Over the past several weeks, I have been getting a crash course in how video editors put together hours and hours of film footage in order to create a 10 minute video. It's been an amazing learning experience.
In late December and January, our District's TV and Film studio has been filming teachers, students, parents, and administrators participating in our Writing Workshop pilot. I lost track of how many hours of interview and classroom footage has been captured. The task was simple, or so we thought, create a five minute video to share with our Board as part of our update report.
I learned that creating a video is very much like writing a story. What is the message you want to tell and with pictures and snippets of interviews how will you tell it? At one point, we had identified 2 hours of interview clips and hours and hours of "B" roll. Far from the 5-10 minute video that we needed. Though video editors work with film, they are very much like writers and book editors. They need to see how story should come together and know what is needed and what is not necessary.
Thanks to the amazing staff at KLRN who have worked in the editing cave for hours and hours narrowing down and cutting out excess until a story emerged, we will be unveiling an 8 minute video - 3 minutes longer than we originally anticipated but much shorter than it was a few weeks ago. It was exciting to see the almost finished video with "B" roll included. Our fabulous editors will be polishing and cleaning for a bit longer to make it perfect for our unveiling.
After spending hours in the editing cave with this fabulous team, I have come to a place of greater appreciation for the hard work that goes into making the incredible videos that they produce for District. Can't wait to see the final video!
For the month of March, I will be writing and posting daily as part of the Slice of Life Challenge. Thank you to the Two Writing Teachers for hosting the March Slice of Life Challenge.