I worked on this assignment with Sunita Devadas and Eileen Wilson. They worked on the lesson plan and rubric, while I put the multimedia presentation together. The only thing I needed to change since showing our project the first time, was to add an audio voiceover track. I used iMovie to do this since the project was already in iMovie.
Isn’t curious how we don’t like to hear our own voices recorded? This project should have been done a month ago, but I was really dreading putting in the voiceover. Not because it was hard. It was actually quite easy. The hard part was listening to myself when I reviewed it. I really would have preferred getting someone else to do the voiceover. I think this experience has made me realize that if a student wants to record someone else’s voice rather than their own, we shouldn’t discourage it. It is probably not because they don’t want to do the work and they are lazy. It is for the very same reason that I didn’t want to do it. I have to hear myself speak! Ugh! Do I really sound like that?
Well enough about the voiceover. Let me explain how I completed my multimedia project. First I used iPhoto to collect all the photos that I had taken for this project. I separated the photos into albums with the album name as the compositional tip. Then I selected “CREATE” at the bottom of the screen, and then chose “SLIDESHOW.” I then chose a theme for each album, so that the animation would be different for each of the compositional tip topics. I then changed the audio music of the theme to music that I had already downloaded into my iTunes, from www. freeplaymusic.com, called “Photograph.” I used the freeplaymusic because it is royalty free, so that I wouldn’t have any copyright issue by publishing my movie onto YouTube.
After creating each album into a slideshow with different themes, these slideshows then appeared into my iPhoto library as slideshow. I then opened iMovie and created a new movie and imported the slideshows using the media browser button that can find the iPhoto slideshows and move them easily into iMovie. I then dragged each movie up into my movie pane one at a time, and put them in the order that I wanted them to appear.
I added the sound track to the background of the whole project by dragging it to the back of the clips rather than directly on a specific clip. This then became my background music for the media slideshow presentation. It wasn’t long enough, so I dragged to song in again a second time so that it would end when the clips ended. I also double clicked on the audio clip and used a fade out for 1.5 seconds at the end of the music to help end the movie with the fading of the music.
I finished the project by adding the voiceover. I first researched what I wanted to say. Typed out my script, and then read it while I hit the voiceover microphone in iMovie, and then touched the clip where I wanted it to go in the movie to begin the recording. It counted down three second and then I began to speak. I hit the microphone in iMovie again to stop the recording.
Here is our finished product for a multimedia presentation and Unit Planner on a google doc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/10OWfyTijdBXtDnczHKWgRB1-XojE9lAxhZQ0i7Duwug/edit
Kim Cofino (@mscofino) said:
Fantastic! I definitely know the feeling of not wanting to record your voice. I have the same problem – it’s even worse when people want to see me too! I always procrastinate as long as possible to actually doing it, but in the end it’s always good enough. When I’m doing something like that I usually tell myself that I’m going to do it in a very specific (short) amount of time, and only re-take the audio or video if I make a major mistake. It seems to help me to set some really strict parameters, otherwise I’ll be re-recording again and again to get it “perfect”.
Love the final video! This would be so helpful for so many people! Glad you’ve added your voice so that it does stand alone (rather than the presentation you gave a the workshop). Well done!
Jean Hino said:
Grace,
Why is it so many of us don’t want to hear our own voice? I love the video and need to watch it several more times to improve my own photo taking. I like how you had the music playing in the background even with the voiceover. I’m still working on all of the ins and outs of imovie. Maybe we should show this in some of the other classes to the students and teachers to get ideas for photo taking.
mrnorris1983 said:
What a great video, you should be proud, this resource can be used for many years to come. I read on Carl Knudsen’s blog how he teachers photography (https://esartguy.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/the-rule-of-thirds/). He uses some good videos, but I’m sure he would be very impressed with yours and would love to use it in his class, you should suggest it to him.
Grace Yamato said:
Thanks for your kind words, if he wants it he is welcome to use it, but I wouldn’t presume that I should suggest he use it. Maybe it would be better coming from you, than me.
Daryl_I said:
Grace,
A very impressive and informative video. The multi-layer sound track with the piano and your voice over makes this both informative and pleasing to view. I also enjoy your sakura photo. Thanks for sharing.