Worth 15 points (20 percent off for late work)
Story pitch due by Thursday, April 11.
Due Thursday, April 25 by 3 p.m.
Teams:
The video project is a group project. Teams are assigned. Students must schedule reporting and editing time with each other. This will happen outside of the usual class time. All team members will receive the same grade.
Team Assignments:
1. Mark and Allison
2. Andrew and Paul
3. Fred and Jack
4. Mike and Mercedes
5. Candace and Matt
6. Reid and Nick
7. Dan and Ryan
8. Kyle, Heather and Aaron
Email your teammates, compare schedules, and brain storm ideas. Pitch your story ideas by Thursday, April 11.
Topic: Sports/Activities Along Route 47
The theme for the project is sports or physical activities “From the Delaware to the Sea.” The students will stories and assignments along Route 47, also known as Delsea Drive.
For this assignment, the story must involve a sport or physical activity. You are looking for unusual, surprising, or unique activities. You are looking for action.
The stories should be “evergreen” feature stories or profile based, rather than news based. You are looking for stories that won’t go out of date quickly. However, they can still be timely.
The project must meet high journalistic standards for accuracy and ethics. All information must be able to hold up to criticism and legal challenge. This is a public website, and students are responsible for all content.
Your video must include interviews with at least two people. No friends or relatives can be sources for this assignment.
This is an “in their own words” story. No voice over or narration.
Submission Guidelines:
All assignments must be in the proper format to publish on the website.
Videos should be 2 min or less.
Each team will submit three items:
· Video exported in .m4v “Large 960 X 540” format
· Still image captured from the video in .jpg format
· A Word document with headline, two-three sentence teaser, and bylines.
1. Pitch your story idea by Thursday, April 11.
2. Each team will create a web video shot on a Kodak video camera (or your own camera) and edited on the video software of your choosing. Use the “in their own words” style where reporter’s voice is not heard. Gather interviews and b-roll with action.
3. Back up your raw footage. Before you return your camera, make sure to save all of your raw footage to your hard drive or computer. If your project crashes, you need to have the raw footage as back up.
4. I suggest you pick one computer for editing and use that for the whole project. iMovie saves to the hard drive of a specific computer, not to your personal files. So pick your computer well. Save your project to an external hard drive if it is formatted for Mac. Under Help in iMovie search for “backup project on external hard drive” and it will walk you through the steps. Also do not attempt to go from one version of iMovie to another (ie iMovie 09 to iMovie 11)
5. Import your video clips into iMovie using the Large 960 X 540 setting.
6. Add a Title Card for story headline and reporters’ names.
Use Lower Thirds option, black background, and flush your text to the left. Display for 4 seconds.
For example, (flushed left):
New Jersey State Fish Faces Extinction
Video by Bobby Journalist and Jane Reporter
7. Use the “Transparent Black” Lower Thirds to introduce people. Those lower thirds should be centered. Make sure you have full names (first and last) and title.
8. When you are finished editing, export and compress into web-ready format.
From Menu
>Share
>Export Movie
>Select Large Size 960 X 540
Save to as YourLastNameVideo.m4v
9. After you export, capture a still image from your video. This will be used as a thumbnail for the video player. Pick a compelling frame that informs the viewer and makes her want to click play. Remember: People are more interesting than objects.
To capture a still image:
Create a New Project – name it VideoStill.
In the lower part of your iMovie workspace, let your cursor hover over the video frame that you want to extract as a still image.
>Control key + click
From drop down menu, select “Add still frame to the project.”
The still frame will be added to your project as four-second clip.
In the upper editing window, put your cursor on your clip and click on the wheel icon.
Select Clip Adjustment
Set the duration for 0.1 seconds.
From the top menu
>Share>Export using Quicktime
Give it a name. Save it to your desktop.
Choose option “Movie to Image Sequence.”
Choose the preset export option: JPEG 29.97 fps.
Save. This will create about 6 images. Pick the best one.
Save it as LastNameThumb.jpg
10. Create a Word document and write your headline, a two or three sentence teaser, and proper credit for your video. This will serve as the introductory text for the web site.
11. Make sure you have multiple copies saved in multiple locations. Put everything on a flashdrive. It is due Thursday, April 25 at 3 p.m.
