Group Video Project

I have never been good at taking video, I don't like to star in video and I cannot stand to hear my voice on recordings - this was bound to be a very interesting project.

I was partnered with Kevin Ezzel and thankfully he had an idea in mind for a topic.  I had considered a topic the entire week prior to the start of this project and I was still at a loss for an idea.  Any ideas I came up with seemed inconsequential or too difficult to get video tape in the Albright college area.

The idea Kevin had was to film video on "Applying to College".  I liked the project idea because it was going to potentially be a useful tool for You Tube viewers who may be considering the process they need to follow when considering going back to college.

The statistic that Kevin had available outlined the fact that a college degree will increase a person's odds of achieving a higher rate of pay and decrease their chances of being unemployed.  I felt that this statistic was very interesting and should be a great motivator for anyone considering going back to college.

We outlined our ideas on the storyboard that was provided to us.  There were 7 scenes that we planned: Panning a view of Selwyn Hall, a set of steps on the front of the Albright property, black screen with various college logos, parking space sign for "Future Albright students", person sitting at desk playing the role of an Advisor, screen with FAFSA website, shot of 13th St sign.

The next step in the project was to video tape the scenes we planned.  In a 30 minute span of time we taped 6 minutes worth of video that we needed to crop and add narration and illustrations to.  Taping was challenging due to user error - finding that the camera was moving while shooting a scene using the tripod, capturing passersby in the video clips, and unknowingly leaving the camera on while transporting equipment back into the bldg and then again while we were in the bldg.  Cropping the video was not too difficult due to having the scenes scripted on our Storyboard. 

Adding narration proved to be time-consuming.  Matching appropriate timing to the video clips took a great deal of time. In addition to simply working out the timing, there was also equipment challenges in getting the narration added.  We found that equipment was not functioning properly, and alternative types of equipment (headphones and microphone) needed to be plugged in and unplugged in order to use the other piece of equipment.  Once we got the equipment figured out it was just a matter of recording and inserting the narration in the appropriate sections of video.

I believe that what worked well was my partnership with Kevin.  He had great ideas and was very helpful in working through all the new concepts and challenges that we were faced with this project.  The one thing I would have liked to do differently would be to tape at an earlier time in order to have more processing time - however, neither of our schedules allowed for the earlier taping to occur.  Although many of the tasks were challenging, I was surprised at overall how easy it was to put a video together.

This is definitely a process that I would be willing to take part in again - but I still prefer to not star in the video - I like to be behind the camera, not in front of it.