And....Action!

Hello visitors! In the previous post I told you about the use of storyboarding in the video creation process. In this particular case, some teachers have decided to create an educational video about Global Warming and Climate change. The video is planned for 5th graders in the Natural Science subject as a recreation of the different changes caused mainly by pollution and the consequences in the weather conditions. The video features a TV station broadcasting a documentary from different world locations in which an interviewer asks locals about their situation and exposing the issues. It was recorded with some sense of humour to catch students' attention but also to make them reflect about these environmental issues and start a research on them. 

To create the video they have used Vegas Pro 15.0 (formerly known as Sony Vegas), a pay-for-use video editing software. The software was firstly released by Sonyc Foundry, then by Sony Creative Software and now by Magix. Vegas can be used to create customized film-like videos or outstanding slideshows. 

Image by Alex Molina. CC0 Creative Commons License

When opening the software, the workspace is divided in two main areas, as you can see in the image. On top you have several useful windows, such as the effects list, the samples list and the video preview. At the bottom you have the project timeline, which is where you are going to work and manage the video. It has an intuitive user interface and it features real-time multitrack video and audio editing, special effects and compositing tools, but it's not an easy tool for beginners, so if you're planning to use it in the classroom, you'd better prepare a good tutorial for your students, and focus on the main features you want to teach them. You can add to the project a wide range of video and audio file formats, as well as pictures.

For this project, the following media files have been used:

Video: MTS files

Pictures: JPEG and GIF files (CC0 Creative Commons License)

Audio: MP3 and WAV files, stored in Soundcloud. Here you can listen both audio files.

To start working, the first thing is to import all the needed files (drag & drop) to the project media window or directly to the timeline. You can quickly add or remove files from the project just by right-clicking on the track. After that, you need to think about the order of the different files in the timeline, just as you want them to appear. In this video they wanted to apply a chroma effect on the video file, changing the green background previously recorded and using a picture instead, so the picture needs to be aligned with the video file and clicking on the fx icon to apply. Then the transitions between the video files are placed using a picture and adding the music to the project. Finally the credit roll is placed to finish the video.

Here's the final result, the GREEN TV clip: