PROFESSOR: So on my way back from class,
I had time to reflect on today's lessons, I guess.
And to demonstrate how you can vlog about it instead
of writing a written post and to practice being on camera,
I decided to make a vlog instead.
Loosely edited, because I still forget
what I'm going to say sometimes, but I'll
keep it mostly raw footage.
So the first main thing I was thinking about
after talking with Elizabeth and a couple of you after class
and re-reading the comments on the annotated articles,
especially those on the Hank Green one,
is that I was thinking about how online video is a thing now.
And people don't necessarily always understand
how much of a thing online video is.
A lot of you in the class right now
seem to be coming from the perspective of scientists
learning how to communicate better.
And video is one method of communicating ideas
to a larger population.
And it's great, and it's wonderful,
and I'm clearly very in favor of using videos
to spread information.
A lot of people who are getting into online video in the more
modern day are people who have worked on productions, like TVs
and film, and come from a different medium background.
And they're trying to transition over to online video
and taking practices with them from those mediums,
like how to shoot correctly, how to edit,
how to compose a script, how to write a script,
how to edit a script, how to engage an audience
from those other mediums, which is all fine and good,
because it's helping online video evolve.
But then there are people like myself,
who watched online video, and grew up with it,
and started watching YouTube and the cheesy vloggers
as soon as they started.
And my editing practices-- the first time I ever filmed
and edited a vlog, it was filled with all these jump cuts
and pauses for comedic timing just because this is the way
that people like Charlie McDonald,
like the original Vlog Brothers channels,
would frame and put together their videos.
You would never see a movie edited with jump cuts
like these or a professional documentary like this,
but this editing style has evolved
because of online video, which is
kind of cool and kind of crazy.
It just become a way for people to start thinking about things
like editing and how to frame yourself
within whatever-- a webcam or a slightly high quality camera
can hold.
And thinking about your background as your room,
as something that demonstrates who you are-- it just so
happens that my desk faces opposite from my wall posters.
And because people are coming from all
these different perspectives, it makes
establishing a best practices type thing even harder.
Because online video, maybe five years ago, no one
would think to use it for education, specifically
for education, and channels like Sci Show
and Minute Physics and the Brain Scoop wouldn't exist.
But now they're being watched and things like that.
And so it's constantly evolving.
People are constantly trying to find ways
to make it more interesting.
And so it's hard to try and describe how to do something
when everyone's making it up as they go.
The second thing I wanted to talk about
was getting overwhelmed at the beginning of the class.
This class can seem scary at first,
especially because we're throwing a lot of new things
at you.
A lot of you have not uploaded videos before,
or are relatively unfamiliar with video making
and relatively unfamiliar with platforms like Tumblr
and things like that.
And all of a sudden, you're tossing around ideas,
and it's really scary to pick an idea
that you could conceivably commit
to for an entire month or three weeks of your life developing
and fleshing out and building upon.
And especially today, it's fun to bounce around
ideas off of sixth graders, to have conversations,
to see what excites people, and excites your peers,
and excites them.
But ultimately, you have to start somewhere,
to pick an idea, run with it, make something.
And even if that thing is kind of crappy--
even if your first draft of your script is kind of crappy,
as scripts tend to be the first time you write one ever,
and that's OK.
Because it's all about revision.
That's one of the wonderful things about digital media,
is that you can always re-record,
you can always re-dub, you can always rewrite and re-film.
So I think the biggest thing going in tomorrow
is just getting something you can work with, getting ideas
concretely down on paper, which sometimes can be
a really hard step in itself.
Because you want your idea to be perfect,
and you know what good content looks like.
But it's very different knowing what good content looks like
and getting to that level where you can produce good content.
And that gap is really frustrating sometimes.
Yeah.
That's all I have to say.