I've never tinkered so hard or so much as in trying to complete the final inquiry project - and I have a feeling most of my classmates shared a similar experience.
Before attempting this video poem, I'd never worked with any kind of video editing or screen capturing software. With only two days to really work on the example, I originally thought I'd focus on using PowerPoint in ways that would make it perfect for the creation of an Illuminated Text: I was familiar with PowerPoint (or at least with its presentation-related features) and so my project in its initial conception would have allowed me to work within a familiar framework while trying to manipulate it in new ways to produce a new result.
However, I soon realized that film would make an important contribution: I wanted images of wind (since a primary theme of the poem is ephemerality, and what better symbol?), but wind only really manifests itself with its effects on other objects. And immediately after this realization, I found a link on the site I used for Creative Commons-licensed images to a site that provides Creative Commons-licensed HD video clips. So, I set myself to exploring iMovie with the goal of creating a clip to export to PowerPoint.
This involved figuring out A) how to import a clip; B) how to edit clip length; C) how to superimpose text upon a movie frame; D) how to change the font on the slide to make it identical to the font of my PowerPoint; E) how to vary frame duration; F) how to save my project (apparently Apple has done away with the banality of "saving" a project on iMovie) and start a new one; and E) how to embed video into my PowerPoint.
I had a little bit of a headache with iMovie and more of a headache with screencast-o-matic, which is what I used to "film" my movie so that it would seem more like a film and less like a PowerPoint with bells and whistles on. My computer had initial issues with Java (enabling plug-ins, allowing it to run on the screencast-o-matic site) and I had initial issues with synchronizing PowerPoint and the iTunes music that plays in the background. Every attempt at recording had some kind of flaw: sometimes the "play" button for the movie clips refused to appear when I hovered my mouse over the appropriate site, while at other times I clicked too quickly and moved ahead a slide too fast.
By early Wednesday morning I had a movie. My biggest headache, however, turned out to be exporting the video to an external site so that I could post it on the Wiki site and my blog: initially I tried just adding it here as the file on my computer, but the video ended up being fuzzy and small. I didn't want to post it to YouTube, so I tried Flickr; my computer stalled for a good half hour trying to upload. Finally, right before class, I managed to get it onto Flickr. And, in class, when presenting, I discovered that Flickr (unbeknownst to me) has a video upload limit of 1'30".
Now the video's on my Vimeo account (I'm accumulating online accounts with startling alacrity; this is something I'll have to stop and think more seriously about later). I liked this project because it ended up forcing me to explore tools I'd never otherwise explore. Even more, however, I liked this because I ended up spending so much time on it. Why? I found it meaningful. I found it vital. And this is a good indication that maybe some of my future students might find it equally as important.
