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We starting editing together today. I hooked my laptop up to the LCD projector in order to work with one video group per class. In true team spirit, Annie took the rest of the kids into the hall to do their writing workshop. Much appreciated, Ms. Perry!
The editing was great! The students viewed existing clips (I'd already imported them into FinalCut Pro and then sorted the clips into folders per each video group) and told me which parts to edit out of the clips. There was a lot of giggling and laughter and cheerfulness...although the girls from the Friends video were all mortified to hear their voices in the videos. Too cute. They think their voices sound too deep and are embarrassed about it. I told them I feel the same way about my voice & I know what they're talking about. But honestly their voices sound just like they do in person. Everyone's getting used to their image and sound on the 'big screen.'
I'll be working with the other 4 groups over the next 2 days to edit the other video clips and to move the projects along. Then I'll probably have to do some fine tuning over the weekend, since we only have 5 school days left to work on videotaping, pick up shots, editing, etc. Yikes! I'm a little stressed about the time. Monday's Memorial Day, so school's out. And we're planning to watch the group and individual projects on Friday, June 1 in a viewing bonanza. It will be a fun last day of school. I'd also like to put both the home video and group projects on DVDs to distribute to the school and students sometime soon. It won't be by June 1. But I can easily do that in time for the first day of school next year.
Ms. Perry and I watched the students' personal videos last night, to make sure they'd followed the assignement (to write a video plan before taping). Some of them are priceless and well done, others had technical problems, and others didn't follow the assignment - they just taped people or things without describing them and seemingly without any plan. So now, about 11 students need to revideo their individual video project, for one reason or another. Zoinks! We only have about 8 days left to get them finished so we can preview them. Hopefully the retakes will be finished by the middle of next week.
The video projects are moving along...sometimes smoothly, sometimes not so smoothly. Today I arrived at ICS over an hour early so the "Day in the Life of Recess" group could videotape recess again. But when I got to school, only one student from the group would take time to actually videotape. Afterward in class, another student from the 'Recess' group asked if he could videotape then. I had to tell him that he'd had a chance earlier but had chosen to play soccer instead of participating in the video project. Bummer for all of us! At this point, we really needed to get that footage taken care of, but the students have to understand their choices matter.
The good news is that all the students who chose to participate in the home video project have taken the video cameras home. Ms. Perry and I are watching them tomorrow night to see if we have all of them and to make sure none of them need to be re-videotaped before we begin to edit them into one vidoe.
Additional good news is that most of our 6 group videos are coming along nicely. We've videotaped almost all the footage we need for them. I'm going to download the footage onto my computer over the weekend and take it to school next week so the students and can edit it together, using a video projector and my laptop computer with FinalCut Pro on it. I'll have to make some editorial choices about which parts we view together because we have videotaped enormous amounts for each group video project.
All the video projects and home video projects are underway! The students are doing a great job thinking through their shots, scripts, etc. It's exciting and exhausting. We are getting so much footage that I hope I can get it all onto my computer and firewire drive in order to take to school next week so we can edit them together. We'll use a LCD projector and the laptop so the students can see how the editing process works. Some of them get the editing concept and some are still struggling with the abstractness of what we're telling them we can do on the computer, so I think this is a hugely beneficial step in this collaborative process.
On another note, have I already mentioned that I successfully defended my Thesis Prospectus in early May? I did! My committee (Niklas Vollmer, Ted Friedman, Merrill Morris) brought up some fantastic additional resources and questions for me to consider throughout the project. Shows that the more people you include in the planning process, the better the project can be!
The student-friendly, plastic video camera's have arrived! We're using Hasbro's VcamNow. They're great for a functioning, child-friendly camera at a relatively low price. Annie and I tested them out over the weekend and made sample videos to show the classes. Parents signed the necessary permission slips over the weekend, and the students are taking them home beginning this week.
4 students per night will be able to video journal at home, showing us where they live, what they like, their families, neighborhoods, etc. The students are so excited about this project, they've been writing ideas and talking about how fun it will be in their written journals.
Downloading the videos off the cameras, erasing the videos before passing them to the next group of students is going to be a quick logistical turnaround. But well worth it. This is a 5th grade version of Kirby Dick's Chain Camera, a video that inspired and informed this project.
