Classroom or real life?
This week in my online journalism class, students were asked to shoot and edit their first man-on-the-street video in groups of two or three.
They chose a question and had to get at least four responses. Students were asked to keep lighting, framing, background noises and a few other shooting tips in mind. They had one class to shoot and one to edit, using either iMovie or FinalCutPro.
As I should have expected, two groups had video files that could only be processed on a PC, not on the Macs in our lab. When we got to the PC lab, codec issues continued to prevent us from accessing one group’s files. The other group used Windows Moviemaker to edit for the first time.
It was frustrating for the group who had to sit through class, watching everyone else edit. But I let them know it’s very reflective of life in multimedia journalism. You never know if something screwy will happen to your tape, or if you’ll be asked to process a foreign file for the first time. The only thing I can guarantee students of multimedia is that you can never anticipate what you’ll be asked to do or what will happen.
My co-workers and I have a saying for the unexpected situations: Yay for freeware, shortcuts and not having a clue what we’re doing!
It sounds scary, but I’ve actually learned to enjoy it. I took the video files we could not access back to the office and wound up converting them using Ultra Video Splitter, one of the first video programs I ever used for RandomThis at it’s inception. I don’t even remember the last time I opened up the program either.
The group wound up getting a crash course in FinalCutPro and produced this video about the UT men’s basketball team in 20 minutes. Another group used FinalCut for their video on the election. They chose this program so they could fix sync issues with their audio and video. One group worked completely independently of any help and used iMovie to make this video on Candace Parker’s decision to leave UT early. Here is the second video produced in Moviemaker, also about UT sports. And lastly, check out this one on UT dining and health, also produced in Moviemaker. It has a nice surprise twist ending.
producing video commentary takes some time if you want quality. there is some skill involved. this was one of my first “man on the street” vids shot with the question: what do you think about the war in iraq?
> http://youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU