For my digital media project, I created a video clip on the background information surrounding Great Expectations, a novel by Charles Dickens published during the Victorian Era. This video is used to accompany my unit plan for my Engl3391 Teaching Literature to Adolescents class. The purpose of the digital movie is to get students interested in Great Expectations and at the same time learn background information about the Victorian period that will be useful to them when we study the novel.
The process first began with the script, and then 195 slides were created for every different image that will be seen in the movie. At the same time, I also recorded my script. This was the second most tedious part, as I played back recordings, after finding them not usable, I had to restart the paragraph all over again. There were at least 20 takes per paragraph, for a total of 8 paragraphs. On the other hand, I can say that I can remember the script in my sleep after recording its contents. The next step would be making the movie.
As I have never used Windows Movie Maker before, I first tried to import the PowerPoint presentation onto the screen. To my dismay, it didn’t work. Eventually, I changed to another movie editing software, called Sony Vegas Pro. Before placing all the slides in, I had to use PicPick, a software that allows me to cut certain portions of the screen and use it as an image. After doing that about 198 times, since I had to redo some of them, the graphics were ready. The second paragraph gave me a hard time, as it took me a million years to get the “Background Information of Publication” heading to match the voice. As I progressed through making each split second of the movie, I learned that with headings, I have to listen to syllables, and mark down the times when they are enunciated and end. The timeline, of course, had to be adjusted to really tiny segments. As mentioned before, showing the typed-out letters on the heading was the part that gave me the most gynormous headache ever. Compared to this, the monotonousness brought on by the recording process seemed like nothing at all. On a positive note, this was a learning experience.
From start to finish, the movie took a tremendous amount of time and energy, but when it was done, I was so proud of myself, as I’ve realized that each millisecond on a digital movie took contains much sweat and labor. I will come to appreciate all the hard work done by the professionals who make digital movies, especially this one. The wonderful part is that this movie was created with my unit plan in mind, meaning that I can use this to engage student learning and to introduce them to the canon.
