Wednesday July 11

Before I let all the groups out to film their projects, I reviewed their storyboards to make sure they understood the requirements and had something realistic to film. That was a concern I had coming into today and I have seen that in other classes I have taught.

The projects were fine and were mostly about the center we were at. One group decided to do one of the flee market. All the groups except for one used digital cameras with the video option. It is amazing how many people have digital cameras with how expensive they are here. Basically all their technology is expensive. The other group had a miniDV camera one teacher got from his school. Fortunately I had brought a firewire cord (don't ask me why I brought one, just did) and we could capture his footage onto my laptop. None of the computers had firewire ports. I was also able to teach him how to use it because he didn't have a clue. He seemed pretty determined to do video at his school and was excited to learn how to use it. From there we transfered the footage to the computer using a 1GB pen drive several times.

The groups spent the whole period filming. One group finished within a half an hour and I reviewed their footage with them. They didn't take time to do any composition so I asked them to think of other ways they could film what they did and also some ideas to add more interest with different angles. They were receptive and filmed some more.

We didn't get Cinelerra installed in the classroom that I wanted, but we were able to get it on some other computers in another lab. Linux has so many different versions that it makes things complicated. Free software is a blessing, but can also create headaches.