Video

Overview:

In this lab you will learn how to edit and produce (i.e. export) video for the web. You will also be able to practice planning an interview and making your subject feel comfortable on camera—important skills for your Video Research Project!

Objectives:

1. Be able to light and frame an interview subject in a pleasing way
2. Be able to record steady, shake-free video (tripods are your friends)
3. Be able to edit video in order to remove unwanted footage and/or modify the order of scenes and add still images
4. Be able to export video in a format appropriate for the web

The More You Know:

Foolproof, indoor lighting

1. Recording Video
   Recording your average video is as easy as clicking the record button on your camera or camcorder.  But we don’t want average videos!  MAET instructor, Ken Dirkin, has put together two short videos on shooting high-quality interview footage.
   • Framing your Subject
   • Other Helpful Hints

   To summarize Ken’s main points:

   • Film right in front of a large window that isn’t receiving direct sunlight (we don’t want our subjects sitting in harsh, direct sunlight).  Have your subject face the window (possibly at an angle) so they are in soft light.
   • Attach your camera (no matter how big or small it is) to a tripod or set it on a steady surface.
   • Frame your subject in the viewfinder so they have proper “head room” and “nose room”.  (Optional: Read more about head and nose room in this PDF – NOTE: ignore the two activities at the end of the reading).  The key is not to bullseye your subject’s eyes in the middle of your video.
2. Editing Video
   Editing video consists primarily of cutting and moving chunks of video, and adding still images and titles.  Both Windows and Mac OS ship with video editing software and their online documentation is pretty helpful.  Of course the Mac help is prettier.  And it’s all video to save you the trouble of reading.
   • iMovie Help:iMovie ’08 Help (Begin by watching the videos on Importing, Skimming, Trimming, and Creating a Movie) iMovie ’09 Help (Begin by watching the videos under the “Import, Organize, and Edit” column)
   • Windows Movie Maker Help (from Windows)
   • Windows Movie Maker Help (from Atomic Learning – see username/pw in our “Readings” tab)

   NOTE: Sometimes your video editing program won’t recognize the file format that your video is in.  This is more common with Windows Movie Maker, but fear not!  You can use freeware such as Squared 5 to convert your video format (Windows users will want to convert to AVI format).

3. Exporting Video (may also be called “producing” or “exporting”)The raw video captured by your camera is much too large to transfer to other machines over the internet so we need to compress it down to a manageable size.  Both iMovie and Windows Movie Maker have “web” presets that will automatically compress your movie for you:
   • Exporting from iMovie
   • Exporting from Windows Movie Maker

Your Performance Tasks:

Your task is create a brief (NO MORE THAN 20 SECONDS) video bio of yourself to be posted on the ReLATe conference website.  You may either film yourself or pair up with a classmate to help record each other.

Your video should include:

• Who you are, what and where you teach,
• Picture(s) of your school and classroom (if you have them) OR
• Imagery relating to your subject (Flickr Creative Commons, SXC, etc.)

Write out a script before you record and practice.  It will be very difficult to keep your video down to 20 seconds or less!

Submission and Due Date:

All tasks for this lab must be completed by 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, July 8th. You may submit your video via a jump drive or by uploading it to the web and pasting the URL to the comments below.