Thought 38: Vibrant Video 🎥

Welcome to the project where I have created possibly the most chaotic things in all of PLP.

We have embarked on a relatively short video making project. Over the course of this project, we used 2 different editing programs: Clips, and iMovie. iMovie is a more traditional video editing program, while Clips has more artistic features. In this project, we created 4 videos: 2 in Clips, and 2 in iMovie. 

Video 1: A Simple Story

For our first video in Clips, we began by defining what makes a movie. We analyzed an early history of films and we got an introduction to Clips. For our video, we had to make a short video about a hobby of ours. Like the totally normal, sane person that I am, I made the focus of my video on notorious PLP student Ewan. I was able to make the video using a few videos I took on the day we were assigned the video, as well as a few clips I already had. My video used technical marvels, such as titles, stickers, zooming, and a title card at the end. Unfortunately, my video missed part of the criteria. My video doesn’t really tell a story. This is probably my favourite of the videos we made.

Video 2: Silent Movie

The second Clips video had a bit more structure: we were instructed to make a silent movie using an aged film filter and no dialogue. I decided to recreate the pill scene from The Matrix, but I changed the dialogue to be in a very old fashioned style of english. I got my brother to help me film, and we used a wide variety of shots, such as close ups, and low shots. I think this video ended up very good, especially considering I made it in about an hour.

Video 3: Tutorial Video

This was our first video made in iMovie and this was the first one to involve a storyboard. A storyboard is like a list of shots you will use in your video so you can plan what it will look like. For this video, we were put into groups, and we had to make a video, teaching a skill. My group had Fraser and Luca, who is from Brazil. That detail is important because in our video, Luca teaches how to speak Portuguese. We also used a teleprompter to give the illusion of the speaker looking right at the camera while speaking perfectly. 

Video 4: Special Effects

Our last video was focused on special effects. This video was made in iMovie and was also made by a group. Dana, Ben T, and I made a video using various special effects such as green screens, explosions and sound effects. We also made a demo video where we tested the special effects and learn how to use them. I would describe this demo video as a “Psychedelic Nightmare.” Fortunately, our final video was less terrifying but still pretty absurd.  

Overall, I learned quite a lot in this short project. I learned a lot of skills and techniques that I thought I would never learn, such as making green screen effects, and I also learned things I had never heard of, such as writing a treatment. I really like video making, especially the editing and I had a lot of fun during this unit.