Course Description:
Focuses on pre-production or the planning phase of various audio/visual storytelling media. Explores creative application of visualizing a text narrative into an audio/visual media production. Topics include story structure, concept development, visual research, cinematic language, shot composition, storyboarding, animatics and editing.
In the face-to-face version of this course I usually spend the first half of the term lecturing every day. For the hybrid version of this class I am going to divide those lectures into 50/50 online in video form and face-to-face. I am going to choose to put lectures online that are structured around technical concepts and terminology. These lectures are pretty straightforward and will also be easier to build in video quizzes. For the lectures with less tangible/quizzable content I will continue to cover these topics face-to-face.
On the technical side of things students need to use digital drawing software, animation and video editing software. In the face-to-face version of the course I produced tutorials that were given over a four week period to teach the student how to create and assemble their large scale project and final animatic. I am going to re-record these tutorials but have them broken up into more manageable chunks. I think I will have them broken up over seven weeks instead of four, this will allow me to cover more material online during the tutorials. My hope is that more incremental learning with the tech part of the class will alleviate the stress of the steep learning curve early on in the course.
It terms of feedback I often meet with them regularly in class to talk about their projects. With the hybrid version I plan on using audio/video feedback when grading and more peer reviews/discussions as well.
As far as the final I always do a final screening of their all video projects with buttery popcorn. I think I will continue this tradition for this course. I may think about eventually moving the final screening online, but I don’t know how to get the feeling of a dark room with warm popcorn and the sweet smell of accomplishment into Canvas.
