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https://h5p.org/node/138392

Goals of this screencast:

1. Quick informative introduction to my capstone research project and doctoral experience.
2. Interactive features were used to provide additional information on the two main organizations I will be working if the audience chooses.
3. For those that are interested in the full presentation, there is a button at the end that will link the viewer to the full narrated powerpoint presentation.

I have done simple screencasting for previous presentations in class before. It is a great way to have educational material for online classes or supplemental information instead of just a simple powerpoint that has limited explanation. I had originally had a narrated powerpoint that I had prepared for a class assignment that explained my final doctoral experience plan. I attempted to screencast this presentation, but the audio became distorted since the audio was coming from the computer and already recording from the computer. Therefore, instead of re-recording the whole presentation over, I decided to keep it simple and just introduce the topic and provided some interactive portions to add more information.

I was most excited about the interactive features that I could add using H5P. That is what originally caught my attention at the beginning of the class. With the transmedia examples demonstrated in class, I feel that it presents educational material as a game-like simulation and takes dynamic & interactive to another level. The transmedia concept, while quite complex, has given me some ideas of how to make my final videos interactive. Since I will be making a series of videos it might be effective to use a simple wix website to make it all more cohesive. I added a few simple interactive pieces using H5P into my presentation. Some of the features reminded me of the computer based learning modules we do as healthcare professionals

https://youtu.be/ZgRYFrP9ZeA

I did not have time to capture footage for my final project this week but this is another video that I’ve been working on for an individual’s video resume. This is a innovative way people with disabilities have been using to market themselves for competitive employment instead of a regular written resume. Not only does this empower her to reflect on her strengths as an individual but gives her a voice to showcase her skills as a worker. I got her permission to use this for my assignment but will be taking it down after it has been graded.
Audio is a very challenging and frustrating piece of videography. The person in the video was very nervous in front of the video, therefore many takes were needed to capture enough coherent audio to create this video. Fortunately, I did not have to match the audio to the video for the entire video and was able to cut to different shots with the narration. This allowed me to use different portions of each audio to create a nice flow and impactful statements. But cropping each audio file at the appropriate time and editing them together to flow smoothly was time-consuming. Only the first shot of her introducing herself is the original audio with the shot since we were in a quiet small room and that shot alone took about 30 minutes to shoot because she was so nervous. She’s naturally very well-spoken but being aware of the recording made it difficult to capture her true self. So, there were times where she was just practicing and I had the audio recording running so that I could capture more footage to use.
I added in audio of her supervisor speaking to her strengths just like one would send references along with a job application. This allowed for a change of perspective and did not put as much pressure on the main individual to speak about herself the entire time. I attempted to adjust the volume so that there was not too much of a change between the two speakers, but this was much more difficult that I imagine since this footage was not all taken in the same room/setting and on different days. I used an IPad to film the video while I used my phone to gather the audio so that I would have two audio files to choose from. Also unfortunately, there were some distorted background noises that I could not fix and had noticed only when I went back to edit the shots. Finding the right distance and a good room (to reduce echo) to obtain the best audio is very difficult.
In addition to the two people speaking, I added a background audio track for an inspirational effect. Retrospectively, I feel that the background audio volume should be lowered quite a bit at a few points. But I feel that it adds a sense of continuity to the video and am quite proud of the ending effect that it has on the video. She makes a powerful statement at the very end and the background audio ends on a strong note to make an impact followed by a few seconds of silence with just her picture on the screen.
Finally captioning using the youtube settings was an interesting experience. I could not get youtube to automatically transcribe, so I manually typed out the script since it was a short video and then youtube automatically timed the placement of the text. For the most part it fit well, but I had edit slightly on the timing of the captions. This feature is very user friendly and simple to use. I hope people that put out content on youtube and other platforms use this feature to make videos more accessible for everybody.

