What I Learned at Click Teacher Summer Camp & Final Product

This summer I was one of 24 attendees fortunate enough to have the opportunity to participate in the Click Teacher Summer Camp: A Video Production Immersion Experience hosted by Wisconsin Public Television and PBS Student Reporting Labs.  This PD opportunity is one that has been traditionally available in Washington D.C. but they brought it locally to Madison.  It was held on the UW-Madison campus and we spent most of our time between the WPT studios and UW-Madison campus buildings for the three days that we were there.

DAY 1

My Awesome Team

You know a good PD session when you see it, and this one knocked it out of the park by first beginning with relationships!  We all had an opportunity to introduce who we were, where we are from, and where we use video production in our roles.  From there we were given an image.  It turns out that image matched us with our production partner.  Cameras matched with lenses and lights matched with light stands.  From there we were required to make sure that we had a camera, lens, light, and light stand together and those would be our teams for the duration of the camp.  The focus from the time we arrived on campus through lunch was RELATIONSHIPS.  They shared a bit of information but really they provided us a bunch of time to get to know one another.  One of the strategies, besides the cards that helped us find our partners was a "Two Truths and a Wish" activity that we did in teams of four that really helped continue to build relationships and support one another.  I enjoyed the opportunity to get to know Tom (informally) during lunch to help me begin to formulate interview questions for the piece that I would be creating.

In the afternoon we attended three rotations that included:

Our Task

• Camera 101
• Audio 101
• Interview Techniques and Storytelling

They were all crash courses and included the information that we would need to be successful in producing our piece.  I enjoyed the opportunity to get to know how to use the camera that I brought, understand better what audio options were available, as well as have the opportunity to obtain some background around storytelling for the piece that we would be creating.  We were tasked with creating the following for our partner (see image to the right). 

Another great strategy that they modeled was the reflection discussion that we had at the end of the first day.  We took turns rolling a die and responding to the prompt that corresponded with the number that we rolled on the die.  

The prompts included:

1. I want to remember
2. Something I learned today
3. One word to sum up what you learned
4. Celebrate something you already knew
5. I’m still fuzzy about
6. Aha! Moment

This is a strategy that is easily adaptable to our classrooms and I plan on modeling it with staff as part of our back to school PD!  My biggest Aha! moments were the modeling that they did with grouping strategies, this discussion, and the emphasis on forming relationships from the moment we walked through the door!  The energy in the room was invigorating.

Day 2

Day 2 was just as exciting and action packed as Day 1.  Here is what we did:

• Artful Composition Presentation
• Interview Question Worktime
• Lighting Rotations
• Off Camera/Continuous Lighting
• Ambient Lighting, Reflectors & Flags
• Lunch (Journalism Ethics presentation)
• Lights, Camera, Action!
• Interviews in Crews
• B-roll in Crews (various locations across campus)
• Share out
• Terrace Time (social)

Interviewing (A-Roll)

During the artful composition presentation we learned a lot of useful techniques in how to film, the types of film shots, and things we should consider in making a quality piece.  The lighting rotations taught us about how to use lighting to produce a quality piece and we went outside to test some of the lighting tools.  During lunch we listened to a presentation by a Wisconsin Public Radio team member and after lunch it was GO TIME!

We had an opportunity to secure our A-roll interview footage and go out on campus to film our B-roll.  The interview process went very smoothly for our group.  We were paired with mentors Jessie and Lena to help us with our filming.  It was great having mentors right along side of us in the trenches when it came to filming.  While heading outside I happened to lose one of the parts to the tripod so all of the filming that I did was with the steadiness of my hands.  I was disappointed, but rolled with it (only to find the piece back in our interview room upon returning).  I had a lot of fun thinking up creative B-roll shots to go with the interview footage that we had just collected.  One opportunity that was funny that I missed was of someone doing parkour outside of Alumni Park.  Lena told me to watch him and film him, but I stopped recording just in time for him to start doing cool stuff.  That was a missed opportunity!  I need to learn to have more patience and take my time when filming. When we returned back to the studio they had us draw out to reflect on something that we learned during Day 2.  Here is what I shared about my missed opportunity and lost tripod piece:

Day 2 Reflection

After the social, my partner and I decided to get some extra B-roll footage at a nearby grassy area close to the hotel.  I wanted to secure some pieces that we needed props for and he was a trooper willing to get this extra credit footage with me!

DAY 3

I was a bit stressed about the interview and capturing B-roll footage on Day 2 and went into Day 3 a bit more relaxed.  Fortunately I had some creative juices flowing and I was fortunate that my partner was willing to take another two B-roll shots in the morning when we arrived at the studio.  I'm not sure I could have asked for a more flexible partner!  Our schedule for the day included the following:

• Rotations
• Paper Edit Planning
• Implementation Planning
• Setting Up Your Project Presentation (organizing files)
• Lunch (Q&A with Student Reporting Labs)
• Hands-On Editing (2.5 hours)
• Screening and concession stand
• That's a wrap!

Paper Edit

While we were out capturing our B-roll footage on Tuesday, one of our mentors went and put our video files into the computer to secure a transcript of the interview.  This was a pretty awesome process that transcribed everything so that we could create a paper storyline of our video with the golden nugget audio bytes from the transcript.  We also attended a rotation that helped us to better understand how to take back what we learned as well as the resources that were available to us within the Student Reporting Labs curriculum.  We took a walk to one of the mac libraries on campus to find our pieces already pre-loaded onto computers by WPT staff.  The file transfer process was really well thought out and they basically took that off of our hands.  Before lunch we were introduced with Adobe Premier as our editing software and uploaded our files into folders on the desktop with the following navigation:

Editing

ANDI KORNOWSKI CLICK (Folder)

• 01 Project
• 02 Footage
• Interview 
• B-Roll
• 03 Images
• 04 Music
• 05 Graphics
• 06 Exports

This is a file structure that I am going to adopt for my own projects and for when I use it with students.  Each one of those files was a unique folder with the names that were listed above.  I have done quite a bit of editing in the past, so the editing process wasn't too daunting of a task, and I still learned SO MUCH from our mentors that were in the room.  We had about 2.5 total hours to put together a 2 minute story about our teammate.  It helped tremendously to have our paper edit in front of us to pull out our audio bytes from the interview that we needed.  In total I ended up pulling out 4 minutes of bytes and had to cut it down to 2 minutes.  I settled with a little over 2 minutes, to allow myself time to make some other adjustments and add in the B-roll.  

Screening & Concessions

The structure they set up within the editing session included showing us how to pull in our video footage as well as batch renaming of files. They then let us work and interrupted us one more time to show us some other editing tricks having to do with fixing the color gradient of video, as well as adjust some of the audio.  I never knew you should leave the original audio on and just decrease the volume!  I always muted it in the past!  WPT staff were also very thoughtful and had flash drives already loaded into the computers that we saved our files on for easy export for the screening back at the studio.  I was incredibly pleased with prototype #1 of my video and am proud to share it below.  We walked back to the studio and participated in a screening with the best movie concessions (like a real theater)! Every part of this camp was incredibly well thought out!

Here is the piece that I created about my partner Tom and took through the entire video production process that I outlined above.  I am very proud of what I was able to put together in that very short period of time and I would love your feedback!  This was the first time that I received any formal training in video production and can say that I am both excited and look forward to creating more pieces in the future as well as sharing what I learned with both students and staff!  This was an incredible learning opportunity!  I am leaving with much more confidence than I had walking in the door!