Our minor taks today involves reviewing Stockman’s advice for novice videographers.
- Think in shots
- Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes (stay close to your subjects, use only short establishing or wide shots)
- Keep your shots under 10 seconds long (way under)
- Zoom with Your Feet (but NOT with the camera running, zoom with shots)
- Stand still! Stop fidgeting! And no zooming during shots! (or, buy a tripod)
- Keep the light behind you (pay attention to lighting)
- Turn off the camera’s digital effects (add effects in a program later, like iMovie or Adobe Premiere)
- Focus on what interests you. Really interests you. (“Focus on something–a person or an angle of interest–and your video will improve instantly”)
- Don’t use amateurish titles. (You have the opportunity to narrate your video–so be strategic about putting words on the screen).
- Keep your video short (especially important for Professional Writers–and don’t forget to front load)
- Use an external microphone (at least, check audio quality. Don’t use poor audio)
Our major task for today concerns the Project 2 rubric. As I mentioned on Tuesday, I want you to have a role in determining what the grading criteria will be for the second assignment. As a heuristic, I’ll ask you to think about the assignment across three poles: content, composition, and technology.
Please take 2-3 minutes to write down a few possible grading categories. Then we will go around the room and create a list. In terms of “turn-in,” I am going to ask everyone to create one 5 minute video (give or take) and submit it to YouTube. You will then share the link with me via Canvas. Please remember that it is possible to set a YouTube video to private if you so desire.
Because I am asking you to post the video to YouTube, I will also ask you to write a description of the video (in lieu of a post-mortem). Which means we should talk a bit about writing a quality YouTube description (thanks Internet). Those linked articles are for one particular purpose. So, while their advice is valuable, you might also think about writing a description for this particular purpose and your narrower audience. That is, see the description field as a site for possible invention.
Homework
