When you ask a kid why they are excited for high school science class, they will usually say labs, fire, and explosions! This is definitely something I have been looking forward to and have enjoyed doing, but before we can get into the more dangerous stuff, we need to learn about LAB SAFTEY! (pause for outdated music).

The Assignment

So for our first official science project this year, we are doing a mini unit on lab saftey, and what better way to convey this then through a video. We were tasked with making a mini skit around one minute long demonstrating some of the ways you can be safe (and unsafe) during an experiment. We also were told to come up with characters, a story, and use our previously accuired film knowledge from other PLP classes  to bring our video to life. Our group decided that we were going to make this video with a 90’s kids PSA special tone, and add as many cheesy affects and “quality” music tracks as possible. Plus, to top it off I dressed up in a mascot costume to become the crusader of the lab, Sam the Saftey Wolf!

Stay lab safe kids!

To start making our film, my group got together and starting off by creating a script. We decided what would be the most important lab saftey things to share, along with which ones would be the most interesting to present. We then went to my house to start filming, and spent a good amount of time deciding the main camera angle, preparing the lighting, and making sure there was enough room for everyone in the shots. After that, it was time to role! We took turns being off screen and with the camera, and discovered a really good filming technique if you don’t have that much time. What you do is you keep the camera rolling for a long time and act out a skit in front of it for a minute or so. Then you voice over the lines after, and have tons of extra b-roll if you need it.

Now came the time for editing, and no 90’s special is complete without some cheesy CGI. In order to get in some special affects, we made use of IOS 11’s newest feature, screen recording with the awesome app Keynote. We put gifs and appearing text in keynote, then screen recorded it and it actually looked pretty nice. We then decided on music, added narroration, and got some nice transitions, and we were ready for presentation.

Hollywood quality effects!6

What I Have Learned 

This creating this video has helped me learn about a lot more than just lab safety. For one, I feel like I understand video story structure much better. What I mean by this is before what I believed my teachers meant by story structure was a set format that all stories has to follow, and I didn’t agree with this. However, after completing this video I realize that they meant all videos have a story structure, even if not a specific story, such as a fact video like this one. I feel this clarification will help me expand my video formats a lot in the future.

I also learned how to use lighting in unique ways. One way we did this was by having a faint light on in the background of a scene where the main lights go off, and had it on the side the characters were facing which allowed them to still be visible. We also decided to film in a white room with white lights because it put emphasis on the special affects and the colourful clothing of some of the characters. Another thing this project has helped me learn more about is ducking and normalizing, which are terms to describe the tone and volume of the audio. We learned about these terms in another class, but I really feel I got to use them to a greater extent here.

Overall, this was a fun project, and can’t wait to see what in store next time!

Here is the final product: