One More!

This weekend I am working on my final video tutorial for WAS.  The topic is Rights Management and I'm actually taking a break from writing the script to write this blog post!  My plan is to finish up the script today and make the video tomorrow so that I can send it to my site supervisor for review before our Skype meeting next weekend.

After I finished up the XML Export video and the Archive your Domain video last weekend I sent them in to my supervisor for suggestions.  Looks like there's one thing I need to change about the XML video, but I'm going to wait until we have a chance to Skype about it before I do the editing.  I'm not entirely sure that I understand what she wants and it seems best to wait rather than to edit and potentially re-edit.

In addition to these final video tutorials, I have spent much of my time lately researching animation tools.  My site supervisor expressed interest in me creating a fun PR type of video for the homepage "if there is time".  I'd really like to be able to fit this into my schedule as I've enjoyed working for my site supervisor and it would be great to be able to help her with this.  I'm hoping that we can talk about what should go in the script next weekend and that I can create the video the week after that.  I figure if I have done the legwork of researching which programs might work best and practicing with them a little bit, actually making the video might fit into our last week of the semester. :)

Animation Research

This week I've done a lot of research on ways to create videos that are animated and fun.  If there's time when I'm done with my tutorial videos, my site supervisor would like me to create a PR type of video that is fun and explains the basics of what WAS is.  I have collected a variety of sites that have videos like this for the purposes of inspiration and have begun to compile some potential programs that I can use to make the video.

I'm actually not done with the tutorial videos yet and am therefore working out of order, but it's easier for me to be able to work on the tutorials on the weekends (since I need to be on my home IP address in order to access the dev site).  I've been doing my research at work so that my time here isn't "wasted".  Sometimes students want to stay after school in my room to work on their art projects and I start to stress that I'm not going home to work on tutorial videos.  In order to make my schedule more flexible and my stress levels lower, I've been staying after school in my classroom, but working on the research portion of my internship while I'm here so that I don't feel overwhelmed when I finally get home.  It works out well that I can get some work done while my students get some work done and I know that I will be ready to jump right into this PR video as soon as I finish up the tutorials.

Editing and Perfecting

Last weekend when I met with my site supervisor on Skype we went over the videos I have completed thus far and talked about some areas she would like me to edit.  It turns out that some of the features in the current dev version of the WAS site are actually not going to exist in the final version because they are just too finicky.  I've got a pretty good grasp on ScreenFlow now though, so I was quickly able to go in and block out those features with boxes so that they just look like they were never there!  Sweet!

I also managed to finish up the last of the Analyze Capture Results videos this week, which was the one on Reports.  I emailed it to my site supervisor on Monday and she promptly emailed me back with areas to fix.  She is awesome at replying quickly to emails which makes it really easy to get things done even when we aren't going to meet for a few days.  Her quick reply made it so that I had time to edit and fix the video before we met this weekend.

The attention to emails will be especially important over the next 1.5 weeks as my site supervisor is going on vacation.  We Skyped this morning and mapped out my remaining videos for the semester so I have plenty to work on.  She said she probably won't be as prompt at replying to emails, but that she'll definitely get back to me if I need something before we meet again on May 4th.  I'm hoping to have completed all of the tutorial videos by that point, as well a new PR type of video that she's interested in seeing on the homepage.  She feels like that's an add-on that isn't a big deal if I don't get to, but I'd really like to accomplish everything she's hoping for since otherwise I'm sure I'll feel like I didn't quite finish the job. 

I'm pretty excited about how things are turning out and definitely feel like I'm on a roll to successfully complete everything by the beginning of May!  Yippee!

Heinz Time: Playing "Ketchup"

I had finally gotten into the task of actually making videos when spring break put a hurdle up.  I spent last week chaperoning 18 high school students on a whirlwind tour of Paris.  I didn't think I'd have much time for grad school work (or very good access to WAS stuff), but I grossly underestimated how packed our days would be and how exhausted I would be by the end of them!  A typical day involved leaving the hotel around 8am, touring/sightseeing/museum-lecturing/shopping/eating/etc. and getting back to the hotel around 10pm!  As tired as I was, I think the crazy schedule was beneficial...there was no time for the kids to get up to any shenanigans because they were all too tired!
I got back last Sunday, but with being back at work Monday and the jetlag hitting hard, the week was a rough one in grad school land.  I did manage to finish up another video today though.  Just in time to meet with my site supervisor tomorrow morning!  We haven't met since I completed the first video so I'm looking forward to getting some feedback before I get too far along with the rest of them.  Then it's just a matter of getting back into a routine and cranking out a video or two per week!
I think I can, I think I can...