Hello and welcome back to another post! We just finished a humanities project with the final product of a video essay to answer the main driving question as well as a more specific one on my groups topic. I personally thought this project was really interesting as it was based around Walt Disney and Walt Disney World.Β As a bonus we also got to go to Disney World which was pretty cool and an amazing experience, but thats not quite what this post is about.

We started off this project by learning about making notes using PKMs also known as Personal Knowledge Managers. I found this helpful as all the information we learned involved making notes. This was all organized in an app called craft that we have just recently started using. In craft you are able to make a template which I liked because every time we started making notes on a new topic I was able to just press one button to get the template. Then all I had to do was fill in the information. You may have noticed that I keep talking about how I have been β€œMaking notes” rather than just taking them. Believe it or not theres actually a difference. Anyways, in most of the PKM’s we completed a 4,2,1 worksheet to help us pick out the important parts of videos we watched and articles we read.

Then we were able to start the first keystone, but before we could do this we were put into groups where we picked our specific video essay topic. My groups topic was based around theΒ  theming of Disney World so this keystone helped us work towards answering our driving question. β€œHow has Disney used immersive theming to transport visitors to different places and times?”. For this keystone we needed to use what we learned about making notes to create five PKMs each for our topic. For these PKMs we all had to find at least five different sources on our topic and summarize the text. I decided to find a variety of videos and articles to find different opinions on Disney’s use of theming.Β 

After everyone in my group completed there PKMs we came together to plan out our video essay. We brainstormed a few ideas for what specific theming topic we would use then after being given helpful feedback we landed on basing our video on the architecture. After that we decided to have the Magic Kingdom Cinderella Castle, the Pandora World of Avatar, and Galaxy’s edge as our main points on how Disney uses architecture to transport visitors.Β 

Like just mentioned we all had out own part of the video essay. My part was the β€œUntil one day” part of the story spine, meaning my job was to build a script and storyboard to conclude our video. Since my part was pretty short I was able to help put all our scripts into a screenplay format. Then once all that was completed we got some feedback and revised a few of the storyboards, and we were ready to film.

Once arriving at Disney world I was able to start filming b-roll and I continued throughout the week as we went to all the different parks. Then once we got back we were able to start to put together our video. I think we distributed the rolls of the video pretty evenly as everyone had a part of the video to edit and add voice over to. Once all our individual parts of the video were completed we decided it would sound better if it was one continuous voice throughout the video. We also revised a few of the clips as some we were not able to film during our time at Disney World.

Overall I think our video turned out great and it was a really cool experience getting to go to Disney World. If we were to revise our video again I think we could definitely cut out some of the clips as it ended up being over eight minutes and some of the voice over is repetitive. Other then that though I am really happy with. If you have not already watched our final video, check it out up above.

-Makenna

P.S – Why aren’t there Disney emojis???