Today’s Plan:
- Bywater-Reyes edit
- Rest of Year Calendar and Deliverables
- Just One Thing Final Video
- Just One Thing Data Memo
- Homework
Rest of Year Calendar and Deliverables
Let’s review the calendar I sent out on Wednesday:
Friday, April 12th: Just One Thing user feedback memo. I’ll give you time in class on Friday to examine your Just One Thing final surveys. You’ll draw conclusions. You’ll send me a memo at the end of class on Friday. Homework: Take some photographs of locations/angles to include in your Pitch Presentation.
Monday, April 15th: I’ll give you time in class to work with your partner(s) to storyboard the Just One Thing reshoot. The storyboard will indicate location, camera angles, and action. The storyboards will be the foundation of the Just One Thing Pitch Presentations. We’ll talk about creative pitches on Monday; professional writers are often tasked with two things I am asking you to do on this project: to collect, synthesize, and concisely/cogently/accessibly present data and to develop and present a creative strategy (that is, learning to present a creative/content idea *before* you’ve developed it so that you can get the contract/resources/approval you need to develop it). We’ll start by selecting a template for a Google Slides presentation and talk about ways to develop a visually-striking presentation (using full screen images)
Wednesday, April 17th: Creating Graphs in Adobe After Effects to Use in Adobe Premiere
Friday, April 19th: Just One Thing Reshoot Pitch Presentations. Course Reflection Day. Homework: Just One Thing Script
Monday, April 22nd: Workday. Shooting your video and editing film.
Wednesday, April 24th: Workday. Shooting your video and editing film.
Friday, April 26th: Watch them final Just One Thing videos.
Altogether, there’s three deliverables between now and the end of the year:
- Just One Thing Memo (due at the end of class today)
- Just One Thing Pitch Presentation (next Friday)
- Just One Thing Scripts (due Monday, April 22nd)
- Just One Thing Final Video (due in class on Friday, April 26th)
Just One Thing Final Video
One inspiration about for the Just One Thing project concerns how we, as professional communicators, can use video to communicate scientific/academic research to wider publics. This has been a question scientists have been asking themselves for awhile now–the NSF used to host an annual video competition (a remediation of the academic poster board). Another inspiration is the facebook series 60 Second Documentaries. Scientific American has its own short video series. I would like your Just One Thing videos to draw upon these examples: for you to produce a short video that both communicates your research and advocates for a lifestyle change (or, perhaps more precisely, one that uses the former to persuade for the latter).
These final videos are meant to serve as a demonstration of everything we have covered thus far this year. On Monday I will provide a concrete list of criteria that will include camera angles, lighting, shot length, audio, and graphics. I want you to show me, and yourself, how much better you’ve got at shooting video over the course of the past few months. Videos should be between 1:30 and 2:00. They should summarize your research and/as a way to advocate for a life change. They should include at least one graph or table (and I’ll have a workshop on including a graph or table in Premiere next Wednesday).
Task for Today: Email Memo
Today I would like you to send me a memo that details your findings from the research. Indicate how many users participated and your synthesis of their final survey responses. Check your findings against your initial hypotheses (did anything unexpected happen). Identify what persuasive research conclusions you can draw, and whether/how the feedback and results you collected will reshape your project. Knowing what you know now, how might you do things differently?
I believe class time today should be sufficient for you to get this done (if it isn’t, then get it to me by midnight Sunday so I can review it before our next class).
The format for the memo should look something like this:
- Summary/intro paragraph
- Survey Results
- Reflecting on Hypotheses
- Key Conclusions
- Thinking Ahead to the Video
You don’t necessarily have to include all of these–they might not all be relevant. And feel free to invent a new subheading as needed.
Homework
Monday’s class will be dedicated to developing a pitch proposal for your final video. There’s a few things you can do, beyond the memo, to prepare:
- Take some pictures. You’ll want to have location and angle images to include in the presentation.
- Really think about what you want this video to do. Start forming a plan.
