I have to admit that the first thing I had to skip through to try was Animoto. I had seen a few other people's finished products and they were really sharp looking so I was eager to try it. The assignment actually allowed me to justify setting aside the time for me to try it. As I expected, it was very easy to do and the results were very rewarding. I was impressed by the ability to flip pictures around and the option to upload your own music files. I ended up using one of their music selection but having the option to upload your own music was nice. It was easy to adjust the layout, order, and timing of the pictures. The only knock on it was that I thought there would be more video styles available for free. I'd say about 50% of the styles needed the paid subscription in order to be used. That is a very minor issue considering all of the other excellent features.
I enjoyed doing some more reading in our 2 books for this class, Presentation Zen and DigiTales. I'm getting a better grasp of the whole process of both giving more effective presentations and delivering good stories. What I'm also learning is that there is quite a bit of planning, organizing, and time-consuming work that goes on behind the scenes for both.
In DigiTales we were introduced to the 7 step process of planning out a good digital story. I mentioned that I was a little intimidated by the scripting the written narrative step and then the subsequent recording of the voice for the story. You're writing things down verbatim and trying to make it seem natural yet you are later reading from a script. I think I mentioned in a forum that I would likely use the script as a guide and just practice it enough times where no two deliveries were the same yet it felt somewhat spontaneous.
My last insight is regarding the old slideshow that we had to revamp. I had a pretty good time transforming it using the Presentation Zen principles but man did it take a LONG TIME. I think looking for pictures/photos took the longest time for me. I would get a vision for a slide and then I was very picky when searching for a picture to complete the vision. Some pictures were too low quality and got pixelated when trying to re-size them. Some pictures didn't have the transparent background I was looking for. Some pictures needed to be cropped or edited in a graphics program before I was satisfied to put them into my presentation. I think I went back and changed my slide design like 3 or 4 times after not being satisfied that it had a steady flow. All of it was very gratifying when you find that "perfect picture" or achieve the "perfect spacing" but all of it was very time-consuming. I'm guessing with practice that the process would move along quicker but there are often time constraints involved that would make these dreamy presentations hard to accomplish. I can't even begin to imagine how long it took to create that "Thirst" presentation that we saw as an example.
Laurence-
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I did also was the Aminto assignment. I too was anxious to start this assignment and had fun with it. It reminded me when I was a little kid getting ready for school, so exciting. I looked at others and was like YES, I cannot wait to do this one. I like that they offered different varieties of music choices, I would update the list though, ha! I agree again that you had to pay for most of the video styles.
Last night I attempt to redo my original PowerPoint presentation using the ideas or elements I never use before and it took awhile. I was getting impatient because mines do not look as cool as the one's in the book. I wish voicethread had an option to start a presentation from their website, versus uploading one. I had used Open office and I tried to do a background theme but it's not the best looking. I think mines is okay after playing around with it. But a lot of practicing will be needed.