As we start moving toward our final project, I decided to find a video that was on the same topic of stress management as my final project. This will give me an idea of what kind of videos are out there and what is the approach I want to take for my video. The video I picked is simple in many aspects but uses many of the audio features that we had discussed in class. Throughout the video there are layers of audio using the background music in addition to the narration and other sound effects on top of that.
First of all, since this video is a narration of a dynamic illustration, the clear voice-over is non-diegetic. The use of the non-diegetic voice I think creates the effect that this is an informative video instead of a story narrative. This video makes good use of complete silence as well to demonstrate moments of calm and deep breathing; they recommend taking a break from the stressful event and to represent that idea, they use a pause in all audio. Strategic silences in audio are good ways to allow the audience to reflect on the presented material and build the suspension for what’s to come after. Although I believe it would be better to have a realistic symbolic sound in place of the silence that represents deep breathing.
The addition of the deep breathing sounds would add symbolic sounds; this video is full of symbolic sounds. This may be why the silences are even more impactful and draws attention when there is a sudden silence between the continuous audio. While the main audio is the voice-over narration, most scenes have some sort of symbolic sound to create some change in the pace of the video. These simple sounds bring the audience’s attention to certain visuals on the video or even highlight trivial silly things such as the character winking. Symbolic sounds were also used to indicate transitions between illustration scenes and make the simple illustrations more dynamic. At the end of the video in order to simulate a social event, the creator layered not only the voice-over narration with background music but also diegetic sounds of a crowd of conversations to create a more realistic setting and environment. In other shots, the videographer uses a more realistic nature background behind the illustrated character to provide more context to the nature bird chirping audio. I can only imagine the difficulty of lining of the layers of audio to create a smooth cohesive audio track to supplement the illustrations and visual components of the video.
The continuous background music provides a sense of continuity to the video, but does not overpower the voice-over narration. I actually did not even notice it during the majority of the video until the end and went back to listen more carefully. That’s when I realized it was layered as an undertone to the main narration throughout most of the video. While this may not have been the most well-done or complex video, it was a good video to evaluate and analyze how different components of audio can be used in a seemingly simple video. This analysis provided a foundation of considerations for when I begin to construct the audio for my final project videos. Symbolic sounds may add a slightly more interactive component to draw the audience’s attention with familiar and relatable sounds. As mentioned in our previous class, audio if made well can make the video more accessible for those with visual impairments. I will attempt to make my videos as accessible as possible with descriptive audio.

The main reason I wanted to take this course was to supplement my occupational therapy capstone research program. My focus for my capstone is health and wellness education for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Even though there is a large population health initiative pushing for everybody to live healthier and active lifestyles, there is a large health disparity for this population. Many times they are not included in research and programming for the general population. Due to environmental, social, cognitive, and physical barriers, this population many times require additional supports throughout their daily routine. In my efforts to include young adults with IDD into my research, I conducted focus groups to gather insight into what topics they were most interested in learning about. Our discussions revealed interest in mental health, stress management, goal setting, and healthy relationships. Therefore, for the purpose of this project, I intend to focus on the mental health and stress management topics and create videos to provide perspective for the individuals with IDD that I will be working with. Healthy relationships and goal setting may reveal themselves through the video but will not be the focus. My hope is that this video 1) provides basic information about mental health and what stress is, 2) how to recognize one’s own stress, 3) provides examples of how peers manage their stress, and 4) how they can apply this knowledge to their own lives.
The audience of my videos will be the individuals with IDD with whom I will be working in order to build their health literacy and self-determination. The majority of these young adults will be between the ages 17-22 years old. IDD incorporates diagnoses including but not limited to Autism Spectrum Disorder, Cerebral Palsy, Intellectual Disability, Muscular Dystrophy, Attention Disorders, Down Syndrome, Vision loss, and hearing loss. All of these conditions are characterized by a variation of physical, intellectual, behavioral, and sensory impairments. Through the focus groups, I have been able to gauge the amount of knowledge they have on the topic of mental health and stress management. There seems to be some foundational knowledge present but a lack of awareness and variety of strategies. Because this is such an important topic that additionally is of interest to this population, I think a video to present some of the intangible concepts will be impactful. Because of the decreased attention span of many of these individuals, I intend to make this video into a series of shorter videos to accommodate for the needs of the audience. Because written communication may be a barrier at times for the audience, there will be clear narration with the video. Since the population I’ll be working with will be cultural diverse and of different socioeconomic status communities, I hope to provide culturally sensitive information and resources/ideas that everybody will have access to.
The video will be used to supplement lesson plans and handouts to create a more interactive medium of information delivery. This will be in attempts to provide a way to present an abstract concept and make it more concrete for these individuals with IDD. As mentioned before, the video will be broken up into segments to create a series of videos to address this one topic. Shorter video clips will be easier to capture the audience’s attention effectively and be used throughout a lesson instead of all the information at once. The link to the video will also be available to families of these individuals to view as well as a resource for what is covered in the lesson. My intention is that the videos be used in combination with role-playing activities, lessons, discussion, and individualized stress management plans.
In order to address the components that I mentioned previously, I will be using a few different approaches. First I will start off with narrative illustrations to introduce the concept of mental health and stress. Then I will be conducting interviews with peers on how they manage their stress; this will include solo interview shots as well as shots of them completing these stress relieving activities (ie: deep breathing, meditation, socialization, planning, yoga, and etc…). I hope to incorporate a variety of people’s perspectives to demonstrate the idea that stress affects everybody, that it is normal, and that people deal with stress in different ways. In order to address how these individuals will translate this knowledge into practice, I hope to create a video that will promote self-reflection using the interactive video feature that was mentioned on the first day of class. This will provide natural pauses in the video to allow time for prompting questions and moments of reflection. Since much of the video content will include interviewing another person, I’ll need to find people to agree to being videotaped, sign a video release form, and work together to schedule a time to meet to shoot the shots needed. The more prepared and the more content I can gather for this portion of the video before starting the editing process will be the most efficient way to complete this video. This way I won’t have to go back and refilm any portion.
With that in mind, in preparation for my production there are many things I need to plan before starting to film:
1) What are the equipment needs (sound, location, people, space) for each part of the video series?
2) How much content do I need to gather for each portion?
3) What is the timeline for filming so that there is enough time to edit the video together?
4) How will I store all the content I will be gathering?
My storyboard plan will show more details of the content of the video but in terms of the technical aspects and editing portions of the video there is also many things to consider. I plan to have some narration voice-over for the more didactic information without the narrator present but instead in-time illustrations on the screen to present concepts in a more concrete way. For the interview portion of this video series, the audio will be coming from the person being interviewed which will most likely require a lavalier microphone to get the best quality of audio. This audio will be stripped from the original video in order to overlap in the shots that show the person actually performing these stress management activities. Musical audio clips for background sound will be used intermittently for transitions and mood setting; I have access to a database of audio from my research position that I have legal access to use for videos. Due to the different needs of my video series, I may be using different methods of shooting the video. For the dynamic scenes I plan to use the GoPro to record and for the static shots and close up shots of people or illustrations I plan to use my Iphone 7 to record. I believe that this will be the best way to gather the most quality shots. From my experience, the GoPro does not capture close up shots well and does not have a manual feature to change the focus of the video. Therefore, I will attempt to use my Iphone to capture this content.
Moving onto the pacing and transitions of this video series. I intend to create a predictable pattern to the interviewing portion so that there is a cut to the person talking during the interview with a subtitle label of the person’s name, age, and their occupation and then a voice over of them completing this stress management activity of choice. This will create a back and forth type of feel for this part of the video. In addition to this I hope to have a running list of activities that people mention to summarize the strategies people use. The transition between two different perspectives will be simple cuts or to distinguish them I may utilize different types of transitions. In terms of lighting, I hope to utilize natural lighting and finding naturalistic locations for the interview portion. The lighting for the illustration and voice over portion will be focused on creating a shot that does not have any unnecessary shadows with the use of natural and artificial lighting.
I recognize that even with this rough draft plan, that there are components that will need to be revised as I go through the process of filming and editing videos. But with this plan, I hope to address basic scheduling and planning conflicts that can be avoided. I am realizing the amount of coordination it takes to create a video and plan to get a start on contacting interested individuals for the interviews and borrowing the equipment when needed to capture my shots. The storyboard will provide a conceptual guideline of what shots I will need to complete my intended video.

