Hold up! Let me just get my videographer glasses on. Ok, all good. Now I can see like a videographer! This helped me create 4 vibrant videos through the course of my most recent project. This maker project took me about 1 month to complete, from early October to early November.
To kill two birds with one stone, this project combined goal setting & planning with making vibrant videos that tell a story. I thought it was an odd combo, especially for some videos (showcased throughout the post), but I’d have to work around it.
Before jumping into making my first vibrant video, my cast and I gathered to review what goals are, why they matter, and how you can use them to achieve what you really want. We started by pondering what we enjoy doing, what are our biggest values are, and what inspires us through a series of questionnaires and think it & ink it prompts. We read through parts of an ebook called What Do You Really Want?: How to Set a Goal and Go for It by Beverly Bachel. This book gave us hot tips (tips for success) and think it & ink it prompts. I enjoyed doing the quick think it & ink it prompts, because they got your brain questioning, imagining, and visualizing and then jotting it down in our goal trackers right away. These are some you can do to!
So with that, we started making our first vibrant video based on what inspires us. I’m really proud of my inspiration video (although it took a chunk of time out one of my thanksgiving weekend). I think this was also the easiest video to create because it was individual, the other ones were in random groups from the cast. Collaborating can be hard, and your visions are accepted, rejected, modified or narrowed down when you work in group projects. By creating this video alone, I could make my vision for the video come to life. I used some fun angles and framed some nice shots to enhance the mood and story that I was trying to communicate.
Make sure to watch this one!
As we continued working through this project, we learnt about the history of film. Not one person is associated with the invention of film; it slowly built, grew and developed with multiple people and their innovations. An important figure in the history of film and moving image was Edward Muybridge, because he took a step between still photography and recorded motion. In 1879, he invented the zoopraxiscope, which rotated still images on glass to make it look like pictures were in motion. He could project up to 200 still images on a screen, that looked like the photographed subject was moving. When in elementary school, I remember making a 12 (not 200) picture strip, that we rotated on a small, cheap version of a zoopraxiscope. The horse photography strip was one of the first still picture animations.
And then Thomas Edison’s invented the Kinetoscope, a machine where one person at a time could view glimpses of actual real life events; including the first ever recorded sneeze. Another big milestone was in 1903, the first narrative film called “The Great Train Robbery” by Edwin S. Porter was released. The first films were only 10-16 minutes long, because they were shot on 1 reel of film. These films were silent films, as incorporating sound (dialogue) wasn’t invented until around the 1930’s.
From that, business men became interested in making the first movie theatres; turning this form of an entertainment into a profitable film industry. Anyways…let’s fast forward. Today movies are an important form of entertainment, and help us escape from our day to day lives.
My cast of 3 planned, shot and edited our second video with our partially developed videography skills. We based this video around a goal-getter story in the “What do you really want?” novel. The story was about 2 twin sisters, who got the idea of giving families living in a nearby homeless shelter everything they needed to bake oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies. The girls thought that those families, like their own, would enjoy baking and bonding in the kitchen. You can learn more about that goal getter story here, but for now, back to my video. We used multiple shots and angles to create an interesting silent film. The thing is, without a backstory explanation, I don’t think audience viewers would clearly understand the story; it’s a bit confusing.
Coming back to our goal setting, we wrote down some short-term goals (to accomplish in the next days, weeks, or months), as well as a few long-term goals ( to accomplish in two, ten, or twenty years from now) of ours and then made them smart. A S.M.A.R.T goal means one that is Saavy, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time bound. We decided on one goal that we wanted to focus on, and then made goal ladder’s to help us achieve our goal. Goal ladder’s describe in around 10 actionable steps toward your end goal. I asked myself what will it take to climb from one rung to the next towards achieving my goal.
Then our goal setting was put on hold, because our maker plans were interrupted with humanities work! We made our 3rd videos for the Geography of the West exhibition. We used the same video making skills, as we did for the second vibrant video; including planning, story boarding, adding tittles, filters and stickers to enhance our video. My group was in charge of the introduction video; the one that the audience would watch before going to see our ebook presentations. This one was challenging to make because in a group of 6, not everyone is doing something productive. There were lots of “ I’m not in charge of that, I thought you were doing that!” and “what can I help with?”comments. I tried to help divide tasks and ask every group member for their opinion, or feedback, so that everyone’s ideas would be considered. Here’s the intro video we created.
Our final video was a tutorial video about how to set goals and go for them. I storyboarded our entire video plan before going to shoot it and edit it.
And then here’s my final vibrant video. I feel as though my group and I could’ve made this video much more interesting if we had used a bigger variety of different shots and angles during our shooting. It would capture the viewer’s attention a bit more. I think our video has a strong framework/ foundation, but we could’ve elaborated on our storyline; like the fun scenes of a goal getter in action examples.
Overall, this project has helped me persevere through goal setting, and collaboration in groups. I contributed during group activities with peers and to achieve our goals of making vibrant videos. I feel like I’ve learnt more about myself with all the think it and ink it prompts, and breaking down my goals in to smaller, more achievable steps. This project has inspired me to set more S.M.A.R.T goals, given the benefits it has on becoming who you want to be. I feel like I do set set goals, but I don’t always wright them down or break down the steps I need to take to achieve them, so they aren’t official, true, set goals…yet. I think I need to set goals more often; write them down, and track them in my goal tracker. Here are my favourite inspirational goal getter quotes from the book, you can read them if ever you get stuck or need some motivation in achieving your goals.
Feel free to share a S.M.A.R.T goal of yours, or any feedback you have on the videos, in the comments section below! Also, consider liking 👍 the vibrant videos if you enjoyed watching them! Don’t forget to be a goal getter!