How To Pass Video Productions Class

This course focuses on creating a website on a topic of your own choosing. In everything you do, it is important to introduce yourself. This is the first thing you have to do in Video Productions class. The website being created has to have an author and a purpose. The purpose of my website was to bring awareness to mental health within all communities by creating a safe space for those affected. Once the purpose of your website is established, it’s time to get to work. 

First, we learned how to do a Five Shot Sequence. For this assignment, I practiced singing the steps to creating a five shot sequence to the tune of “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” in order to help remember them. The five steps are a close up of the hands, the face, a wide shot, over the shoulder and unusual. Along with learning how to properly shoot a five shot sequence, we also learned how to write a voiceover, how to edit the clips together using Adobe Premier Pro and how to add music in the background. After few practice shots, it was time to create one for my beat or purpose. My first five shot sequence featured a freshmen KNWD intern googling healthy ways to cope with stress anxiety. My voiceover was written in order to explain what the viewer was seeing. 

The next step in creating our website was to conduct an interview and integrate a five shot sequence and voiceover. I interviewed KNWD General Manager, Tifphany McClinton, on how she handles the stress and anxiety that comes from her student job. I also learned how to add a basic lower third graphic on the video that told who was speaking and what their position or significance was to my beat. We made two videos with the same format and my next video featured an interview with Matthew Craig, who is re-chartering the National Association of Black Journalists at Northwestern State University. 

The next skill we learned was how to properly perform a stand-up. A stand-up is a quick introduction or close to the topic you are about to or have already presented to your viewers through video. When giving a stand-up, the speaker stands in front of a camera with a microphone in an area pertaining to the subject of the video. The speaker only use two sentences to either explain or recap the video. After a few practice stand-ups, it was time to bring it all together with a news package.

When creating a news package, we learned how to write a VO/SOT/VO. This stands for a voice over, sound on tape and another voice over. A news package opens with a voice over on a five shot sequence followed by an interview which is then followed by another voice over and five shot sequence. Before repeating these steps for a longer news package, a stand-up is conducted in between the two sequences in order to connect them together. My first package was about stress anxiety with students during midterm week. Unfortunately, before we had more time to practice news packages tragedy struck.

School officially became online on March 12, 2020 due to the spread of COVID-19. This put a huge dent in our plans for Video Productions class, but we made the best of it. For the rest of the semester we did video diaries. In these video diaries, we were allowed to be as creative as we wanted and have fun. My first video diary was a lazy day routine. In the video, I did a voiceover of me explaining what I do throughout the day in Quarantine. My second video diary was quick video of me updating how I felt emotionally. That day was particularly rough because I was beginning to feel down during quarantine. I missed my friends and family a lot. The third video diary was my favorite. I vlogged my quarantine birthday “celebration”. I had a photoshoot with a mirror outside, then I ate crawfish with my family and my mom bought me a cake without the candles because you know germs. The last video diary was a video of me learning how to ride a bike. I finally learned how to ride one after being scared for so long because in quarantine you try new things. Another really fun video we did as a class was a special news cast from our rooms. We used the video chat website, Zoom to create a news show. I created the graphics and edited the final product. We met every Monday and Wednesday in normal class times on Zoom to come together and watch videos and discuss the next assignment. These meetings turned into therapy after a while because it was nice to have human interaction during quarantine.

The last step in video productions class is to write a final paper and create a final video. Although, we had a pretty big setback with coronavirus, I would still say this class was amazing, and I learned a lot of valuable skills even while working from home.