Team Wintermute- Matt M., Paul L., Eric H., Martha D.
The subject we chose for our video project was faculty member Dr. Gerry Santoro, professor in the IST/SRA departments. The reason this was chosen was because Matt and Martha have Gerry as a professor for SRA 111 and thought he would be a good choice for a faculty member biography. This was unique from the other group because no other group did a biographical type project.
In order to create a biographical-style video, we realized that we were going to need to interview him with prepared questions and a sense of what we would want to include in our video. We created a general diagram illustrating the topics we wanted to cover, and Gerry’s life in chronological order. This was made to help us figure out where necessary information and data within the video was located, in addition to helping us create a storyboard for the editing process.
We discussed the sort of video we wanted to create, and what we wanted to include. The style we were going for was modeled after a VH1 pop culture production. The interview would be cut and chopped up according to the way we wanted to present the material recorded of Gerry speaking. We would use his personal videos and images as visuals during part of the time that we spoke to illustrate exactly what he was referring to in his interview.
We weren’t sure exactly how Gerry was going to answer the questions we were going to ask him, so we asked more than we knew we’d be using, just to cover all our bases and have enough material. We asked him questions about his entire life story, his early influences, his education, work, research, teaching and personal interests. Gerry enthusiastically answered everything and provided us with an hour’s worth of material.
The Storyboard required a lot of time and energy from our group. We had so much video to get rid of, simply because we could not fit it all, that we had to be sure that what we included counted. We spent the better part of six hours in total working on the storyboard alone.
After a general introduction of the group and our subject, Gerry Santoro, in the first and second blocks, we decided to begin the video with the lesser known facts about this well known professor. In the third block of the storyboard, Paul introduces a little background history of Gerry’s origins, and then we placed clips of our interview with Gerry in an order that brought to light his hobbies and interests, such as Astronomy, Harley Davidson bikes, guitar, and comic books. Moving toward his research, we linked his interests with the technology he works with in the fourth block. Gerry talks about recording video of his bike rides and making covers using multi-track layering software of a famous song. After "the hook", if you will, we start to show Gerry talking about his research in the fifth block, introduced formally by Eric. Gerry talks about technology and pop culture, virtual worlds, and the Web2.0 phenomenon. In the sixth block, we talk to Gerry about his teaching methods and what he thinks makes a good teacher. The seventh and final block, composed of the credits and Imagine by John Lennon, ends the presentation with a quote of Gerry's; that he enjoys dreaming of what can be.
In our video imaging project, we used different types of technological devices in order to completely finish our video. Since none of us had a video camera, we went to the Media Lab in the Willard Building and took out one of their video cameras for a week. This camera was compact and very easy to use, and had a touch screen panel. In addition, we also got a camera to help document the process. Once we had our necessary film, we needed to work on the storyboard to aid the editing.
We used iMovie as our video editing program on Martha’s MacBook Pro. Because we did all of our editing on a lap top, our project was permitted to be portable. In order to work on our movie, we needed two computers, and to exchange the information between those computers, we used Matt’s 160 GB external hard-drive, email and multiple flash drives.
Video Script (interview not scripted due to length- rather than type out entire script, we decided to use a brief summary to describe the dialogue. Narration includes typing and vocals.)
Narration: "Who is the real Gerry Santoro?"
Paul: "Since he was a child in Blanux, Pennsylvania, Gerry’s personal interests have influenced his professional research within the realm of information science and technology."
( Gerry answering question about personal life and interests )
Narration: "How Gerry relates technology to his personal interests..
( Gerry talks about using technology and his communities )
Narration: "Gerry’s research includes.."
Eric: "According to Gerry, his professional research includes social informatics, computer-mediated communication, technology policy and future policies."
( Gerry talking about his research: computer-mediated communication, Web2.0 and virtual worlds )
Narration: "What about your teaching? What makes a great teacher?"
( Gerry discusses teaching techniques and what he incorporates them into his classes )
Problems/ Issues
Initially, we didn’t know how long we would be able to take out the camera for, and our interview date wasn’t set. The indefinite dates made the beginning process difficult and frustrating because of all of our other group work.
Taping the material for our video project went smoothly, but we ended up with an hour’s worth of useful, relevant information. Many issues stemmed from this. First, we had to organize the video into clips in order to find anything in the recording. Second, choosing which clips we would use for the time limit down from the original hour took an enormous time. This was facilitated by the storyboard, but as mentioned, the storyboard took over six hours to create and perfect. Thirdly, Gerry gave us plenty of material, but a lot of it we decided wasn’t going to be relevant to our project and time frame. We spent a good deal of time mashing clips to create thought-provoking and coherent new clips from sometimes long or irrelevant material.
We started the project too close to its deadline, and because of this, we spent almost all week and everyday working as a group on it. Due to the intensity of this project, we all have a good portion of Gerry’s hour long dialogue memorized. All in all, we feel this project was worth too little credit in comparison with the amount of work we put in.
Paul had experience with windows video editing software called Nero. Although the group decided iMovie would be better for the task at hand, in retrospect it might have saved us vital editing time if we had a member of the team intimately aware of the program. Using Nero could have saved us some time, because Paul’s computer has more processing power and capability to handle large files than Martha’s laptop.
That said, there is great value in becoming part of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Like our blogs, this project allowed us to explore our creativity and share it with the world using YouTube. It may have been a lot of work, but we are pleased with the final result.
Resources
Gerry Santoro. Personal Interview. 04 November 2007.
Home Page for Gerry Santoro. Gerry Santoro. Pennsylvania State University.
02 November 2007. <http://cac.psu.edu/~santoro/santoro.html.
- Matt rented the camera
- all of us were present for the interview
- Martha and Paul created the final storyboard
- All members contributed to where certain clips should be placed within the video
- Matt is responsible for all video effects in our movie, and for doing the actual editing to Team Wintermute's specifications
- Martha compiled final paper
- The parts of the paper were written by either Martha, Eric, or Paul, with Martha being the predominant writer
- Eric compiled information from the web posted about Gerry Santoro