Process Journal-Entry 11

March 14th 2010


Today, was basically my final day to complete this project, but was probably the most day with problems and big challenges. First, I went to Mr. Christodoulou in break time to get a head start and finish my editing. While I was there I had just found out that my video was exceeding the time limit which was, from what I have recently found out, 10 minutes. My video was around 15 minutes and Mr. Christodoulou was shocked to hear that. This meant serious editing to shorten it down to around below 10 minutes to avoid exceeding the limit. Luckily a very experienced ninth grader, Abdullah, was there and agreed to stay after school to help. He advised me to either split the video into 2 parts but said it would make the video much more presentable and not boring if I start cutting some extra not needed scenes. The first scene I had in mind as soon as he said that was the scene where we copied an E-Front Video from You Tube that was around 4 and a half minutes. So, I decided to cut it which brought the video time down to 11 minutes. After some more cutting and adding transitions the video ended with a total time of 9:59 minutes. I called that a success.

Here is the final video embed from You Tube:

Later Today I decided to create a survey that will help me during my evaluation. My survey included a few guiding questions that would help the audience comment on the video. The aim of this survey was to help give me opinions of the video that would help make my evaluation.

Here is some screen shots of the survey:

Process Journal-Entry 10

March 11th 2010

Today, my goal was to complete all the editing needed to finish the video. I fired up I-Movie as soon as the lesson started and got working. I was able to input all the movies I had imported the other day and add all the transitions between the different clips as well as all the titles and other effects. I was also able to input the bloopers scene and added the appropriate music that suited it. Speaking of music, I had also added the Broadcasting News theme song in the beginning as well as in other scenes when we returned to the studio. What I had discovered today, was that there was about less than a minute of filming that was required to be done. I quickly got the camera and luckily, Mr. Chris' room was free and didn't have any classes going on. After I got permission, my group mates and I went and filmed the last of our videos. We quickly came back and just had time to import the videos to the mac and input some of them before the bell rang. I plan to completely finish my editing on Sunday after school or in break since the deadline was again postponed to Monday. Luckily, I didn't encounter much challenges that day except for the unstoppable time which was the greatest challenge I faced through-out this project. What I had accomplished today was that I had completed everything except for the credits and inputting that final piece of filming to complete the puzzle.

Here is some screen shots of my work :

Process Journal-Entry 9

March 10th 2010

Today, was my first day of editing and I think it was a great success since I had accomplished a lot. First, I fired up I-Movie on the I-Mac during the lesson. Since I had already played around with it another day, I was pretty familiar with how it worked. I plugged in my USB card reader, slid the memory card in and started importing the videos on to the Mac ready for editing. The editing worked so smoothly and efficiently. I was able to make the titles and some broadcasting news theme music at the beginning as well as adding a news toolbar at the bottom of scene 1 saying," BREAKING NEWS-21st Century Digital Learning and E-Learning". I also added in the beginning of scene 2 carefully playing the video a few times every time I make an adjustment. I also showed my video to my class mates to the take their critical review of it until now. Finally, I accomplished importing all the other videos because they can be ready for tomorrow's work.

Some problems I faced today was the " No working after school in the Lab" policy that I just got by with a few minutes to quickly import the rest of my videos. Other time constraint issues included my involvement in the Global Issues group and the need of me in a quick meeting at the other side of the school. I overcame both of these challenges with the help of my group mate, Hashim, a great helper as well as the star actor in my film!

Here is some screenshots of me editing the video:

Process Journal-Entry 8

March 8th 2010

Today, I aimed to mend those problems that were caused the other day and try to learn from my mistakes. More importantly I aimed to complete every bit of filming that was left to film. This time during our filming, we first considered the background or the setting of the scene, if you like. We started filming in the corridors, outside and in different areas in the school corresponding to the scenes being filmed. The usual setting up was made, followed by a brief discussion on where we were going to shoot the scene. This time I came with the camera and the battery separately to avoid that mysterious power drain again. Again, we had some help from friends and colleagues from other classes and with a few trials and errors our day was wrapped up with a smile. We had completely finished our filming.

