Thoughts from a Five Year Old

Today I grabbed my iPhone and did an experiment.  (It was also and excuse to play with paper airplanes.)  I wanted to see what kind of journaling I could do with a five year old (my son).  Fifteen minutes of filming, fifteen minutes of editing, and fifteen minutes of uploading later we were done.  I did everything on my iPhone 4 (but it also would have worked fine on an iPod touch).  The editing and commentary was done using the iMovie app on my phone.

Someplace during one of my many conferences and PD events I heard a speaker talking about video science reports.  The speaker was playing with middle years lap reports.  The students recorded their conclusions in a video instead of a written report.  Their work averaged about two grade levels higher.  The written report was a barrier to their learning.  (No I can't remember who or where it was - if you know please let me know.)

My goal was to see what we could do with a primary student.  I am quite happy with the results.  Tristan looked at the pictures and talked about them with very little prompting.  (Yes I did bribe him with another airplane.)  I left most of the prompting in the video.  The intent was to see what I could create with very little time and effort.  It is not meant to be an award winning documentary - just a quick record of what went on.  I think that there is huge value in projects like this.  Often in the primary grades journaling consists of drawing a picture to describe what you did.  Isn't a video like this more valuable?  With young students an adult would need to do most of the work but I am sure that Grade 3 students could run iMovie and create the same video (after some lessons of course).

Yay - Some success!

Cando Community School Graduating Class of 2011

Lights, Camera, Documentary?

Ok before you go on watch this video.

No - I mean it.  Watch the video.

(Sorry I did not embed it but there were no embed codes).

Ok - done?  Pretty good huh?  This is the kind of thing that Marco Torres and his students are putting out.  I was impressed.  A group of ex-students of his put together a company named Alas Media they also put on some really good sessions (and where a big part of Marco's sessions as well.)

Marco taught film making through documentaries.  Documentaries are a rapidly increasing genre in the film industry.  Keep in mind that these are not the boring old documentaries that we all have seen (and probably shown) in class - these are interesting, modern, and hip.  The best part about documentaries is that you don't need actors.

The good people at Alas Media talked about what they liked best about Marco's methods.  He started them off close to home.  They talked about themselves, and then their community.  Their assignments were stories that had personal connections.  The assignments worked in the order of:

1. Us
   
2. Our family
   
3. Our community
   
4. The world

Marco made some good points about teaching film.  Don't teach the tech.  When it comes to a new skill teach one student - then have that student teach the rest.  That frees up the teacher to focus on important things like composition and storyline.

Ok - now some of the meat and potatoes of what I learned.

The four P's of film making.

1. Plan
2. Produce
3. Present
4. Pheedback

Apparently 75% of the work lies in the planning section.  If you just shoot and hope to get something then you just have a jumble of cool shots but no cohesive story.  Remember - unless you are making the movie Twister then it is ALL about the story.  (Also - anything that takes away from the story - like unnecessary animation - has no place in the video).

Remember the Rule of Thirds.

How to Make a Simple Documentary Film

A Roll 

Start with the A roll.  The A roll is the interview itself.  It is the camera on the subject.  Marco described the A roll as talking heads - not much action - just talking.  One of the key's to this part is to get good quality audio.  Use a secondary recorder if your camera doesn't do the best job of recording.

B Roll

The B roll is the other shots that get mixed into the video.  They provide the context for the interview.  B roll shots are not different shots of the subject talking - they are everything else.  The key is variety.  Get lots of different shots - closeups, objects, even just the person staring off into the distace (especially if they are remembering a past story).

Cutaway

In this step you start putting things together.  Your A roll is the backbone of the piece.  Start there.  Then start splicing in parts of your B roll.  Leave in the audio from the A roll but show shots from the B roll.  Go back and forth from the subject to the context.

Audio

The key to a good interview is being able to hear what is being said.  This is why I suggested a secondary recorder.  Then you have two audio tracks to choose from.  Check out some of Marco's how to videos to find out how to sync up audio.  (You did remember to start with a clap didn't you?)

As you can see I walked away from these two sessions with a lot of information.  This is only part of it and already this post is way too long.  I guess I will have to end it with some links to more information.

Here are a bunch of how to videos they put together.

FlickSchool - more how to's

Marco Torres

Alas Media    (Here is their YouTube channel)

And Finally my rough notes from the sessions are here and here (not that you really want to read them.  I place lots of emphasis on rough.)

BLC 09 (Building Learning Communities)

My first impressions. (Done in a make and take here at the conference). I will post more when I have time. It has been very busy.