Group Video Project

    At first, I was unwilling to participate in the project of making a video. I didn't understand how to use the movie maker program. I felt like every time I was looking at my keyboard to click on something, I should have been looking up at the Smartboard, and vice versa. The media lab is not a good classroom in terms of a facility to teach and learn in---the Smartboard is not easily viewed by all students, it is noisy and crowded and uncomfortable. So, there were a lot of negatives and I felt totally overwhelmed by the time we were supposed to pick groups. That is something I really dislike having to do. Everybody immediately turned to somebody else and I would have to insinuate myself into someone else's group. The whole situation led to a huge menopausal meltdown of rather embarrassing proportions.
      Fortunately for me, Deanna and Julie invited me into their group. By this time, being overwhelmed and exhausted and exasperated in every way, I was not prepared to sit down and figure out the project from start to finish in a specific way. We did leave the media lab and go into the library to discuss the project. That really was a good thing--to get away from the noise of the other groups. I found that I had a role to play in the video, that is, acquisition of the music ( I was able to use music that my son Tim had written), and being the actor, and supplying a few props. Julie and Deanna had different roles. Deanna was the director and storyboard maker, and Julie did the actual filming and understood  the editing program pretty well.
      The day of the making of the video went well--the taping of the video went as planned and Julie and Deanna did an excellent job of finding different camera angles and making sure they got all the shots necessary according to the storyboard layout. We then went back to the media lab and set about editing the video and adding the music to the finished video. I thought that the editing was difficult in spots. I did help a little bit with that task, but needed guidance in order to help! By the end, we were all very tired, and couldn't get the music to go onto the video. Julie finished it the next day with Ms. Mislevy's help, which was great. Deanna and I were very relieved tohear that all was well, and the project was completed.
    There were two very nice outcomes to the project. The first was that we were successful in our quest--a one-minute video that worked well! The other was finding out, to our delight, that our group worked very well together. We each played our part and complemented each other. I personally was very relieved not to have to be responsible for the technological part of it. To use the movie maker program, I would need a lot more practice with a "cheat sheet" next to me to remind me what to do next and how to fix mistakes, and how to save everything.