F L I C K S C H O O L

Black Keys 'how-to' on GarageBand

We know creating original music is difficult, but we found a great technique in building a song by playing the black keys on a piano and staying on tempo. In this how-to we show you how it's done. Enjoy!

 

 

Weather Reporting with GarageBand

Here's a fun project you can do with your science class. Lets say the topic for this week's assignment is weather reporting. You can use GarageBand to record the actual weather report. Here's how.

 

 

Lavalier Mic placements

In this video we share different lavalier mic placements to get the best audio from your subject.

 

 

Need a mic to record audio? Here's a Yeti for you

Deciding which microphone to use for recording audio can be a bit daunting. There's so many mics out there. Well, we recently been experimenting with a mic called Yeti made by Blue. It's awesome and it's reasonably priced.

 
 

Connect iPhone to GarageBand to record a song

Here at Alas Media we are true believers that the iPhone is not only an awesome phone, but also a great musical instrument. In this video, we show you how you can connect your iPhone to GarageBand so you can record a song. Enjoy. Click here.

 
 

DIY iPhone Tripod

If you've filmed movies on your iPhone you'll know how tricky it is to keep the shot steady. So we came up with our own DIY iPhone tripod. We used a type of a C-Clamp, mini tripod & our iPhone.

Here's the final image.

 

 

 C-Clamp

   

Tighten screw to hold phone firmly, but not too tight

 
 Screw clamp onto mini tripod

 
 & voilà! 

NYC Schools Digital Storytelling / Planning Seminar.

Assignment: B Side / Passion (or Hobby)

The Step-by-Step guide to your assignment:

1. Identify your idea (Passion/ B-side). PRODUCT
2. Write some ideas down: PRODUCT: What do you want to share? PROCESS: How would like to share it?
3. Write a script with some of your key points/ ideas. PRODUCT
4. From the script-- identify the images, sounds, video, text needed for the project/ movie. PROCESS
5. Record the script in a quiet place.
TIP: Record 2-3 takes. Also, use Garageband or a recorder. Get Music from freeplaymusic.com orincompetech.com. PROCESS

6. COLLECT, MAKE (shoot) your images/ SHOOT your video. PROCESS
TIP: Collect "safe" and legal images from compfight.com. TIP: Follow the Rule of Thirds when shooting video or making a picture.
TIP: Divide roles to speed up the process.

7. IMPORT your images to iPhoto. PROCESS
8. IMPORT your Sounds/ Music/ Narration to iTunes. PROCESS
9. in iMovie (or Moviemaker, Final Cut Studio, Premiere, Layout the images, the audio, the music. Make adjustments with timing, audio levels. PROCESS

TIP: Experiment, try, vary your options.
TIP Advance: Normalize your audio. This means you need to make sure your audio level(s) are level at 0 dB. See this link for more. PROCESS

10. Refine! Add text: Credits, Titles. PROCESS
11. Export (Or Share to MobileMe Gallery). PROCESS
12. Get your pop corn!

GO TO RESOURCE PAGE

D90 Work Flow in Final Cut Pro

The new Nikon D90 has the amazing capability of recording video and audio. We have never seen such quality come from a prosumer video camera, much less a still camera! The interchangeable lens's makes this camera and the results a gold mine.

We recently shot a short piece for the John Lennon Bus to test the camera. Click here to view the final piece. 

Because this is a new process and we ran into some challenges, we decided to port our work flow for this project and share with you how we did it.

WORK FLOW:

Tools: D90 and a tascam recorder.

The audio from the camera is descent, however if you are in a loud environment like we were, using a external audio recorder is the way to go.

For the broll we kept the camera audio, however for the interviews, we used the audio recorder with the D90 and synced it in post production. (Here is a video that shows you how syncing works)

Note: The D90 only records up to a maximum of 5 minutes of video at a time, keep this in mind when interviewing people.

After recording we used a card reader to view the clips on our computer. The D90 generates AVI Files, we coped the files into a Hard Drive.

CHALLENEGE: The AVI files require you to render when brought into final cut. Also, when we brought our AVI files into Final Cut and our audio from the tascam our interviews would go off sync. The audio from the AVI file and the Wav file from the external audio recorder would lose sync about 3 minutes into the interview.

Here is how we fixed this:

1. We sent the AVI file through compressor (both video and audio)
2. We created a droplet with the correct setting to make this process a lot faster
3. You can download the droplet here Download 720_Droplet.app
4. Open the droplet, drag and drop your video clips and set the location of where you want to save
5. After you compress, take the clips into final cut pro
6. Create a new sequence with the following settings:

 

And you are ready to edit!

We found that running the clips through compressor (which converts your clips to .mov files), you do not lose video quality and the audio syncs up perfectly. Not to mention this eliminates rendering, unlike the original AVI files.

Hope this is helpful. If you have any questions please shoot us an email!

TCEA 2009 Workshop(s) Wiki

Dig deeper into the art (and science) of making great pictures and producing cool and effective movies in you classroom.  Regardless what you teach-- multimedia can make your learning and teaching experience more relevant, meaningful, and applicable.

This site is for you-- the learner who wants more cool and friendly tips on the photo making, digital storytelling!

Visit us. Learn! Share!

• TCEA Practical Movie Making in the Classroom
• TCEA Better Photography in a day!  Really!

How to document using video, photography, and audio. A new tips page.

Welcome to Your Documenting Wiki!

This wiki is created to provide you with useful tips and resources to guide you through the production of documenting your school. If you have any questions or concerns, please refer to the discussion tab at the top of this page and leave us a comment. We'll be happy to get back to you as soon as we can.