Making movies has been an enlightening experience. It can be done simply but as I found, it takes multiple times taking the pictures and recording sound. There is always something that isn’t quite right.

I first mapped out my idea, using skiing around our pond as a metaphor for life. I brainstormed metaphors of skiing and life. Since the pond trail is a circle, it fit in well with thinking about life and coming full circle. There were many analogies that I thought about, light and dark, sun and cold to name a few. I stopped to take pictures of the things which I thought would be good subjects. The picture taking did help me think more about metaphors. But taking pictures of snow is difficult. Tracks I discovered are very difficult.

Another challenge at this time of year is keeping the battery in the camera warm enough so that it would take pictures. When I did this the first time, the pictures were too dark. First, I took pictures with a Canon EOS 10Dcamera with a 24-135mm lens. This camera kept freezing and didn’t quite capture what I was after. I used up all the available daylight by the time I skied around the pond and returned home multiple times to change out batteries. The following day it was -25 and foggy so I could not try to ski and capture light again. I had to wait until the following weekend to ski again as the sun is not up when I am home. This time, I borrowed my husband’s Nikon D300 camera with an 18-200mm lens. The day proved to be better as it was warmer and the sky was clear with more light. This time I was able to capture the sparkly snow! Also, the battery did not freeze up once so I could spend time getting the pictures I wanted without returning home to switch them out.

The sound also created some challenges. I used an Olympus Digital Voice Recorder WS-100 to capture the sounds of me skiing. This was really great. I had to improvise a harness for it so I strapped it to my daughter’s ipod arm band. I used hair bands to keep it from falling out. I then strapped it to my calf upside down just below the knee. It did great! In fact the sounds were too loud and I had to tone them down when I put them into Movie Maker. The other problem was that I had to edit over an hour of sound to figure out which parts I needed for my short story.

With each change, the story kept evolving. It changed as I made my multiple times around the pond. I would discover more ways I thought life was like a ski around the pond.

As I edited the hour’s worth of sound, I decided that I didn’t capture the chickadee sounds at the bird feeder like I wanted and since chickadees are very active at my feeder during first light, I hung the recorder on the feeder to capture more sounds.

In between skiing and downloading, there was time for talking. I kept talking to people about what I was doing. Of course my husband was the one who had to hear about what I was working on the most. He did not mind as long as his glass was filled with wine. I would bounce my ideas off of him and he would suggest things. I showed him my pictures and he suggested cutting out many of them. He also showed me how to edit them first in Photoshop and then import them into Movie Maker. I found out that there is not a way to turn a picture while in Movie Maker. (Actually, since I first wrote this, I figured out a way to rotate pictures in Movie Maker. I was just missing it.) I wished that I had known that I should not have taken any vertical pictures as this format doesn’t fit with the movie format which is longer horizontally. Oh well, to live is to learn.

So far this process has inspired me to think about how stories go together in a multimedia way. I now have more of an appreciation for the movie industry and understand why multiple takes is necessary. I also like how making movies has inspired me to think about telling stories in a new way. The only downside is the technical aspect and making it simple for the kids I teach. Since I teach second and third graders, their technical prowess is not quite as advanced. However, I do think they could tell a story and narrate it into a recorder. I have already done this last year with them. I would like to add the movie portion. We have flip cameras at school that would be great for this. In January, I plan to have the kids in my room tell a snow story. I am thinking of doing a science unit on snow and weather. The kids would have the option to tell a fiction or non-fiction story using snow as their main theme. I could show my example to spur them on.

I created a simple rubric for their story. I would look for four areas with in their story. First of all, their story must be in sequence. This is age appropriate of the kids I teach. Their voices should also be clear. We have been working on this all year. I also want them to play with their written story and have them take out and change a few common words and add a synonym which is “fancy”. The term fancy referrers to a lesson I recently taught using Fancy Nancy’s ABC’s. We wrote sentences using a fancy word. I think asking the kids to change three words would be very appropriate. The last area in my rubric is the setting. We have been talking in our reading about where the setting is so adding this detail to their writing would be ideal. I could but did not add another part to the rubric which is that all the work should be beautiful. I use this idea a lot when I am teaching to express to kids that they do their best work.

Thank you for this opportunity to go through what my students do to help me understand what I am asking them to do. I enjoyed learning new technologies like blogging. I find I must often take a class to force myself to investigate new things!