Digital Storytelling

You didn’t miss “Florida ’08.1” I fully intended to get a couple of posts up last week while at FETC with the DEN crew. However, I found myself living life in the Hall lane while in Orlando and thought I’d catch up on the weekend after presenting at the Northern IL Computing Educators conference Saturday morning. My daughter went into labor later that day and we had our new grandson just after midnight, very early on Sunday morning. On Monday it was back down to Orlando airport and over to Viera H.S. to offer the keynote and a few breakout sessions for the Brevard County Educational Technology Conference. So that’s why my Florida review is beginning at the end.
Due to the weather and flight delays, I was in Florida for just under 20 hours. However, it was a warm, sunny visit that somehow bolstered my spirits for a return to sub-zero wind chills. The warm hospitality started in the parking lot where Matt Frey, educational training and customer services manager for the county, met me and guided me to my sessions. I shouldn’t play favorites with audiences, but this group seemed especially in tune with my “Makin’ Movies” keynote. I’ve never had people so sympathetic from the very start to the poor, little discarded lamp in the IKEA commercial. And the acronym and logo for their tech integration program is probably another indicator of that warmth: PAINT - Planning and Integrating New Technology: Improving the way students see, hear and interact with the curriculum.
As promised, with thanks to and a nudge from our own DEN Second Life council, clips of some of the special effects I talked about can be found on my homepage. They all start with F/X.

Good thing I have Trish Fuglestad and her art students to keep me from dwelling too much on high school and middle school student video makers. Last year’s 5th graders won a local contest and went on to have their film be shown at an international festival in Naples. This year her 4th grade class has championed the cause of what happens to cast off art supplies when the bell rings - they get “Swept Away.” Lots of clever shots to go along with a very clever story about saving those supplies that still have a lot of LIFE in them. Anthropomorphization, chromakey, original music - it’s all here! A clean sweep!

On top of that, they have shared the process with us in pictures. From a super sized, dynamic storyboard to recording the original song and filming eraser, pencil and paper in front of a blue screen made from bulletin board roll paper, it’s almost like a “making of” chapter at the end of a DVD.

OK, so maybe you’re not headed to Disney World or the NFL, but you can still be a “Video All-Star.” The 21st Century Connections people have extended the deadline for their contest until the end of February. And since it’s leap year, you get an extra day on top of those extra four weeks. Here is my post from December 10th.

21st Century Connections is once again inviting K-12 teachers and schools to make a 2-3 minute video on why digital learning tools are important in educating today’s students. There will be 1 grand prize and 3 runner up prizes in each of the three (elementary, middle and high school) grade categories. The 1st place teams will receive a Lenovo laptop and 25 licenses for the Adobe Digital School Collection. Runners up will also receive copies of ADSC. In addition, winning schools’ principals will win a trip to a 21st Century Connection event.

They have also put together a nice list of things you can do to create a more polished video. Regular readers know the drill: planning, lighting, preparation, sound, a variety of shots, and plan some more. Deadline for submissions is midnight January 31 February 29, 2008.

P.S. And in addition to or instead of entering the contest, wouldn’t your school board like to see a few well crafted video minutes from the students on why digital tools are important in their learning?

That stands for Chief Magic Official. For years we’ve been talking about how homemade videos could become the letters to the editor of the future. So it’s just logical that they could also become the job application of the future too. Well, Disneyland, Disney World and careerbuilder.com think so too. After looking over a short list of “goofy” characters, Disney has decided to go outside the company to fill the year long, CMO position. All you have to do is make a minute or less video explaining why you would be the right person for the job and be available for up to eight appearances between May 2008 and April 2009. Videos will be posted and the top three vote getters will be invited in for some fun competitions to see who gets the final nod. Step aside, “Apprentice!” Take the M.A.T. (Magic Aptitude Test) first, to see if you qualify. But hurry! You only have until January 27th to get your video in.

No, not me. Both Vinny Testaverde and I have recognized that our best playing days are behind us. But fellow Niles West H.S. grad (I retired from there) Rashard Mendenhall returned to the school to hold a press conference announcing that he would not be in the University of Illinois’ backfield next year and instead would enter this spring’s NFL draft. I bring this up for two reasons.

