This was the first assignment I did on moviemaker, and so it’s a little rough.  I chose to do the sports mashup, which involved piecing together clips of great sports plays, but they were supposed to also tell a story.  I picked rugby as my sport, even though I could have probably picked any number of them.  The reason I chose rugby is because there is generally a set method for how to move the ball down the field;  first there is a scrum between the forwards on each team and the scrumhalf pulls the ball out of the back of the scrum; they then pass it out to the back line, who run/pass/kick the ball down the field in attempt to score a try.

I pieced together solid plays (for parts where there’s no real way to do anything interesting) and impressive plays for the whole process, starting with the scrum and ending with a really awesome move.

I unfortunately forgot the tips from last week involving resizing the clips so that they all fit together, but I will try to do better with the other assignments.

Another assignment option was to show the evolution of a product; I chose the telephone.  I feel like telephones are something that have been around for a very long time, but are constantly changing (much like computers, which telephones basically are now).  Cell phones now that are considered archaic (flip phones?) were super cutting edge when I was in middle and high school.  So that’s where I got the idea for the product to use. The song was just common sense.

I also showed the evolution of the product in terms of social impacts – people are so attached to their phones now that it is common to see people on dates or hanging out in public and every person involved is glued to their own phones and not even interacting with each other.  So my video shows the progression from the earlier phones to that issue.

Another option for an assignment was to make a PSA, which I was excited about.  I did mine about household fertilizer use.  It’s actually a really big problem and contributes to a lot of environmental issues, but not many people are aware of the consequences of making their lawns beautiful each spring.  Watching the commercials for these products, one might never guess that any harm could come of it!

That being said, I cheated juuuust a little with this one.  As my “I am me” video pointed out, I am an education intern with Friends of the Rappahannock. I teach fourth graders every week about watershed pollution, and one of the major things we talk about is the effects of fertilizers on watersheds.  I kind of just adapted my schpiel into a video and found pictures and videos to go along with it.  I downloaded and trimmed commercials for fertilizers, using various instructional videos and a couple of miracle-gro commercials.

I don’t know why I had so much trouble speaking – I recorded myself several times and kept stumbling.  That’s why there are a couple spots where I sound kind of weird — I did a bit of editing because I sounded even more troubled and stutter-y than the video even shows, but there are still a few hiccups in there.

If you didn’t know about this issue already though, you do now!

I chose to do the “I am me” assignment from the bank, which involved creating a video that described me.  I didn’t really understand the example video that was provided, but I may have just missed the point.  Either way, I diverged from that a bit with my example and tried to incorporate video, audio, pictures, and music with mine.  I ran into difficulty matching up the timing of what I was saying with the pictures showing, and once I finished that part I still had a lot of blank space that I didn’t know what to do with.  I filled those gaps with music, although I’m not really sure that it fit.  I just didn’t like the silence!!!

Some of the pictures I used are pretty old, but I really don’t have pictures taken of me very often so my options were kind of limited.  I could have taken some, I suppose, but they would have appeared very staged, so I opted for just using some older ones.

Yeah, you heard me. I wish that I had a great man voice. It would have really come in handy when it was time for making the five star vintage educational video assignment that I decided to take on this week. It was the planning that really helped to put this together, plus my friend Kylie helped out a lot as well. I decided that I wanted to do a math video, so I went with the Integration by Parts since I am a PASS leader at this school (meaning I attend a calc 2 class regularly and then hold study sessions 3 times a week for the students in the class). So I decided to make a video on what they are working on right now so that way I can maybe even show it to them! Who doesn’t love a multi purpose video

So to make this video I started writing out a script first and had my friend Kylie to help out, and even star in the role! I knew I wanted to have it in black and white and I was trying to keep a steady hand while filming, so I had it on a stand. I had filmed and put together a video for my volleyball team, so I knew that filming long clips but staying under a minute would be best because the online converters I used (which will be mentioned in the weekly summary) only allowed a certain size file. So I tried to keep everything easy to cut off in points while making the script.

I wanted to have interaction with the narrator and I wanted the narrator to be a guy, so I pulled out the best guy voice I had (which is pathetic to say the least) and started to talk. You can hear it for yourself now

It is pretty bad, right? So this was a frustrating video to make, but not at the same time. I had no idea what to do for the background music. I had a certain tune stuck in my head, and I never figured out where it was from. However, in my endeavors in finding the song, I found the Leave It To Beaver theme song, which was similar to what I had pictured. I wanted something obnoxiously happy because that’s how calculus should make everyone feel. Obnoxiously happy.

My favorite part of this was the LATE part, in which I made it on a PowerPoint and saved each slide as a JPEG to be inserted into my timeline as a picture. However, I did not have narration recorded for that part, so I had to go into Audacity and record my voice talking again and mesh it with the background music (which has to repeat about 2.5 times because it was too short). Once the sound manipulation was done, the rest was pretty easy! I had filmed it in order, which made it very easy for editing purposes.

I hope you learned something!!

Thanks for reading!

Princess Karissa