Week 8: Special Effects
Due: Final Video Pre-Production
Review the assignment. Add your POD to Dropbox. Please submit the Project Proposal before class begins. Please hand in your storyboards (on index cards) at the beginning of class. Remember, a rough cut does not have to be perfect. However, it does need to have every scene filmed and placed in order, and should be complete enough to share with others to solicit feedback.
Incorporate Students’ Interests
Video is a powerful tool to tap into students’ passions. Use excellent video to motivate students in your classroom. These two videos are great examples of using non-academic interests to leverage student interest:
Ninja Cat is a popular video among 5th-8th grade students. They love this video. Use videos like this to creatively tie in student interest to your lessons. Tap into student passion, and tie it into your classroom.
Special Effects
There are some easy, free ways to create stunning special effects.
Forced perspective makes something appear larger (or smaller) than it actually is. You can film shots like this guy pushing over a hot air balloon. Flickr has some great examples of forced perspective. Here is a gallery with some great forced perspective examples.
You can also use time compression to speed up or slow down video to give the illusion of something taking a very long (or short) amount of time. Radiohead effectively used time compression in a video.
On YouTube, companies like Google are beginning to create interactive games/movies. You must answer a question correctly to watch the next video. The Google Chrome Fastball is a brilliant example of thinking outside of the box in moviemaking.
