Reflections of video making so far.
The task of producing a 90 second video has been a bit deceptive to me. We have made several videos so far and all of them have been longer than 90 seconds. So in terms of amount of content, footage, audio, still images to find or create, those videos have been “harder.” Then, working on it side by side with the behemoth that is building our capstone website, it seems even smaller still. Talking about my work for ninety seconds is easy! I can fill ninety seconds no problem. Or maybe that is the problem. How do I say enough in ninety seconds! Building a storyboard a few weeks ago was helpful. It gave me some boundaries and a narrative to fill in. There is just so much to stuff in there. It is tempting to double down and use visuals to cheat a bit of extra information in there but I feel like that goes against what we learned in our design classes and Baggio readings. So, thinning down my script to the bare essentials has definitely been the largest challenge. This has led me to consider the purpose of my video. The rest of my capstone is very formal and data driven. However, including a ton of data in my script really pushes the time. I can say something and back it up with a data point in five or six seconds. If I take those numbers out of the script, I can convey the information in maybe three seconds.So, my 90 second-teaser benefits from having fewer statistics shoved in it. However, I have the exact opposite in my capstone website. It is not an opinion blog, it is a research project and a data driven argument. I feel like the word I am looking for and struggling with is tone. What is the tone of my 90 second video? I naturally wanted it to be a little more generic and light hearted in my storyboard and that contrasts with the professional tone of the rest of my capstone. Perhaps that is the point of our elevator pitch. I currently have several drafts of different sections of my script, some more specific and some more generic. I have practiced some tongue twisters to try and spit my script out a second or to faster. I have poured through stock image websites to find the images that convey the tone and emotion I want paired with my data. I feel like it is all about choices now. I am thankful for our previous classes. I have been exposed to a lot of different video making tools and know which one I am comfortable which to get this particular type of video done. I am not fretting over editing or transitions or formatting because we already did those. I even know where to find free background music that I like. All because we have been through this process before. I get to focus on the content of my script at a high level of detail. I get to think about the tone and audience reception because I am not stressed about producing the video. It is a pretty big contrast to the struggle I felt communicating via storyboard.
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I was going to begin this blog by comparing my level of artistic ability to an animal, but then I researched the kind of art animals are capable of producing and realized they are better than me. Either way, my students will gladly tell you that drawing and graphics are not my strong suit. So, the idea of designing a logo was a little daunting at first. I began my journey by looking at a lot of logos. I went through previous cohorts pages and and looked over the infographics on color and logos we had looked at previously. This gave me some ideas to start with.
The first big idea I had was that I did not like logos that were too on the nose. A lot of logos from previous cohorts were very literal. A toolbox, computers, school supplies. I do not feel like that approach is a good fit for my product. I played around with the idea of using a brain or some kind of sapling-type image but both felt overdone already. I latched onto logos like Khan Academy’s. Khan has a logo that represents what they are about, growing, but it is not actually related to what they do, computer based learning. So, I decided I wanted a more abstract logo or a concrete logo that represented the values of my project, rather than what the project literally was. I settled on a tagline of “Agency is power.” The whole purpose of my capstone is to change mindsets and develop life long learning skills. I frequently remind my students that, if the world was fair, they would only get two and a half minutes of my attention in class everyday. They NEED to be able to have some agency in their work. I need to teach them to seek out resources that are effective for them. I need to teach them that whether a teacher is there or not, they are the ones who own the learning. If I can do that successfully, I have empowered students to succeed in all classes, all subjects. I have many adult friends who struggle in math and are not proud of it. I always tell them it probably is not their fault. One bad year with a teacher or one year upset by family or personal situations can have long lasting ripple effects in math education. One of our cohort members says they struggled in math earlier but are working to re-learn it as an adult, through Khan Academy. There is power for students in the realization that they have agency in their learning. So, I decided a lightning bolt or electricity type of graphic could be effective and if I did not like that, I would want some kind of abstract symbol like Sprint or Chase. Their logos take advantage of principles of shape and color but do not actually seem connected to their business. Next, I found a free logo making website, because the internet truly is the great equalizer. I input my preferences for text, style, colors, and tagline. The website generated around 2000 sample icons and I spent some time going through it. This lead me to thinking about color matching a bit more. Before I went looking, I had very little opinion on colors I wanted, but after seeing different types of colors paired with my product name and tagline, certain preferences became clear. Greens reminded me too much of existing things like Khan Academy. Red seemed too harsh. Most of the logos I instinctively liked were composed of blues. Most shockingly, I really enjoyed orange as an accent ro secondary color. It just made sense with my tag line to have a color like orange, or at least an energetic accent. So, after much deliberation, I narrowed it down to two options, one with a blue and orange scheme with a lightning bolt and another with a blue contrast and abstract graphic. I’m still trying to decide which I want to use before I purchase rights to it, but the process ahs been much more exciting and enjoyable than I thought! |
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October 2017
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