Video Essay

Essay #3: Video Position Essay

An alternative to writing a position paper is to make an argumentative position video essay. A video essay is a video work that explores a topic using various sources of information and that experiments with form and content. This genre combines various art forms (pictures, music, video, words, voice, etc.) Most of you are part of the YouTube generation where making a point often involves taking advantage of Web 2.0 technologies that exist today, like YouTube, Flickr, Utterli, wikis, VoiceThread, and Animoto just to name a few. Here’s an opportunity to try something new, to be a creative, and express your position in a new way.

Criteria:

  • 3-5 Minutes in length
  • need a script or outline
  • documentation is required (use MLA style) & submit a works cited page
  • work needs to make a claim and support it (in other words, this work should have a thesis and support that thesis just like the position paper)
  • research (at the very least, for images, video, and audio) required

Grade will be determined by how well video essay meets criteria and how the essay is suited/developed for the video format.

Examples

Nickelback’s “If Everyone Cared” is, in essence, a video essays that makes a claim and supports it. You can watch this video on the course network. Ask yourself:

  • what is the claim being made?
  • how is it being supported?
  • how do the images/ included video support the claim?
  • how does the musical “bed” (soundtrack) aid in the development and support?

Preparation:

You will need to script your work. You can use the outline format. Beyond the obvious (you need to determine what claim you will make and how you will support it), you should storyboard your work. An easy way to do this is by creating a table using MS Word or GDocs. To create a storyboard, simply create a two column table in a document. In the left hand side you may put an image or a description of an image. In the right hand side, place any notes or voice overs that you may include.

I’d suggest you list your purpose in a brief heading/ abstract.

So, here’s my sample situation. I’m arguing that creating video essays helps to build and reinforces the skills required to compose “traditional” essays. So, how am I going to prove that?

Sample:

Abstract:

What Is Composition? argues that creating video essays strengthens students’ abilities to compose traditional essays by allowing writers to visualize the structure of the essay as well as to clarify the role of the independent writer who, though making use of others’ sources, still creates an original work.

(footage) development of writing… cuneiform to word processing (perhaps video footage or slideshow) question: include cave drawings (form of communication/ writing?)

what is writing?
show student at computer typing in “typical” comp mode what constitutes composition?
video capture dragging/dropping files into video timeline what does this have to do with this?
typing screen flips to video screen. text in screen reads everything. (expands to fill screen)

You may want to be extremely precise (as above), or you may want to mark key “signposts” in your development.

Materials

You will need to set up a separate folder in your drive for all of your video files. Trust me on this one. What goes in there? Image files saved in .jpg or .gif format. What does this mean?

  • if you were to search for images using, say, Google image search…
    • click on the image file in the results.
    • Click on “see full size image.”
    • Right click to “save image as” and save that file in the appropriate folder.

In theory, you could copy and paste the image into a word doc, but it would not be usable in your video.

Speaking of Word docs…

  • start a Works Cited doc for your video.
  • Save it in your video folder.
  • When you copy/save a file, you will need to keep track of where it came from. This Works Cited page is the place to do that.
    • Go back to where you clicked on the image file in the results.
    • Click on the link following “Below is the image in its original context on the page:”
    • Take down the site information using the handbook guidelines for citing a work from a website.
    • Yup. Do it. You need to cite this just as you would statistics or other data.
    • Do I need to mention that this includes video and audio as well? If the work is “republished” (for example, a Gorillaz song downloaded via iTunes), you will need to indicate both the original source and the source through which you retrieved the work

Some Helpful (Re)Sources

Edit video using provided camcorder software or Windows Movie Maker or YouTube.

Find free Creative Commons music

Podsafe Audio.com. This is good if you plan to post your video on the web. Most sites will not allow using copyrighted music from the popular artists we know and love. You can use the music on this site, and there is instrumental music that won’t conflict with your own words (voiceovers) you may add in your video.

Process – Let’s Get Started

  • Start Windows Movie Maker (Start->all programs->accessories->entertainment… if you can’t find it there, start–>run–>browse–>c:\Program Files\movie maker\moviemk.exe)
  • Ctrl-i (import into collections) -> select the folder where you have kept your video files; double click to open that folder; click once in the window where the files are ->ctrl – a to select all-> click Import
  • The easiest way to work is in timeline view (Ctrl-t changes the view from timeline to storyline)
  • The rest is more or less simply drag and drop.
  • To add text, go to tools-> titles and credits
  • To add effects, tools->video effects
  • To add transitions, tools->video transitions
  • I’d suggest you take about 10 minutes and just goof off. Learn how the program works. After that, learn as you go.

The final and most important suggestion I can make: SAVE YOUR MOVIE OFTEN.

Save & Submit

If you choose the video essay option, you will need to save your video file in Movie Maker and then upload the movie file, your outline or script, and your works cited file to Blackboard. You’ll find the upload link at the bottom of Video Essay folder.

Source:  Andrea L. Beaudin | Composition and New Media |http://abeaudin.com/video.html