Due to the low quality of the shots I gathered last time, I decided to shoot a completely different video to put together. For some reason, the video automatically converted when I uploaded it onto my computer this time. The better quality of the shot video makes a huge difference on the whole video regardless of editing. In order to put this video together, I made use of music background, changing the speed of the video, transitions, and cropping shots.
I decided to set the tone of the video by adding a title page to introduce the idea of the video, but not yet disclose where I was traveling. The audience does not know where (unless they were able to see through context clues) I was traveling to until the very last shot. Editing during this video made it possible to put random shots together to make a somewhat linear story. I took shots throughout my trip and then went back to see which ones I wanted to keep. I also utilized my body to either bring the camera closer to the object of focus or bringing the object closer to the camera to get the zoom effect. For the shots that were too long, I was able to crop out idle time/shaky moments, which then separated one shot into multiple. I am really starting to appreciate the stability of videos that are from a person’s point of view. Unfortunately, I do not have anything to roll my GoPro on, so recording point of view video using a handheld tripod makes for some shaky videos.
A feature in editing that I wanted to experiment with was the transitions. Since my video covers a span of about five hours of events in less than one minute, I attempted to use different transition types between shots in order to provide the audience with a cue or indication that some time had passed or to ease the abruptness of the change in scene. The different types of transitions seem to have subtle differences in the purpose of the transition. These differences may become more apparent as I begin to use these more purposefully in my subsequent videos.
Finally, since my videos did not have any audio or very limited audio, I decided to add some background music to tie all my shots together. Through IMovie there are a few audio clips to choose from. I ended up choosing the “travel” audio clip and it actually fits quite well with my shots. Although it is a generic tune, it provides some continuity and rhythm to somewhat choppy shots in order to create a short video that tells a story. At first I wanted to use multiple audio clips and use those to transition the scenes between shots, but decided that it made the video too disjointed overall. The background music has a large role in dictating the flow of the video. It’s similar to when you play a scary movie without the sound; it’s instantaneously less scary and less suspenseful without the sound effects.
My next goal in video editing is to plan out my shots more and to add narration (or self-created audio) to my videos. As I move toward my final project, I will set aside more time to plan out shots, gather shots, and even more time for editing.

