It is Time For some Encouragement: GLCA NEWS February 17th

It is Valentines' day, which means one thing at Glca: Encouragement week. Everyone at Glca has been working on encouraging one another this week. They try to keep their secret friend a secret until Friday, where everyone is surprised with the big reveal. And what at sweet surprise that is. This video is a few highlights of this special week.

GLCA NEWS February Tenth

This is the second GLCA newscast. Encouragement week is coming next week and the GLCA elementary students are really excited. I interviewed the students and put the footage together. I did not use any green screen technology for this, but I did use iMovie on the computer, which is something I have never done before.

I noticed that iMovie on the computer has so much more to offer then it does on an iPad. I could see that there are endless possibilities with it. While I enjoyed exploring it, it was also starting to annoy me. The app glitches out numerous times and I was unable to use the transitions that I wanted to use. I had to upload it to youtube a handful of times before it actually showed up. I also had trouble downloading the video clips. Hopefully, next time it will be easier to use.

When I was interviewing the students, I made some mental notes for next time. I asked them some questions that could be answered with a simple yes or no. Having one word answers is not very helpful in an interview.  I should have asked more complex questions.Some of the students played with their microphones, and that made the video clip unusable. Next time I need to make sure that there is nothing interfering with the microphones. I also ran out of space on the iPad that I was using to film. It is important to have a backup.

One important tip that I have for anyone making a video is to be ready to film at any moment. I have many shots that I would not have had if I turned the camera off. I figured that I could always delete footage, but I could never get back the moments that I missed.

GLCA News February Second

I have been working very hard on making newscasts for my school. I learned a lot  and I am excited about the results.

This first video is my first official attempt at a green-screen video. We had a special chapel speaker and this video introduced him. We enjoyed listening to him speak, and learning more about him.

As I made the video, I encountered a few problems. I used curtains as the "green screens" in the background. The curtains were supposed to be the same color, but when we took them out of the package, they were different colors. With the app I am using I can only replace one color with chroma key technology. This made one side of the screen have less quality then the other. Another thing that affected the quality of the screen was the smoothness of the curtains. I did not iron the curtains, so you can see the folds. I also need to be careful of the lighting, fair skin, and blonde hair.

I loved discovering how green screens work, and using that knowledge to make my first green screen video. I hope to make more videos like this in the future, but improving the quality, of course!


If you have any questions about the video, please comment below.

Imovie

 I have been working a lot with iMovie lately. I had to write and film a book commercial. I love using IMovie, but I have encountered many problems. I hope that next time I will be able to avoid these problems.

1. IMovie video segments can only be 0.3 seconds short.
I know that does not seem like a big problem, but when you want to achieve a special effect then this gets in your way.

2. IMovie does not have a wide selection of audio.
The background music that IMovie does have it great, but there is not a wide variety. IMovie allows you to use music that you have downloaded as a background, but complications occur when you do not have downloaded music. It would be much easier if IMovie had more of a selection.
Of course, this problem can be solved by downloading your own music, or creating your own interesting sounds using the different features that IMovie comes with.

3. IMovie does not allow me to put the background music where I want it.
This problem may just occur because of my ignorance, but as far as I know, background music has to start at the beginning. It makes sense to have background music throughout the whole length of the movie, but what if I want it in just a portion of the film. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the music to just play in the areas that I wanted it to. There is a solution, but it takes a while.
First, you have to add the theme music, repetitively until it covers the area that needs to be covered. Then every time you want a transition in the music- from on to off, or off to on- split the audio. You will then have multiple segments of audio running throughout the movie. Then go and mute the audio in the places that you do not want audio. That is the only solution that I have found.

Although I discovered different problems while making this video, I also discovered new things that I can do with IMovie.

1. You can separate the audio from the video.
While I knew this already, I discovered what this actually means. It means that I can take the audio from any video in camera roll, and place it as the background music, the audio for another video, or simply just delete it. This takes my filmmaking to a whole new level.

2. You can speed up audio.
This has helped me so much. While videos from camera roll can only be slowed down, audio can be sped up as well as slowed down. That means that you can take a song from the selection of theme songs in IMovie and change it to a completely different sounding song. You can also do the same thing with sound effects. Using the many different features of audio speed on IMovie, you can create your own selection of sounds.








I am still discovering all the uses for IMovie, but this week, I was able to help a third and fourth grade class discover IMovie for themselves. So hopefully this helps you to discover iMovie.