Your next major video project will combine a few skills into one interesting project.

This time, you’ll be making a documentary-style video about a program or club here at St. James Collegiate. You’ll find out more about a class/program/club and then tell everyone about it. Assume that your viewer knows nothing about the program. What do they need to know in order to fully understand what goes on there?

We often use these kinds of videos to promote programs at our school when people are considering coming here. Here’s a technology video that has been shown (too) many times at our annual open house in February:

• The first and probably most important step is to choose a good topic. Make sure that you have a topic that you are interested in. You don’t need to know a thing about it, because you’re assuming that your viewer won’t either.
• Next you have to figure out who you’re going to talk to about your topic. Come up with a list of questions that will help your expert to give you information explaining your topic.
• As always, you’ll need a STORYBOARD when it comes to putting everything together. This time you’re not so much planning out each shot as you are ensuring that you have the right kind of footage, and enough of it.
• Shoot your interview using different camera angles and/or ensure that you have enough coverage video of people participating. You DO NOT want to use your interview in its entirety, so you want to make sure that you can cut clips together without creating jump cuts.
• You’ll need to come up with a voice-over script based on the information that you gather.
• You’ll need to conduct an interview with a teacher and/or student involved in the program, so you’ll need to shoot that well and ensure that you have high-quality audio recorded.
• You’ll need some kind of interesting animated introduction at the start.
• You’ll need to use LEGAL creative commons music. I really like this site. Make sure you keep the creator info for your credits.
• You need to include credits at the end, explaining who did what for this project, and you’ll have to give credit for your music and any other images/video clips that you used.

Here’s one about THIS CLASS! It’s pretty well done, but there are some things I’d definitely change

Here’s a GREAT example of what I’m looking for. It’s a bit long, but really well done:

Here’s one about English class that’s quite good.

Here’s one that is pretty good (although not quite as informative as I’d like. It kind of assumes that the viewer knows what the Jimmie Midnighter is all about:

Here’s one that’s pretty good (although parts, like the beginning, are a bit boring)