Book+Trailer+Projects

We will be experimenting with making book trailers. For this class session (October 10/12/2011). We will have "hands-on" time to learn the basics of Movie Maker.

You can also use iMovie (on macs) or you can download Microsoft Photostory or Microsoft Live Moviemaker. iMovie should come free on your mac. Movie Maker came free on older PC's. Newer PC's may not have moviemaker, but you can download photostory or Live Moviemaker for free. Most of the language or commands are pretty similar between programs: once you understand the concept, you can look for the tools that go with that particular software.A really cool option is "WeVideo." We video is an online video editing software- with collaborative features. Think about this for group projects, especially! We won't look at it much tonight... but put it on your list.

Students learning and growing in the digital age need to not just demonstrate knowledge and content, but the ability to create something new from their knowledge and content. Making movies is fun and adaptable to many instructional content areas in k-12 curriculum. Start with a manageable project... like a 90 second book trailer. Or, try using the movie as a test, where you can provide the images and essential question, and let students prove they know "the story." I used this approach with history classes in for both 10th and 11th graders.

Here is a rubric I used with a teacher who assigned Book Trailers to Senior AP English students. [|Sample Book Trailer.pdf] This assignment was a homework assignment, so kids had lots of options for completing. We demonstrated how to use basic software and ideas for storyboards, but students had a lot of freedom to do what worked for them.

Here is a sample rubric for how you might use movies with pre-determined content. [|Sample Mini movie rubric.doc] I used this for history classes and counted the movie as a "test." I did this early in the year so all students knew the basic concept of making a movie, so we could do more with this concept later in the year.

Ok... so let's get started.This is on the wiki, so if you are a "techie" you can move on your own. If you need some instruction, work with me.

these are the basic steps for the Movie Maker hands-on tutorial tonight:

1. Decide on a book for a subject of a book trailer. 2. Brainstorm and list the main points of that book. 3. Find images to go with this outline of main ideas for the book. 4. Save those images to one folder or place on the computer. 5. Open moviemaker. Import all of the images. 6. Look at transitions between images and look at effects to go onto images. 7. Add titles and credits. 8. Find music to import. If you use photostory, there is an option to create music. (Same with iMovie- garage band and WeVideo has pre-made files for use). 9. Add text slides.. you can add as "titles" and "credits" but put slide where you need it-- or you can type words into a powerpoint slide, and save that slide as a jpeg image to insert into your movie. 10. If you want to add narration.. do it here. You go into the "storyboard" view and click on the microphone icon. Then click "Start Narration" and begin speaking.. click "End/ Stop Narration" when you are finished. 11. Double check to make sure it is all that you need.. then "finish movie." This step finalizes the movie, so it saves it as an mp3 file.. which means, once you do this you can no longer edit the movie- so be sure you are finished.