That video was produced a couple of years ago by students in the Communication Production Technology (now known as Communication Media)

What you will need to show me:

• an outline of the steps you will be taking to make the video
• a storyboard. I need to see this before you start recording.
• the videos that you record. I can see these when you load them into Final Cut Pro
• the final edited video – between 1 and 2 minutes long

Unlike a storyboard, a script primarily plans the narrative sequence of a film/video. Scripts tend to follow a certain format or sequence of events. In his series of videos “How to Write a Movie Script“, Ron Becks describes the process for developing a movie script and the structure of the story of a script. Here’s the introductory video:

The next 6 videos that you should watch are:

• How to Get Started
• 3 Act Structure
• Characters
• Movie Script Length
• Conflict
• Protagonist

The Assignment

Before you start the main part of this project, be sure that you watch the first 7 videos in the “How to write a movie script” series. Once you have watched the videos, write a 15 to 20 page script based on the story of the three little pigs. I recommend that you use the Celtx application (you can use a regular word processor, but Celtx takes care of all the formatting. It’s also free to use so you can download it onto a home computer if you are going to work at home).

The script should have the following elements.

• The story should follow the three act structure described in the “How to Write a Script” videos.
• Scene headings, action and dialog should be properly formatted. (Celtx does this automatically)
• The script should have numbered pages and a title page. (Celtx does this automatically)
• The characters don’t need to be pigs or a wolf, but should have the characteristics and conflict as in the original story.

Deliverable

One script, 15 to 20 pages long, written according to the above criteria. You can submit a pdf file of the script or print out a hard copy of the script. Due no later than December 15. There won’t be any class time especially allocated for this, but you’ll be able to work on it whenever you have down time while working on other projects.

… to how to build kitchen cabinets …

… to how to true a bicyle tire.

Your next assignment will be to plan and create a “how to” video. You can decide the subject – what you will explain how to do – within the following restrictions:

• The subject must be school appropriate
• there is no risk of harm to any participants in the video
• it must something that can be done and recorded in school or if you have your own video camera (on an iPhone or iPod touch, for example) to record it outside a school.

Procedure

You will work in groups of 2 or 3. As long as work is getting done, you may choose your own groups.

1. Write an outline that describes the steps in order of how to do whatever it is your video is about. Show the outline to your teacher.
2. Sketch out a storyboard (see video below) that shows in order how the steps will be presented in the video. Also include any other shots you will use in your video. Show the storyboard to your teacher.
3. Shoot the video using your own device, or you may use one of the school’s cameras if you need to.
4. Edit the video and save the video so it can be presented to the class.

** Video – Storyboards

• rule of thirds
• leading lines
• dominant foreground/contributing background
• pattern and repetition
• breaking pattern
• selective focus
• balance
• framing
• blur or panning to show motion
• closeup
• low angle
• high angle

Now that you have some ideas about what makes a good photograph, take a look at some of the photos that have been taken by previous students in this course. Feel free to leave productive and/or supportive comments.

There are a number of phases to producing a video or film. The American Film Institute describes the process in five steps:

1. Script development
2. Screenwriting & Storyboarding
3. Production & Filming
4. Editing
5. Exhibiting, Reflecting and Reviewing

In this model, steps 1 and 2 are the pre-production stages, step 3 is the production stage and steps 4 and 5 are post-production stages. The first part of the A Day in the Life of NBCHS project is step 1 – script development. The goal of the script development step is to get permission to proceed (sometimes referred to as getting the green light) to go to the screenwriting and storyboarding step. Within the script development process, there are 3 basic steps – pre-writing, outlining & treatment, and the pitch. These videos explain these three steps:

Pre-writing

Outlining and Treatment

The Pitch

The Assignment

Form work groups of 2 or 3. You may choose who you work with for this project. Each group will work through the script development process, delivering their pitch on Friday, March 23. In addition to the pitch, you will also need to submit a written copy of your story treatment (for this project the treatment should be one or two paragraphs).

For the first part of the assignment, you will make some jot notes (hand written) that describes the following kinds of film techniques as well as reasons that they might be used. For example, a close-up shot is a shot that shows a close up view of the subject, often someone’s complete face but none of their body. It used to show a character’s emotions or reactions to an event or something another character says.

There, I’ve done the first one for you. Now please make some notes on the following ways of framing shots, different kinds of cuts (transitions between shots) and different camera angles:

• Extreme long shot
• Medium long shot
• Long shot
• Medium shot
• Close up
• Extreme closeup
• Two shot
• Reaction shot
• Inserts
• Cutaways
• Selective focus
• Soft focus
• Low angle
• Eye level
• High angle
• Tilted

Due March 9, 2012

• use a variety of sound effects from freesound.org and music from ccmixter.org (but using 1 or 2 effects or music clips from Garageband is OK).
• try to use more than one music piece
• use a variety of audio production techniques such as varying sound levels, fading sounds in and out, panning sounds from one side to another
• be 1 to 2 minutes in length

Make sure you are saving all your work in a folder called “soundscape” in your folder within the “Documents” folder on the iMac.

Before you start putting the sounds together, I’d like to see that you have a plan and you’ve done some amount of pre-production. I’d like to see a list of sounds and types of music that you want to use. If you want to do a little exploring on freesound or ccmixter to start out, that’s fine, but you should get an idea of what you’re going to do before you start collecting audio clips.

• A description of each project that you worked on (including help on other people’s projects).
• A description of your contributions to the project.
• An evaluation of the best parts of the project. What were the best things you did during production of the project? Why do you think they were well done?
• An evaluation of the parts of the project that you think you could have done better. If you could go back and change things in your project, what would you do differently and why?
• A list of what you learned during the creation of the project. What skills – technical, organizational, personal, etc. – did you use and develop during the project?