Some problems that had occurred was the constant appearance of other students in the school that created a hindrance to our filming and caused noise and other types of distractions. This problem was resolved simply by being patient for the right moment to film and not filming when kids were running around shouting!

Here is the some screenshots from the last of our raw filming:

Process Journal-Entry 7

March 7th 2010

Today, I aimed to finish my filming once and for all because I can edit on the last couple of days before the deadline on Thursday March 11th. We had a lesson today, so I tried to utilize that time for our filming. While I was asking Mr. Christodoulou, he reminded me that I needed to take the background into consideration and suggested to research about "Green Screening", an aspect used in the movies to make it easier to edit and insert any background in a video. After a lesson of surfing the web for answers, I came up with a reasonable solution. I was to go to the photocopy room to get a big sheet of green paper, this was followed by positioning it in the room so that I can start filming everything all over again except with that big green sheet of paper in the background. Some more research and consulting some experienced colleagues from other classes, I found out that a sheet of paper wouldn't work and would cause even more problems. This got me thinking again and I was able to find an ever simpler and more basic solution. We were to start filming in different areas in the school which will create a good background since most of our scenes were set in a school.

This time wasted on research decreased our expectations to a minimum. Well, what we actually accomplished exceeded our expectations. As per normal, we set up an after school session, reserved the room and started filming right away. This time I came more prepared and brought the camera, 2 memory cards, a USB memory card reader, a fully charged battery and a new addition to the list, a battery charger. This helped avoiding the encountering of problems like not filming because of low battery and the "No Memory" error. Well, not completely. Another problem was caused. Mysteriously, the battery dropped from 100 % charged to around 15 %. So there were a series of around 6 power outages for the camera leading to a series of 6 brief charges to the battery. Later, I found out that that sudden drop of power to the battery wasn't mysterious and was just a fact about the camera I needed to know. It happens, as my dad had told me, when the battery is left for too long in the camera without the camera being used.

Well, we still managed to work things out and actually filmed all of scene 2 and parts of scene 3. As well as that, we also accomplished conducting a new idea. This idea consisted of changing scene 4 from an interview about E-Front, to downloading a video I had just found that was a really good overview of the main interesting features of E-Front, citing the source appropriately. This really helped because it meant less filming but bit more editing. This also meant another adjustment to our script and plan.

Overall, I think we accomplished a great deal of what was planned but I think we could work more on planning and preparing our day a little bit more.

Here is some screenshots of the filming we managed to accomplish today:

Process Journal-Entry 6

March 4th 2010

Today, I was aiming to actually work in class and get a head start on my editing. I faced a great problem which eventually caused to no work. My problem was that my memory card adapter was not compatible with my tablet and so I wasn't able to transfer any of my videos to the I-Mac to start editing. Therefore, I didn't manage to get any work done but I was able to get some answers. I asked Mr. Christodoulou about editing during after school hours but all I got was, "I have to lock up and there is no one to supervise you". So, I didn't just sit there and whine about unfairness, instead I thought about it and planned my work so that I don't depend on the I-Macs but on my laptop. The bigger problem in the beginning was easily resolved by later in the weekend by buying a USB card reader, making sure it was compatible with my laptop.

Here is a picture of a USB card reader I had bought over the weekend:

Process Journal-Entry 5

March 3rd 2010

Today, I had aimed to accomplish the goal I had set last week: To film a final draft of Scene 1 of our video. Along with accomplishing that I had also been able to accomplish filming a final draft for the beginning of Scene 2. To accomplish that we had also planned out another after school working session that helped film the video. We asked to reserve the music room from Mr. Chris and, after the approval, filmed from 2:30 to 3:30. We started by filming Scene 1 and filmed it from the first time successfully because of the several rehearsals we did yesterday. After completing Scene 1 we got a head start and started filming parts from Scene 2 and, after a few tries, got a decent final draft.