First press conferences and interview formats can be a great vehicle for your students telling a story. Imagine Caesar explaining why he had to cross the Rubicon (maybe even in Latin), Columbus speaking Spanish (or Italian), General Lee under the scrutiny of the media after Gettysburg, Einstein or Fermi announcing the splitting of the atom. You can also fake a two camera shoot with footage of the interviewer asking a question and then a cut back to a picture of say Washington as another student voices the response. Kids get press conferences. Think of the recent series of beer commercials where actual footage of coaches is cut in with some under achievers asking off the wall questions.

Second, Rashard and his older brother Walter were regulars in our A.V. Media Lab. Walter and his teammates actually started it out by making an epic football highlight film of their season, but as they got comfortable with iMovie they asked their academic teachers if they could make videos instead of PowerPoints and other types of presentations. Then they also ended up mentoring other students with their video projects.

I did wangle my way into the press conference in the black box theater to get a feel for what they are really like. Of course, I also wanted to wish Walter well in his last school year and football season in Champaign, and to wish Rashard good luck in the NFL. I’d love to see him with the Bears…if they can rediscover their defense, and find a quarterback, and some blocking, and…

The Great Minds Foundation Video Challenge, sponsored by local businessman Joe Elias, is looking for a few good high school and college video programs - about 1,000 to be exact! National Board Certified Teacher Jeff Doles of Barrington High School in Illinois would like to get twenty information kits out to each of the fifty states and I told him we’d help him try. So you could be one in a thousand. This year’s challenge topic is “Healthy Living:” eating habits, exercise, managing stress, pollution, environment, etc. You can check out the videos from past challenges at the site and get inspired. And if you think you’d like to know more, contact Jeff (jdoles@cusd220.lake.k12.il.us) for one of those kits and imagine what your high school or college students could do with one of the 5 prizes ranging from $2,000 for 1st to $250 for 5th. Entries must be uploaded by March 25th, 2008.

I guess a Leopard can change its spots if it’s Apple’s newest operating system. PC people with chroma key capability may want to stick with this post just for the example of a staff training video with green screen and Mac users should be warned that the specifics of this exercise are only done with the most recent OSX, 10.5.
Many of you have picked up on my disappointment that the newest version of iMovie left out some great previous features and did not include a chroma key effect that is built into the free online conferencing program, iChat, which is part of the Leopard ugrade. A chance exchange of emails with fellow Illinoisan (Rose Bowl, what rose bowl?) and Apple Distinguished Educator, Bruce Ahlborn, clued me in to the same feature that is also in PhotoBooth. AND it can be saved as a movie AND imported into iMovie for further tweaking and editing.

So, as an example, I’m using a screen movie of how this is done. I captured the operations of going into PhotoBooth, choosing Video Effects from the Video menu, and then arrowing over to the add your own background screen with a free program for Leopard called Berio. If I had used a commercial program like SnapzPro by Ambrosia I could have limited the screen capture to just the part of the screen I wanted to show instead of capturing everything showing on my laptop’s monitor. There is another free movie screen capture program for both Mac and PC but it saves to its own server and may take some finagling to actually get your “hands” on the movie: The Jing Project.

Unlike traditional chroma key shots, PhotoBooth (and iChat) in 10.5 “memorizes” the background. Then you step back into the scene and it replaces those memorized pixels with a still picture or movie of your choice. I wanted to give you a feel of how the program actually replaces the many different shapes and colors of any background. Unfortunatley, one wall and my skin seemed to be a close match and wood and my hair also blended. If you were to actually set up a green or blue or any solid color, well lit background it would really be a piece of cake for the program to insert your graphic behind you. Here’s a quick movie in a movie walking you through the process.

With any green screen program, this can be a fun way to make staff or student training videos. By utilizing a head to foot shot, you can literally walk and point your way through the interface of any program to help your intended audience “get the picture.”P.S. Thanks to Hall’s pointing out that my part is on the wrong side, I see that PhotoBooth reverses the “live shot” but leaves the background the right way. You can see the Discovery logo is reversed on my shirt in one of the pictures and all through the movie. You can flip photos in PhotoBooth, but not videos (which would in turn reverse your background). I’ll have to investigate this phenomenon and get back to you.