process. Hopefully, this will make it easier for you to succeed in making better movies in less time.
I hope none of you are shy about being in front of a camera because not only will you be taking pictures but sometimes you will have to be acting in the videos.
What are you hoping to learn in this class? What problems do you think you might have as we go through the semester?

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?