Extra Credit Mini-Project: Be Serious for 30 Seconds

Hello Students,
Your last chance to gain some extra credit in this class is to create a video for Fred Armison's Participatory Video Project: Be Serious for 30 Seconds.

Be Serious for 30 Seconds Mini Project:

The Rules:

• Rule 1: It has to be serious.
• Rule 2: It has to be 30 seconds or less
• Rule 3: No more than 2 people in it (teams of 3)
• Rule 4: At least 1 5 second dramatic pause
• Rule 5: At least 1 cutaway to an object
• Rule 6: Do your best acting
• Rule 7: It needs to have a door slamming

Have fun!

- Mr.W

ROP End Of Year Course Survey

Hello Students,
With current legislation regarding education in California and a looming budget crisis for California schools, it is more important that ever that we gather information about your experiences in ROP courses and your future plans for education and career.

Please click the link below and fill out the survey. It takes about 3 minutes and is very important to ensure that ROP courses are made available for future classes.

Link: ROP End Of Year Course Survey

Thank you,
- Mr.W

New Assignment: Video Yearbook Project

Hello Students,
Your new assignment is to create a yearbook video to highlight and capture the activities on our lovely campus. This project has a part A (shooting/recording video footage and sharing it) and a part B (editing your own video).

Project Overview:
In 10 or 20 years what will you remember most about High School? What will be your fondest memories? For many it is the bonds of friendship that we create, for others it is the trappings of student life, dress styles, hair styles, technology, teachers, environments, sports, events etc. Your challenge is to take the best pieces from our collection of footage and edit a great video together. Think of some great music to edit your video with and create a memorable project. We will choose our favorite to possibly post to the school website.

Video Yearbook Assignment:
Part A: Footage

• Each student must shoot a minimum of 10 minutes of footage to add to our collection
• When you are done shooting, copy your footage to our hard drive
• Catalog your footage, is it sports footage? Interviews? Clothing and Style images? Messages to the future?

What to shoot?
B-Roll: This is footage that can be used as "filler" or as a visual narrative. Students coming to and from classes, working in class, teachers teaching, students working on projects and having fun, smiling faces etc.

Interviews: Interview teachers, faculty and students. Ask them to discuss their roles, activities, memories. They can send a message to themselves.

Catagories:

• Current Events
• News
• Fashion, headgear, jewelry, shoes
• Tech and gadgets
• Language, slang
• Popular culture, movies, tv, music
• Teachers
• Faculty
• Events, dances, fund raising, proms
• Clubs
• Sports & teams
• Spontaneous activities during breaks or lunch

Part B: Editing your video

• Each student is responsible for editing a final video. We will review them in groups and pick our favorites for a final round of judging
• Use all the techniques you have learned to make a great video, nice titles, animation, music, rapid fire editing, keep audio levels smooth
• Final video is due on Monday the 21st

Have fun!

- Mr.W

New Equipment: Zoom H2 Audio Recorder

Hello Students,
We have 2 new pieces of equipment in class, the ZOOM H2. This is a microphone with recording ability built in, it runs on 2AA batteries and comes with lots of goodies such as a handle for holding during interviews or a small tripod for setting on a table during recording. Use it in conjunction with your flip camera and start the recording session with a clap, that way you know when to sync up the ZOOM H2 audio files with your video files.

Watch this video to get a lowdown on good settings for the unit and how to use it:

New Project: Documentary Short

Hello Students,
Documentaries are a great way to inform and delight the viewer. It can be a view into worlds that we rarely see. If you have access to someone unique, a place people don’t go or have a great idea for your own documentary than this is a great opportunity to share with the world. When shooting your documentary the idea is to shoot as much footage as you can, and weave it into something informative and entertaining through editing and timing.

Video Production Documentary Project
Project Details and Requirements:

• This is a team based project, teams may be no larger than two
• Final run time must be 5-7 minutes minimum
• Each project must have an animated title sequence, this animation may be created in After Effects/final cut/livetype or with a Stop-Motion technique. 
• Must have titles and tails
• Each team must produce and use a production logo
• Each team must produce a 1 page film proposal for approval. Upon approval a script or treatment must be written along with a storyboard or shot list. Guidelines for each are provided in this packet. Read the entire project info packet before proceeding. 
• Each team must screen a rough cut and a fine cut for feedback. 
• Each team must produce a press kit to document and promote your video project. Guidelines for the press kit are contained in this packet. You can use wordpress, blogger or tumblr for your blog
• Each team must produce a blog to document and promote your video project

Treatments for Documentaries: 
Since most documentaries and experimental films do not have scripts, they frequently use the treatment to summarize their project. The treatment for an experimental film should express what the audience is going to see, hear and feel – it should be clear and descriptive. The treatment for a documentary may be less descriptive because much of the information (the interview, for example) may not of been filmed yet: documentary treatments typically spend more time establishing the conditions of filming and the questions the filmmaker intends to address. Nonetheless, a documentary treatment should also establish what the film is going to look and sound like to best of the director’s knowledge.

