From Pics4Learning
I was not immediately engaged with the one-minute-video challenge but became more so as a story started to formulate in my imagination: eventually becoming a message I truly wanted to share! Originally I spent much time seeking out that magical comfy spot for the imaginary warm drink scenario but I had little sense of a theme or direction for my beginning, middle, and end. In several of my scenarios I was to end up at Sundance Lake, down the road from where I live, and so I dutifully trotted over and took video in a haphazard sort of manner. I also took some updated photographs of my grandson, Rory, playing on the beach near the water's edge with my husband, Richard: good material for something I thought!
Then I contemplated utilizing the many, many photographs I had collected from my travels abroad and wondered about the ethics of using such photographs as most included images of various members of the family. On approaching my daughter, early in the project development, I was asked not to use clear images of Rory: so much for the beach scene!
After several initial storyboarding attempts in which I explored locations close to home and later within and around my house--here is where I could use those lake clips, I imagined, or else take video clips of various areas in my home--I began to mull over the reason behind my particular video. “What is so special to me, personally, about having that warm drink—or any drink for that matter? Is a particular place to drink really that important to me?”
And so my message changed: my narrative would argue that the best place for a warm drink is anywhere where close friends and family are located. Such a digital story would truly offer a grounded narrative from my personal perspective. Much culling of images, and changing of ideas ensued. At this point the informal storyboards that I had scribbled earlier did not do justice to the new argument in formulation: my final idea was to use video footage of various uninhabited places in my home juxtaposed with images of my family gathering and enjoying times in those same locations.
Setting to work on the storyboard I discarded
an online tool I had considered for this task, and also decided against using my limited sketching skills. Instead I chose to use
Microsoft Word and created a table into which I could add representative clip-art and images. I posited different camera shots that I might use, as well as initial voice over narration. I did not use all of the storyboard suggestions in the end, as the video was far too long: I had to cull many images and video footage, as well as ideas that had occurred to me outside of the storyboard framework.
For example I had recorded a clip of the well known cartoon figures,
Hoops and Yoyo, as they chanted a mantra about needing coffee: I thought this would add some levity to my narrative. Then I had included an image of the same characters on each of the video clips and several photographs I snapped. But, in the interests of final length much of these elements were cut!
In addition I discarded several photographs in which my stuffed penguins had been carefully placed to represent the low levels I had reached in searching for company for my drinking moments! Thus, much of the levity was sacrificed in order to stay within the time constraints. I had hoped to reduce the possible maudlin interpretation of the narrative. Oh well! A bonus presented itself however: I had not planned to have my cat, Eighteen, turn her nose up at having coffee with me, but she instinctively obliged as I was recording video. I couldn't resist including this little gem. What did I learn? Much about my inadequacy at judging length for a video! As we discussed in class, the video needs to be just long enough to effectively illustrate your message and it is right to rid the piece of extraneous material!
The above-mentioned humor edits encouraged me to attempt, instead, a more light-hearted script to accompany the video. Hence my use of alliteration and many references to coffee related vocabulary. Although I was able to record my voice-over using this composed text, I was unsuccessful in attempts to paste related phrases over any of the stills or video clips. I have since discovered, with the help of a classmate, how to do this in the new version of
iMovie on the Mac.
A sacrifice I had to make was to exclude an idea that had occurred to me during filming: I wanted to add subtle messages about being "alone" to the video clips of areas in the house. I have several books where the word Alone is a prominent part of the title and I took video that included a zoomed shot of the titles on each clip. Again, due to length, most of this was omitted in the final cut--except for one!
Another problem arose: my actual video camera was kaput and so I had decided to use the video recording setting on my digital camera, although I had never used that mode before. In uploading and previewing the video snippets I was disappointed at the recording quality: the footage was grainy and fuzzy and certainly betrayed my amateur status! In addition, the planned zooms and pans where not exactly what I had seen in my mind's eye! Certainly, I need to work on developing a new skill set!
I spent a fair amount of enjoyable time evaluating music tracks to accompany the footage. This also involved playing with sound recording elements as I tried to balance voice-over and sound effects with the chosen music track. I selected
Human Beat by Kevin Macleod as the title was amazingly fortuitous, the music was fun and addictive, and, most of all, seemed to represent an appropriate mood for the piece: slightly humorous but not too irreverent. I sent a voluntary donation for the privilege of using it: much of
Macleod's work is amazing!
Eventually compiling and editing the video presented more conundrums. Due to the grainy nature of my film clips I decided to use black and white coloration instead of color. I wish I could say I planned this, as eventually it occurred to me that this was an effective way of differentiating the colorless, more routine coffee times alone in my home, from the more colorful, animated, and cozy ones with family. (I had to cut out the friends--length!) In essence, the black and white sections are reality and the color sections are the memories or longings I harbor: as in there is less color in my "drink" life without the family around. I also tried modifying the color or mood finish on the still images but found that that my chosen "Dream" format managed to make the photographs look merely badly taken! I chose the "ripple" transition as a reference to both a dream state and to the swirling of the coffee. A final effect that I explored was using the "cartoon" representation (in iMovie) applied to a section of the film as I rushed down the stairs seeking my personal warm drink solace and possible companion--the cat.
The ultimate challenge was to ensure a one minute length and yet maintain some level of quality as I played around with size, recording format, sound quality, streaming rates, and other technical obstacles as I exported the film in a format that could be shared online. Interestingly, it was after I had uploaded a copy from my desktop to this blog that I discovered tutorials on the
Vimeo website that are extremely helpful for novices such as I! Consequently, I learned a little more about compressions rates and the like and followed Vimeo's advice in uploading to its collection site ---with a guarantee of no adverts being added to my video--and have since replaced my original on the previous posting. It is of far better quality--it even disguises some of my fuzziness!
So, on to the next challenge!
For that I will make use of resources I have located online such as:
Creative Narrations Mutimedia for Community Development Resorces section at URL
http://www.creativenarrations.net/produce
