MMP & "Baby Bears"

For my MMP screencast, I have outlined the vehicle that I am going to use to enable students to upload their videos/presentations/images to the internet for their peers and myself to critique. I am using a free discussion board called invisionfree.com and it's used a lot for gaming sites. I've found a template that I think works well with the whole 7th grade Life Science theme -- it's not too dark, or too light. Please let me know if you think the font needs to be darker/bigger. Link to Mrs. Cella's Biology 101 Discussion Board. And link to: My MMP Screencast.

The cloud helps brighten it up in my opinion, and I like that the forum space does not stretch to the sides of the page ... it makes it hard to read and is very overwhelming in my opinion. In the screencast I mention condensing the forums into sub forums, the reason for this is to streamline, and to create more white space. My goal was to make the forum legible, appealing graphically, as well as spaced out. I have seen many forums that have large font that is super narrow, and design-wise that does not work. The green border around the whole forum gives it structure, and gives the eye something follow down the page.

My banner stinks ... at least I think so. I don't want something that is going to distract from the whole forum, but at the same time I feel like it needs more substance. So suggestions, please!!

One a different note ...

Below is my video for the 60 second video. The overall feeling that I wanted to convey was a touch of nostalgia, as well as a 'homey' feel. I wanted it to be heart warming, and sweet, almost like going back and watching a home video ... The name of the clip is "Baby Bears" because we call the oldest boy in the video Luca Bear, and the baby, Noah, is Double Bears (or perhaps that both of them together, I forget!). The kids in the video are my adorable nephews!!

I tried to use different techniques as outlined in the White Spaces text. I attempted to pan, specifically in the shot when looking at the baby, Noah, over his mother's shoulder. In the clip where Luca, the older boy, is being thrown in the air, I wanted to sit on the ground shoot "up". The feeling that I wanted to convey was the child flying through the air, and I emphasized this by slowing it down 0.5 times. It was hard to film exactly what I had outlined (SEE HERE FOR STORYBOARD). I was working with children, and they are obviously unpredictable. Luca wouldn't kiss his baby brother for anything, so my "final shot" was thrown out the window ... But he did perform perfectly for my opening shot where I imagined him running at the camera, and placing his face as close as possible. Obviously the music aspect of the video was important as well, and I chose a song that my grandmother used to sing, and if I had thought of this sooner, I would have recorded my mother-in-law singing the song, and added it. But I found a beautiful, acappella version of "You Are My Sunshine" by Sara Hickman, that reminded me of a mother singing to her child ... and I used my new tool, MP3 Editor (that I critiqued) to cut the track so that it only did the first verse and went right to the humming harmonies.

On a side note, the storyboard helped A LOT ... especially when you only have a select window of opportunity before the kids need to sleep ... so I knew exactly what shots I wanted. I had Ryan (the dad) throw Luca up in the air. I knew I wanted an over the shoulder shot with Lauren and the baby ... so it made everything go so quickly.

My biggest issue was lighting. And I think this is one thing I really learned. Even though you think a room is well lit, it probably is not. Luckily in my case it didn't matter so much because I wanted to convey a feeling of being at home, and being with family, so the dim lighting worked to my advantage at times. The best lighting was when Luca was being throw in the air. The room had white walls and bright, bright lights.

I made two versions of the video: REGULAR COLOR and SEPIA COLOR (to give it more of a nostalgic feel ... but I think some of the images just came out creepy due to the lack of lighting ... but my favorite sepia image is the over the shoulder shot of baby Noah).