New Line Cinema Production Logo

Biographies,Press Kits and Logos: 
Each filmmaking team is responsible for assembling a press kit and writing the biography for their film. These materials are used to distribute the project to film festivals and for publicity.

Biography:
A biography is a brief, third-person description of the filmmaker(s). Information that is typically included in a biography includes: place of birth, place of residence, educational background, past projects, current projects, areas of interest.

A sample biography:
Jason Jakaitis is a filmmaking student at San Francisco State University and a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Master of Arts program in Communications Studies. Born and raised in San Diego, he currently lives in the Upper Haight area of San Francisco. In 2007, Jason was awarded a Murphy Fellowship from the San Francisco Foundation, as well as a Personal Works grant from Film Arts Foundation and a New Filmmaker grant from Panavision. Jason's previous film, minutiae, is a 16mm narrative short that was awarded Special Jury Prize at the Portland International Short Short Film Festival, and screened at the 2007 Mill Valley, Humboldt and Santa Cruz film festivals.

Logos

Your team must produce a logo for your “production company”. This can be drawn by hand, created in photoshop or illustrator. It could be a still image, or animated for extra credit.

Press Kit:
Depending on the project, press kits can be composed of a variety of different kinds of information, but the overall goal of the kit is always the same: to provide the individual with as much relevant information about the film as possible. This information can then be used in articles, in film festival schedules, online “blurbs” and any other way that a festival would choose to promote the film.

Check out this link: How To Make A Press Kit for your Indie Movie
Download and read a real press kit: Press Kit for  the film Some Kind Of Wonderful
Check out this press kit: Watchmen Promo Press Kit

Press Kits require the following: 

• Two or more still images from the film itself 
• Two behind the scenes production stills taken with a camera, cell phone cam, ipod camera, point and shoot, etc 
• One “headshot” photo of the director or filmmakers 
• A one paragraph (3-4 sentence) synopsis of the film 
• You can assemble your press kit using google docs, pages or word, indesign, photoshop or illustrator 

Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford, behind the scenes production still from the film "Blade Runner"

Production Still from the film "Blade Runner"

Original Press Kit from the film "Blade Runner"

Blogs:

Your blog has the same goal as the press kit, to provide a potential audience member about details regarding your film. People love seeing behind the scenes images, information and watching the creative process. Update your blog throughout the process of creating your project, and show your video on it when complete.

Check out the blog: The Making Of Game of Thrones for inspiration.

Blogs should show:

• Two or more still images from the film itself 
• Two production stills taken with a camera, cell phone cam, ipod camera, point and shoot, etc 
• One “headshot” photo of the director or filmmakers 
• A one paragraph (3-4 sentence) synopsis of the film 
• Behind the scenes information and photos
• A final edit of your project

- Mr.W

New Long Term Assignment: Print Portfolio Development

Hello Students,

Having a polished and professional looking portfolio is key to your success in finding work after High School and moving on to developing a career. Download the ROP Portfolio Handbook to use as a guide for creating your own portfolio.

Remember that the best portfolio in class will be sent to the portfolio design competition that ROP has at the end of each school year, your portfolio will compete against other web design classes across the county, and there is a prize.

A judge evaluates print portfolio's from past entrants...

Portfolio Development Assignment:

• Your portfolio must be created in Indesign and final file must be a PDF document
• Use the Pages palette to create multiple pages for your portfolio
• Your portfolio cover, table of contents and all materials should look clean and consistent. Use consistent design style across all aspects of your portfolio

Your Portfolio must contain in this order:

• Cover page with your name, class title, year. Spend some time on this, it should show good design skill and be reflective of your personality
• Table of contents
• Letter of Introduction
• Resume
• Handwritten Job Application 
• List of References
• Letter of Recommendation -  cannot be from your ROP teacher or a family member
• 3 or more work samples with written explanation about the work, why is it important to your career choice? What did the project entail, what were the challenges and difficulties? Give us details.

How Your Portfolio Is Evaluated:

• Contains required content and format
• Well organized
• Free of grammer problems
• ROP related work samples
• Shows creativity
• Nice appearance
• Shows skill development
• Appropriate for use in job search
• Professional appearance
• Nice presentation

Use this as a rough guide to laying out your own portfolio...

Ok have fun!

- Mr.W

New Assignment: TV Commercial Development

Hello Students,
Your newest assignment is to create a 30 second TV commercial in conjunction with a team from the drama 1 class. Your role on this project is to execute the clients creative in a professional manner and make the actors and products/messaging look amazing and be effective.

TV Commercial Development Assignment:

• Team leads will be picked your instructor, leads will choose their team members
• Each team will be paired with a group of two from the Drama 1 class
• Drama teams will provide the creative, a storyboard and be the principal actors
• Video teams will refine creative, direct video shoots and provide technical solutions
• Video team members will each create a final edit from the raw video footage, complete with music, sound effects, graphics, narration as needed
• Projects must adhere to the 30 second specification
• Projects will be graded on the ability to communicate with drama teams,coordinate schedule, execute production, adhere to creative messaging, produce quality content
• All projects due on Thursday the 22nd

- Mr.W