After reading through chapters 11 and 12, I feel
that I have a pretty good basic understanding of Ohler’s five phases in the media
production process. Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary, and I wasn’t left
with too many questions just reading about the different steps. However, even
while reading the explanations, I found that I was making internal comments to
myself that certain bullet points seemed a little unnecessary, or not entirely essential
for all projects. One example would be the first bullet in phase II, developing
a media list. While I do feel that this is important, actually writing all of
those things down just seems counterproductive to getting the project done. Yes
I could take time to write it all out, but when time is limited, as it always
is in a classroom, I’m not sure I (or my students either) would need to take
the time to carry out this entire step. Ohler mentions, “Don’t be surprised
when students don’t want to spend a lot of time with this step,” (Ohler, 2008,
p. 150). It’s hard for me to want to persuade my students to do that though,
when I’m not entirely convinced of the process either.
Then, after going through the media process myself
today, I found even more areas that just did not work for me personally. Going
back to phase I, I understand the story planning phase is necessary as far as
generating ideas and solidifying the story core, story map, and storyboard.
However, it seems a bit backwards to me trying to write out the whole storyboard
if you are using media (pictures or videos) that is already available. I fully support the story core and story map
process, and felt that it definitely helped me narrow down my focus, and give
me a more clear idea of what I was doing for my video. But I didn’t agree with
the story board process being done at that point, as I already had the pictures
that I was going to use. My story was clear, and I knew generally what images I
wanted. But to write it out on paper would have meant changing things, drawing
arrows, spending a TON of extra time that I didn’t have trying to get my
thoughts in order. Instead, I deviated from the rules a bit, went through my
pictures, created a folder for images that I knew I definitely wanted to use,
and then put them in order directly on the computer. I felt that was a form of
storyboarding that worked for me, although it was going against what Ohler
mentions, as I was using technology before I was supposed to. It worked
though...as I then was able to go to the written story board and just begin
coming up with my narration that would go along with my images. I didn’t draw
the pictures because I had them right there on my screen. But I used the
written story board to help with that part, which seemed to work for me.
As far as phase III goes, I found that this part
was almost done for my simple story, since I had already gone through the
process when I found and ordered all of my pictures. I just had to simply add
them into the movie maker, and I was good to go. For more complex videos, I would
take more time with this step adding music or recorded narration. But my
thinking is that if we kind of merge phases II and III using technology, we can
save time, and streamline the whole process. That’s how I felt it worked for me
as I would have wasted SO much more time if I hadn’t been able to get the
pictures together right on my computer.
Finally, phases IV and V weren’t too tricky either
since I already had the information ready to go. I found that for Windows Live
Movie Maker, adding the transitions and effects that I wanted FIRST was the way
to go. When I added my captions in and then changed the slide duration or transition
time, it messed around with all of my captions. When I redid it and saved the
captions for the end, I didn’t have that problem at all. Lesson learned! As far
as the performance phase, I was able to upload my project onto my blog fairly
easily, and all in all, I found that going through this process was helpful for
me to see what worked for me and what didn’t. I know every project will be different
and when working with students, this is always true anyways. But I do feel that
I learned a lot and have much more respect for the storytelling process as a
whole now!
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