EDLD 5363 - Week 5 Reflection

I expected to learn how to produce multimedia content and use those produced materials and educational tool. I suppose it was unfair of me to expect to learn much about video production. I already have fairly advanced knowledge of video editing. I’ve taken advanced digital film editing courses and train university faculty on how to edit every semester. The base level of knowledge for the rest of my classmates is probably much lower. Unfortunately I didn’t feel like the course offered much in the way of using multimedia to educate. I was hoping to at least learn best practices for producing multimedia content intended for use in a course.

I edit video on almost daily basis as part of my job. At Lamar we constantly try to convince our faculty to utilize multimedia content in their online courses. The learning outcomes of the course mostly covered topics I already had and advanced level of knowledge of coming into the course. The only outcome I didn’t achieve was participating in the optional web conference. This is only due to time and family restraints. I also wasn’t very motivated to participate. I provide training on using the acrobat connect system on a very frequent basis.

With the exception of the week 2 assignments the course work was very easy. Week 2 was not particularly hard, but I was very confusing.

My daily work is done in a collaborative environment. The application of the skills I’ve learned through past experience made working in a group for this course easy. We all worked well together. Everyone was willing to apply their full efforts. I love having an opportunity to work on creative projects. I essentially functioned as the creative director for the group. I’ve worked in this capacity professionally and very much enjoy in the process involved. The rapid birth and death ideas is very exciting to me.

EDLD 5363 - Week 5

Our group worked extremely well together throughout the production process.  Our main venue for communication was email.  The threaded nature of our conversations made it easy to follow.  All messages were sent to all group members so that we could all be aware of any developments.  The brainstorming process was rapid.  We gathered 10-15 ideas but quickly settled on text messaging while driving.  The topic seemed interesting and we thought we could have some fun creating the PSA.  We bounced around ideas of how best to cover the topic and finally decided on a simple model.  A single shot that loses and regains focus to indicate changes in the driver’s attention.  Our video was produced in 720p HD quality.  We were able to preserve the high level of video and audio quality by utilizing YouTube.

Call me arrogant if you want, but I believe firmly that our PSA is television ready.  The only improvements that could suggest would be using a higher quality microphone to record the narration.

As a group we decided to avoid using any copyrighted material. We shot our own footage.  Sound effects were either self-recorded or from royalty free sound databases.

EDLD 5363 - Week 4

You can view my groups activity report at:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=17TheKw2hpFs240rLbWKPkvSuyvdtG4YKDcVEClsEQVs

The bulk of our production took place this week.   All of our footage was filmed, the rough edit was completed and the narration was recorded.  We have all focused on our strengths.

Jacqueline has become our videographer and our record keeper.  David has become the voice (literally) of our group.

EDLD 5363 - Week 2 - Video Editing Software

I've worked with video editing software years.  My first introduction to the area was through Windows Movie Maker.  Anyone that has ever used anything else will tell you that it is extremely weak.  It's feature set are as minimal as possible.  Shortly there after I was able to get my hands on the Adobe's video editing solution, Premiere. Adobe Premiere is professional level editing solution that is on par with the industry standard, Final Cut Pro.  In more recent years I've had substantial experience with Imovie and Final Cut Pro.  The most bang for your buck can be found in Imovie.  Imovie does 90% of everything I need to do. When i need more advanced capabilities I use Final Cut Pro.  Like most software every year brings new features and numerous other changes.  I constantly look into new versions of software and new tools that available.  I tend to export my videos as either mp4 or mov files. Mp4 is more of universal standard.