Video - from conception to web in 27 minutes...

Image from Sandra Regina, under a CC
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

Last week I was asked to give a short presentation on video production to undergraduate students, who would be producing video as part of a project to create a Google Site. The idea wasn't so much to make them experts in video making, but to sell the concept of video to them as something relatively easy to do and well within their capabilities, both in terms of skill and available technology.

I decided to break the creation of an online video down into seven stages, and demonstrate them as I went on, finally embedding a video into a Google Site. I did the presentation at quite short notice, so didn't get time to time myself delivering it, so I was actually curious how long it would take me to do it, and really hoped it would be within the allotted 50 minutes!

So the seven stages were as follows.

1. Planning
I very quickly went through the ideas of script-writing and storyboarding, not dwelling too closely on the details, but giving the central message that the more you think about the content of the video, and the technical practicalities of film-making, before you start, the better.

2. Recording
A brief overview of different types of recording devices available to them, and a quick demo of our Zoom handy video recorders, which are available to them to borrow from the Information Commons.

3. Transferring
A quick demo of transferring from the handy video recorders to the computer, showing how easy it is. I'd been recording the first part of the lecture, and transferred this material to my laptop.

4. Editing
Then I went through the different types of editing software that they have access to, stressing if they have their own computer they probably have at least Windows MovieMaker or iMovie, and access to edit in YouTube. I imported and quickly edited the first part of the lecture in iMovie, adding titles, music and comedy sound effects. It was far from the greatest video ever made, but showed the editing process to be nice and straightforward!

5. Exporting
I showed how to export from iMovie, explaining briefly to be mindful of file-size and file format.

6. Uploading
I demonstrated how to upload to YouTube (explaining other video hosting sites are available...).

7. Embedding
And finally I embedded the video into a Google Site I'd made earlier.

And in total this part of the presentation took a total of 27 minutes. Following up with some notes on copyright considerations and what facilities were available at the Information Commons, I think the session was successful, and showed how quickly video can go from conception to being published online for the world to see - although I recommend people take a little bit longer than 27 minutes if they're doing it for real...!

Pete