Digital Video Reflection

When thinking of how I wanted to produce a digital movie project I debated over whether to make a book trailer or to promote a library. After careful thought and deliberation I decided to promote the Teachers Resource Center. The TRC is housed in the brand new Phyllis J. Washington College of Education and Human Sciences. Having moved into a large, spacious room it was a perfect time to create a digital video to promote the library.

I started out just assuming that we would be using windows movie maker or iMovie to create our movies. When we received the assignment I was surprised to read that we would be using an online resource to produce these movies.  Researching the Web 2.0 movie making sites was slightly scary. I wasn’t sure how I was going to promote the TRC in only thirty to sixty seconds while incorporating pictures and audio. Through my research it was very relieving to find out that through most of the Web 2.0 resources provided audio that was easy to add after you had compiled all of the pictures.

I chose to use the movie making tool Animoto. It seemed user friendly at the time and the videos that I previewed were all nicely put together. After using Animoto for free the first time, I think that next time I would try out a different program or pay to have more control over the movie making process. There were many aspects of Animoto that turned out to be not so user friendly. Being as there was only thirty seconds to work with, it was hard to choose which pictures that I could incorporate into my final project. There was no tool in Animoto that allowed the producer to set the amount of time each picture showed on the screen. I had to go through the process of editing and rendering and re-editing and re-rendering the project several times before it turned out the way I like it.

Having completed this assignment and taken the time to look at others projects I feel that I definitely have room for improvement when it comes to creating a thirty to sixty second movie. I feel that this project could be very beneficial in a classroom or library setting. Student could create movie trailers, create digital book reports, or even create a vide promoting their classroom or library. I feel that it is very important to introduce technology and Web 2.0 tools to young children because as time goes by technology is only going to become more prevalent.