Professor Michael Durst in the Middlebury College Physics Department proposed this project during the summer of 2017. The idea was to begin creating a series of videos that show the professor outlining a lab for students before they are asked to conduct the lab themselves. This project was challenging because it involved: sound recording, photographing, and video recording. All of the footage was obtained from scratch during filming/photographing sessions. The software used for sound editing was Audacity. For photographing and video recording we used Canon SLR cameras provided by Middlebury College’s Davis Family Library. The bulk of the project was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro, a versatile video editing suite. All of the photos had to be retouched and cropped using Adobe Photoshop.
Aside from creating the video itself, one of the main goals of this project was to create a template for future videos to be created for more labs in the department. An official shot list, software list, and editing template needed to be created so that the next videographer and photographer could maintain consistency as new videos are created.
Overall, this project was engaging because it was created entirely from scratch which required me to become familiar with the equipment at Middlebury for filming and photography. The project familiarized me with creative commons background music, how to properly credit sources on public media projects, and most importantly keep long lectures and labs concise in a 5 minute video. I love film-making and editing so this project was really fun to take part in!