Video Length

The Christchurch City Council has asked for a one-minute video.
This means that they want it to be one minute long! (State the obvious, why don't you?)
This means that one minute and 30 seconds is too long! And 45 seconds is too short!
I think a reasonable "tolerance" would be ten percent - this means that the video could be shorter or longer by 6 seconds.
It matters because charging for showing on TV is based on length.
It also matters because you need to DO what the client wants.

If it was impossible to do what they asked for, you would need to go back to them with a new proposal. This would involve renegotiating the brief.

Selecting footage

Selecting footage means making decisions for each video clip we have given you:

1. Do I want to use it at all?
2. Do I want to use all of it?
3. What part(s) do I want to use?

The result of this stage might look like this:

ArtsCentre1: no. Better to use a still, but Art Gallery is not going to attract young people much.

Botanic Gardens: yes, but needs trimming at both ends, to give 10 seconds. Would be good to get a shot of canoes on river.

Interesting discussion: Storyboard before or after selecting footage? If you were taking your own footage, I would suggest storyboarding first. However when you have video clips given to you it makes better sense to decide which are good enough to use and how long they are before storyboarding.

Copyright

When you are making something for a real customer and a real reason, you need to be "squeaky clean" about copyright. This means that EVERYTHING you use MUST be either copyright free or your own personal work. If you wish to use something that is copyrighted, you must ask for and get permission, and keep the evidence.
Just so there is no excuse for misunderstanding, EVERYTHING includes

• Video
• Still images
• Music
• And anything else!

And MUST means MUST!

Finding copyright-free material can be a challenge. When looking for still images, use Google Advanced Images Search and under Usage Rights select "labeled for reuse". At home, you could try Flickr - amateur photographers are often keen to share their work.

You may not use mp3 files, even if you own the CD. If you want to read more about the laws around this, try these sites:

• NZ Law Society 2009
• Creative Freedom NZ
• Consumer (this is from 2008, so slightly out of date, but explains things simply and clearly)

YouTube

YouTube is great for sharing videos, but of course you can't access it at school. I went looking at its policies and found a page of terms and conditions that you are agreeing to by "using andor visiting" the website. When I copied and pasted the text into Word, it came to 11 pages and 3914 words! I intended to summarise the main points for you but it was just too hard! You can look at the page yourself at home!

Instead, I found YouTube's Community Guidelines and saved them in iNet > ICT > Year 11-12 >CCC Problem. This webpage goes onto two Word pages and is only 745 words long. And it gives us eight guidelines that are easy to summarise and understand. I suggest using these as the YouTube Community Code of Practice. These guidelines are a good place to start when thinking about the standards that the Christchurch City Council is likely to set.

Gantt Charts

A Gantt chart is a way of managing your time when you are working on a project.
It may show time in weeks or days.
It shows all the jobs that need to be done to complete the project.
At the beginning of the project it shows how long you think each stage in the project will take.
It is useful to help you keep track of where you are up to.

A Gantt chart can and should be revised as things change. If something takes longer than expected, there is less time to spend on something else. If something is faster that expected, you can spend more time on something else, or even finish earlier! It is important to show that your Gantt chart has need adjusting during the course of your project.

Instructions for Monday 20th July were to

1. Open your Gantt chart.
2. Check that you have included storyboarding.
3. Revise so that you can complete everything by the due date.
4. Print an updated version.
5. Handwrite comments about changes needed.
6. Put into your folder - do not remove the old one.

Happy Birthday to the Library!

Christchurch's Public Library is turning 150 this year!
There is a website especially for this event.
As part of the celebrations they are running a competition, asking people to make a 1-3 minute video about the library and upload it to YouTube. The information on the competition page gives some guidelines which are also relevant to our Rugby World Cup video project and may be useful for developing codes of practice.

Videos for YouTube

What makes a video popular?

I read an article in Canterbury that talks about a lecturer at Canterbury University who has put some teaching videos onto YouTube. You can see her videos here. She has used some creative techniques to keep people interested. In the article I read, she is quoted as saying

• "Some of the other YouTube videos in this subject area are quite painful to watch."
• "I wanted to make mine a lot more entertaining and it helped that my son has the creative talent to do that."

Her clips include

• her son's drawings
• anime images
• a dose of humour
• a character, Helen
• voice-overs

She says that keeping the action and narration fast is important, and aims to keep the videos short.