A Video Project

I always have a similar hesitations when I hear about assignments with videos. First off, when I had to do a video assignment in middle school, we didn't have digital recording (or at least I didn't have access to it). So for a video project, we did each scene in one take, in order, and had no way of editing or refining the project. So when I got the assignment I thought of all of the cool things that I could do with it and how it awesome mine was going to be. Then, when we watched through it, I discovered the sound was really different for different scenes, and the quality was NOTHING like the movies (which I kinda expected, not knowing better). Now I know technology has come a long way, but that might heighten the expectations of students.

Next, there is the issue of participation. In large projects, its easy for students to assume a more minor role and still receive credit for an assignment. A solution to this is to make a set of jobs for the movie and divide the work load. So the writer writes the script, the director makes artistic decisions on how the scenes should be shot, and the actor investigates the motivations of why the character they are portraying acts the way he/she does. All members of the group would be required to do research on the subject of their video. So, after the project is complete, each student would write a paper presenting what they discovered in their research and how that effected decisions. Along the lines of participation, what if the writer doesn't do his job? Do you penalize the other members of the group? How can you grade the other members of the group?

My final hesitation is the time factor. Students finding time just to get together for filming can be a huge challenge. On top of that, they have to wait on the writer to write the script, find extras, and edit the video. Your students will have other assignments going on and it is hard to imagine devoting that much time to just your project.