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Some time ago I wrote about using PowerPoint to edit videos.
This week I got a lesson in another use for PowerPoint – creating animations. I was wandering through the school library, looking for a computer so I could print some tests (problems with our school server, computers, and printers is another story) when I saw a young man looking at an animation. As a staff member I had to call him on it – school computers are not to be used to watch videos or listen to music – it slows the server down.
It was a surprise when he showed me he wasn’t on the Internet – but had created the animation using PowerPoint. He had hundreds of slides and had painstakingly drawn characters and had moved them/animated them frame by frame and then made it go fast enough to appear real.
Wish I’d gotten his name – he was a freshman and on his way with family, moving to the East coast.
But I experimented on my own and the above is the result – and trust me, it is nowhere near the level of my teacher.
Something new to spring on your students.
Turns out the new Ground Zero is south of Stockton in Merced.
We had our guest speaker point that out in class Thursday – class being my fourth period broadcasting class at McNair High School.
Mr. Imran Poladi got to the classroom just as my students finished setting up lights, mikes, cameras and re-arranging the desks for a press conference. It was their first time and turned out to be his first time too at an event like this.
Fist the ground rules. Generally, a press conference is held for the purpose of giving information to and answering questions from a number of reporters at the same time. Organization and agency press conferences are pretty calm – very much unlike the feeding frenzy you will see at breaking events.
There are recognized protocols. The speaker introduces themself or is introduced by someone (press officer, local person). Usually the most senior reporter or reporter with the most expertise in the area begins the questioning. This usually sets the tone for the conference. Others then either raise their hands or call out to be recognized.
In this case I had a wireless stick mike which was passed to each person so that their question could be clearly recorded (after all I am keeping track of quantity and quality of questions for grading, as well as wanting this recorded for student stories).
I explained to Mr. Poladi that he could recognize and call on students to ask questions. You might think that the person running the conference could control the line of questioning this way -and in some cases this might be the case. But reporters are a tenacious lot and like bulldogs, they will not let their victim walk away until they have an answer. Trust me, it is best to answer the questions and get it over with.
That said, the press conference went well. I imported all of the video to computer last night and need to switch out the on-camera questions into the main tape with Mr. Poladi so students can view and choose which segments they will use in their stories.
Visited the counseling department at McNair Friday morning and (as with the real news world), had to make some changes. Apparently the counseling staff has been hammered by potential budget cuts, cuts due to loss of students, and having to counsel kids whose families are evaporating and they had to politely decline speaking to my class due to fears they would break down and cry on camera. Wow.
So when class started up on Friday afternoon, I explained the changes to the students, and then read the notes I took for them in lieu of them asking questions directly to the counselors. Several students kept questioning me about why the counselors were not there…and I had to keep repeating that it might be too traumatic for them to speak. Fortunately former KOVR reporter Craig Prosser was our guest that day, and he explained they were not refusing to talk – something that officials or politicians might do if they didn’t want to deal with the press. This would be more akin to a distraught family member declining to speak after a family tragedy.
Craig picked it up for the rest of the period, talking about how he might go about setting up a story like our Ground Zero story….find some way to personalize it, find an official, make sure you get both sides and the necessary B-roll to cover the story.
We reminisced about our days together and showed some of his old stories and then I left him to the advanced students to go to the back of the studio to work on studio lighting with the beginning students.
So this is where Ground Zero stands right now:
We have an hour long press conference with the president of the Stockton Realtors Association (Imran Poladi).
We have about a half page of notes from the counseling department on how many students have left the school due to losing their homes (60-80 so far this year), and how many staff/counselors might lose their jobs because of the decline in student numbers (6-8 teachers/maybe 2 counselors). We have quotes from a counselor about the traumatic effect this issue has on student ability to focus on day-to-day school issues and long term issues such as college planning.
They have a good overview of how a story is planned and put together from a veteran reporter.
Next week, along with their studio talk show assignments being taped, they have to interview students on campus about their knowledge of the Ground Zero issue as well as how it affects them directly or indirectly.
Oh yeah. And we lose two days of class time to STAR testing. Looks like another sliding deadline…
Blame it on Sixty Minutes – the label stuck. Stockton is Ground Zero in the US real estate meltdown. More specifically, zip code 95210. That’s my school – my kids.
So what better way to get them into working on a news story than making personal. When I first introduced the concept, most of the class said, who cares. Until one of my quiet sophomores spoke up and said he might be losing his home. Silence.
Then a little bit of talk about…maybe we all know someone who might be losing or have lost their home.
Thus began the assignment. With an idea.
This past Thursday I got them into the terminology of the story. Mortgages. Interest rates. Prime and sub prime. Borrower, lender, equity. Their questions revealed both their interest and lack of knowledge of real estate transactions – and this was what I fully expected. How many of YOU knew it all at ages 15-17?
Thanks to this site I was able to get some good solid information to prep the students.
Then it was off to Google Land to find and print images of homes…from the high and mighty to trailer trash. I wrote three years/prices on each photo. Year 2000 and an estimated price for the real estate; year 2004 and a high price for the real estate; year 2008 and a very low price reflecting the decline in real estate prices.
