Learning video editing software couldn’t come at a better time. With the school closures we’ve been forced to rethink how we teach content. There are some excellent resources out there, but based upon the kids you have in your classroom, often times there are certain things you know you need that just don’t exist. Case in point, this week my kids were learning about the Law of Conservation of Energy. There are plenty of videos out there explaining what it is, but they don’t really explain it at the level that an 11 year-old can understand, let a lone an 11 year-old that has only been learning English for 5 months. I had the wonderful opportunity to put my Premiere skills to good use and make a video for my kids to help them understand the topic. Based upon their quiz scores this week, it looks like I successfully got the point across (they’ve never done so well on the question before!).
Now you’re probably thinking that’s what I’m going to show off for my rough draft, show off my Law of Conservation of Energy video. That was definitely the suggestion of my co-workers, but I’ve always been overly ambitious, so I made a different video for this project.
When reading about this project, I immediately knew what I wanted to do; my inspiration once again came from my work with AVID. One of the things we have to do in order to be an AVID school is complete something called the CCI; basically AVID has a standard for what they expect and they ask schools that have the program to grade ourselves on nearly 100 criteria to see how “AVID” we are. One criteria is the “College Talk” criteria, which states that kids are learning about college in ALL of their classes (not just AVID). College talk is pretty vague, it just means that kids are learning about what colleges are out there, they are hearing stories about what colleges people in their lives went to, why they chose that college, hearing about our college experiences, why we picked our careers, etc. As someone who teaches two content areas, I know that I hit the college talk in my AVID class (it’s like the #1 reason why we do what we do), but I am terrible at hitting it in my science classes. I have so many standards that I have to hit, and randomly talking about my college experience doesn’t really fit into those. It’s not that I don’t think these stories are important, because if AVID has shown me anything it is how important those little stories are. When kids come back they’ll always casually mention how one of the stories they heard from one of our guest speakers or one of the AVID teachers changed their perspective or made them consider something else; yes, even those kids that I am convinced never paid attention to anything.
So last school year I tried to make a push that every staff member make a college talk video and we show them in rotation during our advisory class, that way the kids could hear these stories from all the teachers and it didn’t have to take away from our regular class time. People were on board with the idea, but nothing ever came about from anyone. My thinking is that, with this project, if I make the first one then it will spark people to start making theirs, or at the very least film themselves and send it off to me to polish up.
To get content for the rough draft I emailed a handful of my coworkers asking if they would be willing to shoot video of themselves answering these 4 questions:
- Why did you decide to go to college?
- What college did you attend?
- Why did you pick that college?
- Why did you choose to become a teacher?
I received responses from 4 of my co-workers and used the footage to make this rough draft:
While I am happy with it, I know that there is a ton of work that needs to be done with it, especially because it is way over the time limit. There were a lot of really great responses that I was not able to get in, like our responses to why we chose to be teachers. I didn’t pick those though because I thought they’d be over the time limit. I am going to play around with the footage and see if I can fit it in, so it’s very possible that my final is actually video of us talking about a completely different topic. We’ll just have to wait and see where the creative process ends up taking me.
Kacee's Blog 
Hi Kacee! Great job with your first draft! I love that you got a lot of great interviews to work with for this video in addition to some great still photographs of the schools to better support the interview scenes. Below are a few of my recommendations for your consideration:
1. I think that the video needs a bit of background music to help set the tone.
2. I think it would be great to have text showing to identify who is currently being interviewed. You can include their name, occupation, and college alma mater.
3. With respect to your video length and a way to shorten it, I think that you should consider picking one or two clips from each person you interviewed. You should segment your videos to 4 parts as per your interview questions. Each scene can start with a black background and the interview question text (in white), then fade to the clips of the people you have chosen with the best answers to the question. Doing this will help give you a better transition between each question as well as shorten the video to the appropriate length.
Overall, great start!
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Thanks Cy!
I agree about the music. I originally intended to have some, but was having downloading issues and figured I could just leave it since it was the rough draft.
I do have the titles like you suggested, but their timing is off because some of the transitions didn’t work. I do like the idea of including the alma mater though with the title. I think that is a fantastic idea.
Thank you for the feedback!
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Posted on Behalf of William-
Hello Kacee, I really like the approach that you took with your choice of project. The variety of people that you were able to interview were all engaging and interesting. Sometimes people who are not use to being in-front of the camera can be stoic and mechanical. I am not sure if you coached them or they are naturally relaxed, regardless, great work. The transitions you chose to show the universities and other candid shots was really well done as far as timing and subject matter. It was interesting to see an administrator in your cast. It brought a different perspective to the interview. I liked the mix of schools represented in the story. While I love WSU, it’s great to see other venue’s showcased. I liked the comment of mistakenly taking poor advice about not applying to Boston College. The honesty was refreshing. You captured great story telling from start to finish. You also utilized the techniques we learned in the labs in a seamless, natural fashion. As mandated by the course rubric I am asked to provide some critical feedback. Your blob post instructs that you have yet to edit for length, so I am sure my comments come as no surprise. The last interview has some um’s and some places that could use little edits to smooth-out the interview. My other comment is your credits page at the end rolls by too quickly for the reader to see. Overall, great job Kacee! I enjoyed the video and I am sure I am not alone in my opinion. Wonderful job. William
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Hi Kacee,
This was a solid start to the draft video project. It’s great that you were able to get multiple interviews to combine into one place. In addition, it’s amazing that each clip had pretty good audio! It’s also nice that you were able to include images of all schools that were mentioned.
Improvements:
This video will be strong if you shorten the amount of time each person is talking. I’d suggest choosing one answer per question and possibly cutting between each person. It can be hard cutting clips when a person hasn’t finished a thought, but if you find a way to cut between everyone’s answers I think it would be really cool and powerful!
The second improvement would be to include some sort of sound or music in the background. As I edit video, I try to remember that the viewer has a short attention span and can zone out listening to “talking heads.” I think with a combination of music, shortening clips, and including answers to multiple questions you’ll have something special.
Another minor improvement would be to add some sort of shadow or background to the signature titles. In some instances, it’s sort of hard to read the interviewee’s name and/or school subject.
Thanks,
Chelsea
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Thanks Chelsea!
I completely agree with you that it needs some kind of background music. I also plan on playing around with the titles like you suggested. Since Cy missed them I’m assuming that I need to work on making them more apparent.
I think I’m going to really struggle with the editing piece of figuring out who to cut down, but your right. I might have to cut off someone’s thoughts and just be okay with that.
Thanks for the feedback!
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First off, my video is too long, so I need to find a way to cut it down. I think I may reshoot some of the video or, like I mentioned in the post, use one of the other questions that was asked. William suggested that I might be able to cut some time from Jasmine’s interview, so I am going to look closely at that one. I may also have to end up following Chelsea’s advice of cutting someone’s thoughts off.
Secondly, I agree that the video needs music in the background. Originally I intended to put music in the rough draft, but ran into some issues. I have a song picked out, I just need to fix my issues and get it into the video.
The third thing I plan to do is adjust some of the transitions. Cy mentioned that I should use titles to identify each person. I already have those in the video, but their timing is off so I need to adjust their positioning in the time code. Since she missed them, I should probably double-check to make sure the font is big enough to catch the eye. I like the idea of adding in their alma matter with their title, so I think I am going to do that as well.
Lastly, some of my transitions didn’t work. I tried to do the page flip transition, but for some reason it doesn’t appear in the video and it caused some timing issues. I need to go through, check all the transitions, and replace the ones that don’t work.
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