From paper to YouTube

This post was created to support the LHS gifted students. 
Feel free to print this guide to help the students think and plan their shoot. We will be using the paper guide to help focus our thinking during our lesson.

Purpose

How do you use video to tell a story, convince someone of something or entertain them?

In class, we will discover a few key techniques you can use to help tell your story in six minutes or less.

1. What do you watch now?
This question helped frame our thinking around the videos we watch and why we watch them.

• What videos do you watch now?
• Why do you keep coming back?

2. Balloon - shot on an iPhone 6.
We watched this video without any context the first time.
For the second viewing, we split the class into six small groups. We then rewatched the video while the teams looked for one of the specific topics below. The big idea was to see how these video elements helped tell the story.

• angles the video was shot in
• movement of the camera
• sound/audio
• lighting
• cuts in the video
• who was the intended audience

3. T.H.I.N.K.

This acronym was designed to help when shooting on a mobile device.

• shooT with this storyboard or that storyboard
• Hold that camera steady
• Interesting surroundings
• Not too soft, not too loud
• Know your audience/subject

4. Warm Up The Subject (if you are interviewing someone)

Think of a few questions to get your interviewee to relax before you start asking the questions you really need them to answer.

Example:
You are interviewing a teacher and need them to talk about their day to day life in the classroom. You could warm them up by asking them why they became a teacher, tell you about their inspirational teachers, etc...

After a few minutes, they will be much more likely to give you a great answer to the question(s) you really want to ask.

5. Editing

Pay super close attention to your storyboard. If you can capture superior raw footage your editing shouldn't take too long. Trust me, editing takes way too long if your shots are not very good or well planned.

The screenshots below use the app called FilmoraGo, a free iOS and Android app.

WARNING: I would recommend that you have a minimum of 1 gig of free space on your mobile device before you start editing. Do not delete any clips until your video is 100% complete. Trust me, we have learned this the hard way.

Start by clicking CREATE NEW VIDEO.

1. Make sure the VIDEO button is selected.

2. Click Camera to search for your video clips.

Find the first clip you want to add and click it.

1. Trim the beginning and end of the clip.

2. Click Add.

3. Click BACK to add more clips. After you have gone through and added all your clips, click NEXT.

At the bottom of the screen, you can see all the clips have been added. 

Click the Transitions button.

Transitions

1. Start by toggling on the APPLY ALL button. This will make sure the same exact transition is applied throughout your video.

2. Choose the transition you like best. 

3. Click OKAY to continue editing your clips.

Adding text to your video helps focus attention and push the story along. Do this by clicking on the SUBTITLE button.

Adjust the color when adding the text so it shows up nice and bright.

You can move the text around the screen.

Click OKAY when done.

One other important button is ADJUST. You can find it near the end of the editing tools list.

1. Brightness. Play with this button a bit, sometimes it can make a huge difference.

2. Saturation. This can make some of your colors a bit richer.

When you are totally finished, click SAVE.

It would be wise to have your device plugged in when saving your project. This process can take a  very long time.

There is a button on the main save screen that says YouTube and another for Camera Roll. We recommend saving it to both places. If you are super cautious, it would also be a good idea to add a copy to your Google Drive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.