Group 2 Digital Tools: Audio/Visual

Group 2 Digital Tools: MovieMaker

I had a bit of a fiddle with MovieMaker to create the following video:

It's supposed to be a montage of photos with some overdubbed acoustic guitar music. Can you view it? I can't. For some reason, Blogger wouldn't let me upload any of my videos. It would take ages to upload and "process" them, then tell me that there was an error in the file and it couldn't use it. I was a bit miffed, because I'd spent a while messing around with transitions between photos, and worked out how to fade out the audio at the end of the movie.

Hmm...

On the other hand, I have previously used MovieMaker to edit footage and post it to YouTube.
Here's a couple of examples:

The first movie is probably the best example of the features of MovieMaker in action. I used a cutaway to an intro title, then set up a credits roll at the end.

Movie Maker is relatively easy to use. You can load photos and video footage onto it's clipboard, then drag and drop them onto the timeline so that they show up in the video. You can also use music or additional audio for the soundtrack in the same way.

Students can learn how to edit raw video footage so that it can be transformed into a video clip. Once they are aware of how to cut the footage up, and how to delete unwanted parts and move the remaining parts together, they're already ahead of the game. Then it's possible to insert text and photos if necessary, add transitions, and generally make it look pretty. Fading the audio in and out is also a handy skill to have.

Students could use A/V for a variety of situations, from presentations, to interviews and coverage of special events in the school (creating a school news bulletin could be fun) or for creating a vlog. What's a vlog, I hear you ask? Well, actually I don't hear you, because I can't. Probably because you didn't even say it. But it's a Video bLOG - basically an audiovisual podcast. Vlogs are a common occurrence on YouTube. Because of the way they're set up, it's easy to subscribe to someone's channel and be notified whenever  new content is uploaded.