Final Exam Preview Activity

For your photojournalism final exam you will use iMovie to create a video product of your images. iMovie is a very simple program that you will find very intuitive to use. It will add another tool to your skill set that you can use in the future.

So let’s start with iMovie. The icon may already be in your dock. If it is, go ahead and open it up. If it is not on your dock, go to the upper right corner of your desktop and click on the Macintosh HD, open the applications and find iMovie, click it. If you want to mount it to your dock, please let me know and I will help you do that. Or you can hit F4 and find it there and do the same thing.

I am not going to directly teach you how to use iMovie but I will send you to some tutorials online so you can figure it out. It is NOT complex.

Here are the websites:

http://knowledge-innovation.wikispaces.com/Basic+Skills+for+iMovie

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH14696?locale=en_US

http://www.dummies.com/computers/macs/macbook/how-to-edit-video-on-your-macbook-with-imovie/

You will have an assignment with these three websites today in class. You will find that assignment at the end of this blog.

Now for the assignment itself: I am asking you to tell a story using your camera. There are lots of ideas you could come up with to tell the story of something.

This story can tell the story of an event, for example you could actually go to an event like a baseball game, or a wedding, or something similar and shoot photos from beginning to end. 

You could document a day in the life of your pet from the minute you wake up to going to bed, what does your pet do all day?

You could get creative, and take photos of someone doing something and document their progress, here is an example: my backyard is overgrown and needs lots of work, eventually I am going to take a day and clear it, rake and bag all the leaves, etc. I could shoot photos of that process from beginning to end with the first images a sequence of photos from left to right of my overgrown yard and the end the same thing of my beautifully manicured yard.

Maybe you could take photos of your mother and how she cooks your favorite meal, start with the ingredients and then take photos of the entire process.

You need to have between 20 and 60 images total to tell the story. You will also be required to have at least 180 seconds of video to show (although you can go up to five minutes as needed, but don't go overboard to just use space, make it relevant).

In addition, this year I am going to ask each of you to include at least 45 seconds of video footage. You can choose how to use this 45 seconds, meaning you can break it up into shorter vine-length pieces of 5, 8, 10 seconds, or you can do something that fills that space fully. You can always make the video longer.

You may include music, but you MUST narrate some portion of the video.

You will also need a title and credits at the end, like a real movie.

On the day of the final, you will need to export the file in the correct format. It could take up to 45 minutes for the file to convert so DO NOT put this off until the day of the final to start piecing this together. I will designate days this 6 weeks for work time. I will announce these in advance.

So get out there and start shooting – remember I am going to count frames, I will expect 20-60 (more if you get my approval ahead of time), and the video should be at least 180 seconds long (no longer than 5 minutes).

Here is today’s assignment:

What I would like you to do is to pick TWO of the websites above and answer the following questions on your blog:

1.) Summarize what you watched and read about - let's say 2-3 paragraphs of 3-4 sentences

2.) Tell me one thing that you already knew about iMovie that the website explained

3.) Tell me one thing that you learned new today that you didn’t know before.

4.) What are you concerned about with this final project?

5.) What are you confident you can complete early and have ready to use?

6.) If I asked you today, what do you think you will do for your video?