There were a few problems we had faced during our filming today. First, the Camera was completely full of memory and again started to bring up the " No memory Remaining on Memory Card" error several times and we were left with basically nothing to do since the camera was not only full with our videos, but with my family's videos too.(it's my family's camera) Along with that my group mates left early again causing less work to be done. For this problem to be resolved, I think we have to plan out our day more to be able to know who is leaving at what time which will make it easier for the work to get done. The problem of the memory card though had to be resolved by emptying the memory card at home or finding a spare memory card that will for school work solely.

Here are some screen shots of the final draft of Scene 1:

Process Journal-Entry 4

2nd March 2010

Today, I had started to actually film my video and started making a few test or draft scenes as rehearsal. I first went to Mr. Chris and asked to reserve his room for filming. My group mates and I then stayed after school from 2:30 to 3:30 to start to film some draft scenes. We began by firing up the 12 mega pixel Sony digital camera and started looking for the right angle so that the laptop we were going to glance at for the script wasn't visible. After being comfortably seated we started our journey of trials and errors as we were filming the video. After a few tries, we had a fully loaded video of scene 1 as well as the beginning of scene 2.

The challenges we faced was the constant error of the camera saying " No memory Remaining on Memory Card", as well as the low battery and my group mates needing to leave early. I also felt that the videos of the scenes weren't that good and had some mistakes. All these challenges or difficulties were solved by us working together as a team. We first decided to delete some previous videos and images to empty the space on the memory card and had to work faster since the battery was low and wasn't fully charged. The need to leave early by my group mates also caused us to work hastily. The final problem was to be solved tomorrow and was to be one of the main goals; to make a good video of the first scene with barely any mistakes.

Here is the beginning of our process during filming our video:

Process Journal-Entry 3

March 1st 2010

Today, I was able to complete the final script and accomplish one of the most important task during my create stage. I followed the same steps I used the other day and wrote what each character was going to exactly say, assigning each group mate/friend to each role. I continued writing the lines of scene 3 and finished the lines of scene 4 and the new scene 5.

The problems/challenges I faced today, was that I felt that my script didn't include the eye-catching element and wasn't really going to impress anyone. So, I decided to consult my group mates. They helped me modify my script so that it contained humor, the eye-catching element as well as the needed information. One of the suggestions they made was a blue prints scene at the end of the video where we showed some humorous draft scenes where we messed up and made silly mistakes. This is what brought the idea of the new, scene 5. This meant a few adjustments to my design and an addition to my filming and editing. This eventually lead to harder work.

Here are some screen shots of my final draft of the script:

Process Journal-Entry 2

February 27th 2010

Today, I found out that there had to be an extra task added as well as a few tasks removed. Gathering the materials, and memorizing the lines were the tasks that were thrown out. This is because gathering the materials wasn't really needed and was basically instant. Memorizing the lines however was resolved by quickly glancing at a laptop containing the lines. Speaking of lines, this was the extra task. I had forgotten that I didn't have lines to say anything on my video and ended up spending a couple of days writing them. These two problems easily cancelled out because they luckily had the same amount of duration. Now, it was time to get started on my work.I started by writing the lines that were supposed to be said in the video. I started by looking at my brief script and using its bullet points to create the final script with all the lines for my video. First I started with the introductory scene and wrote down what each character would exactly say. I then moved on to scene 2 where I had to write down an interview. I created a few appropriate questions and used my investigation and other sources to answer them in detail. This took me around an hour.

The problems I faced were that I wasn't really following my Gantt chart and the exact timing and I had just found out that the deadline had been postponed to a different day. I also encountered another problem; I didn't know the roles of each character and who would be which character. To fix these problems I started by calling my friends and asking them if they can help film the video, after they agreed, I was able to complete the other task of choosing the roles of the characters which I did as I was writing down the final script. The other challenge I faced caused me to have to work faster but keeping the effeciency at its standard which is how I ended up finishing the script faster.

Here are a few screen shots of my progress:

These Screenshots show the work I had done that day which was finishing the final script of scene 1, 2 and the first few lines of scene 3.