For this assignment I chose to analyze the editing on a music video, specifically a K-POP music video that are known for their dynamic and colorful visuals. Components of contrast, repetition, rhythm, pacing, flow/continuity, and juxtaposition are purposefully used to create an enticing and exciting video that flows well with the song it depicts. There are a lot of features in this video that can be attributed to video editing but I will bring to light some of the main observations I made. Although this video is made purely for entertainment purposes and the story doesn’t necessarily flow that well, pin pointing the editing features makes me as an audience appreciate the hard work and time this took to put together.
First of all, rhythm and pacing are especially important for these types of videos in order to create a sense of smooth flowing through the song while telling a story through the video. The editing reflects the beat in the song, transitions of the music video accentuate the down beat; for this song this makes the shots extremely short jump cuts at times because of the fast pace of the song. Without the sound, one could imagine that the song was highly energetic and fast-paced. Many times the video editor uses cut-in/cut away shots to either zoom out to see the whole group or zoom in to focus on the singer that is singing his part at that moment. At the end (3:00) when the melody changes to a more smooth pace and softer down beats, the scenes become longer and they change part of the visual to black in white indicating a change of pace in the song. The video editor uses scenes that are not intended to be choreography to match with the adlibs of the song when the there is a “woo” sound at the end of lyrics.
There is a juxtaposition of the feel that this is a performance (choreography) versus telling a story (random scenes of them interacting with each other and the environment); the members are wearing different outfits in each type of scene to distinguish between the two. Both combined creating a sense of high energy throughout the video. While the interruption of the two sets of videos seemed to create a disconnect in the underlying story being told, ultimately this led snippets of choreography dispersed sporadically throughout the story. Culturally, K-POP is also known for the choreography, particularly the chorus portion of the choreography. Throughout the video, during the chorus when they say, “vroom vroom” the video will cut to the choreography to showcase these dances to the audience.
With repetition of the similar scene at the beginning and end (with them nodding their heads), it creates a sense of cohesiveness with such a dynamic video. Just like dancing in this video is choreographed to match the song, video editing really is the choreography of videography, creating a sense of rhythm, flow, and setting the mood of the video. By placing scenes strategically together and the type of transition at the right time, the video editor evokes some type of intended/unintended response from the audience.

From starting this class and after reading the chapters from the book, “How to Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck: Advice to Make Any Amateur Look Like a Pro,” I was interested in seeing how people created video from speeches/talks and what made them engaging. As a student the last thing I want to hear is another lecture, but how does TED talk create video from their talks to make them the iconic and educational videos that they are? So I picked a TED talk by Matthew Williams, a Special Olympic Athlete, who speaks to his audience to bring awareness to intellectual disabilities. Within just the first two minutes of the talk I can pinpoint a few things that come to my attention with slightly more focused eyes than the normal viewer. The movement of the camera, zooming, and use of camera angles, and highlight of the location are components that I will discuss in further detail.
First the movement of the camera throughout the talk creates a more dynamic view within a static environment. The speaker is the main focus throughout the video but that does not mean that the background is not just as important. Throughout the video, different angle views of the speaker are used to capture details of his surroundings. The camera pans through partial views of the 360 degrees of the stage; at one angle the video reveals that the speaker is directing his talk to a live audience. He remains the focus of the video but the blurry audience can be seen in the background. As the camera zooms out, the viewer of the video can see the TEDXVancouver ID sign behind the speaker, revealing the location of the TED event and potentially the theme/topic as well. This adds depth into the environmental context of the video and situation. While movement in the video adds a dynamic component, the views are not continually changing. There are moments where the focus is simply the speaker and the blue background. This balance of movement and still is done skillfully to create a more appealing video, than just video of the speaker talking without distracting the audience from the focus of the TED talk.
An added component of emotion is evoked through the zoomed out view when you can see the speaker’s hands. He demonstrates courage through speaking out about intellectual disabilities through his personal experiences but the audience can see his nervousness with his fidgeting hands. In addition, as the camera continues to zoom out, the viewer can see how large the audience is and the size of the stage. When the video does fully pan to the audience, the viewer can just barely make out facial expressions of the audience. The stage light is just barely bright enough to show the audience clapping at a critical point of the talk. But I think it’s importance to capture this moment of the audience’s reaction to Matthew’s talk, giving the video a sense of collectivity, appreciations, and acceptance.
Ask the audience a challenging question. Matthew Williams uses thought provoking questions in the first two minutes that challenge the awareness of his audience. When creating video content, the producer must also keep that concept in mind even if it is not directly addressed. In that sense, capture the audience’s attention with something intriguing and potentially uncomfortable. Video is such a powerful medium to convey what simply words cannot. To the untrained viewer eyes, a talk is a talk. But now that some components of videography have been brought to my attention, I am aware of some of the purposeful ways they have used video to enhance the speech.

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