We drew names and each student got to choose a piece of property. Then they each drew a purchase year. The lucky ones got the 2000 price. The unlucky ones drew the 2004 price. They then compared their purchase price with the estimated current price.
My point: I wanted them to understand how random this could be. Told them that some folks were speculating (had to explain yet another term) and flipping houses for profit, while many homes were bought by people who just wanted a home. Nobody knew a collapse was coming.
They get it now – or at least the basics.
The rest of the assignment will take place over the next few weeks. This past week and over this weekend I sent cameras home with each student with instructions to shoot homes in their neighborhood, focusing on homes for sale if possible. Five minutes of video (variety of shots; each at least ten seconds long) or 20 still shots. This is our pool of raw cover video.
Sidebar: after the first group of students sallied forth into their neighborhoods and returned to class the next day, we had an impromptu lesson on media rights. One student who lives in a fairly nice, close-knit neighborhood where everyone knows each other, was threatened and told NOT to shoot pictures of the neighborhood. Apparent fear of break-ins by the adults. So I got to explain media rights – they cannot prevent you from shooting if you are on public property. And then common sense. Don’t argue at your age – walk off. It isn’t worth the trouble. What I might do as a professional does not apply to you as a student – especially for a simple assignment like this.
This coming week we will have speakers. The San Joaquin Board of Realtors is sending a speaker for a “press conference” on Thursday. The students will learn press conference protocol Monday so they can properly question their guest.
Former KOVR reporter Craig Prosser will visit later in the week and discuss how to cover a story like this (I had him slotted for Monday, but he had to bail).
Friday the McNair counseling department will send a counselor to discuss how traumatic this might be to students as well as how it affects the school itself. We’ve lost several hundred students who have been forced to move because they lost their homes…and this dominos into losing staff.
Final piece of the puzzle – each student will find and interview a student on campus on the topic.
Then it is on to logging, scripting, and editing.
I honestly wish I could post examples of student work on the blog – but like many educators, my hands are tied by a very restrictive district policy regarding student work on the Internet.
Whew…I spend way too much time in front of the class and not enough sitting and learning. This is a hoot – I’m finding out that Premiere and Final Cut and close relatives and learning new software is easy.
The brain-twisting part is the lead-in and instructor —– made me sweat but did a fantastic job explaining how interlaced/progressive, pixel ratios, frame rates v. shutter speed, lines v. pixels and oh so much more. I knew the pieces, but his take on how they all tie together really made sense.
Oh – and it’s nice to be back in The City again. Too many years in the outback of the Great Central Valley. I beat the sun into the Bay area and hopped on board BART for the (almost) final leg. Final leg was my own legs taking me about 12 blocks and up a flight of stairs.
Stay tuned and I’ll keep you up with anything new learned.
11:38pm
Ouch…this day is way too long. My biggest lesson seems to be that once you learn on system, you can segue to another pretty easily. Caputure…cut…paste…adjust audio…transitions (if needed).
On the way back from lunch I looked over and, by gosh, there was KQED!! My old staton moved to 18th and Mariposa about 20 years ago and this was my first sight of it.
Left a message and got a callback from former co-worker and reporter Spencer Micheals, who now works for the McNeil-Lehrer Report and got a quickie tour of the (to me) new facility.
After the layoffs in 1980 I never thought public television would be prosperous, but the place looks regal. Spencer says they very nearly went under in the 90s but recovered.
Sorry…not much left to talk about and a long(er) day tomorrow.
…signing off…
Addendum April 8: a quick look back at Premiere. The actual desktop similarities to Final Cut are location of the raw video and monitors. There are a couple of nifty shortcuts to insert or do overlays rather than dragging/dropping. Acquiring video is pretty much the same (import or drag/drop). Three finger control for forward/stop/backward and in/out is identical. There are some difference in creating motion paths (sorry, couldn’t stay for days two and three) which I will figure out on my own. And for around $700, a pretty good solution if you want a good solid program.
A quick roundup of recent thoughts.
Has the Internet made us more of a world community than a nationalistic community? There is SO much out there and the wise surfer will learn as much about far-flung events as regional ones…all the while focusing on whatever toggles their switch (i.e., personal interests).
So maybe that’s why today we care more about the world and our hyper-local sites than regional news sites.
Ah well…
Tomorrow early (very early) I head for San Francisco to BAVC (Bay Area Video Coalition) for training in how to edit with Premiere. My first serious venture into PC-Land nonlinear editing.
Oh – the the photo above? Middle daughter will be flying back with crew-mates to her new home – the Makin Island, now ported in Mississippi. Sometime soon they’ll head out to sea and sail around the South American horn on a good-will tour. Final destination: home port of San Diego.
Well to keep her busy, we came up with an idea…Lego animation. Something tiny she can shoot with her still camera and edit in MY old Ti-Book (Powerbook G4). While her animations will be Navy and sailor-themed, I kind of caught the bug myself and will be trying some news animes.
Oh – and thank you Larry Nance for pointing out what a sloth I am. I like to buy tech stuff and made the mistake of letting Larry know I was buying a Beta deck and quite a while back a U-matic deck to dub down a buncha old tapes. Larry called me on it, asking if I’d done any dubbing. So now I have to get to work…dammit.
Enjoy the day while you can…
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