Video Production Tips

Discover the Joys of Video Making! Learn how to make your own videos for fun or profit

Visual Communication: Advancing a Story Using Pictures.

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Projects For The Beginning Film Maker. One of the skills you need to develop to create professional-quality videos is the ability to think visually. Instead of words, you communicate using pictures.  What visual cues can you as the film director give the viewer so he or she “gets” it? You have to first think of […]

An Introduction to Documentary Filmmaking

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Documentary filmmaking is a subcategory of film and video production where the production crew creates a work of journalism rather than a fictional movie. Instead of making up fictional characters and creating a world of make-believe, the documentary filmmaker’s job is to document real life and real people by accurately and fairly telling their stories.   Journalism […]

Character Marketing: Why So Many Advertisements Feature Branding Characters

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Take a look at these eight marketing characters used to advertise national brands.  How many of them do you recognize? Do you know what product they represent? Every single time I showed pictures of marketing characters like this to my media students, they instantly knew almost every single character  They knew both the character name […]

Let’s Make a TV Commercial!

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Now that you have studied character marketing, it is time to come up with a product, a character and a commercial! Guidelines for your TV Commercial Project Your assignment is to create and produce a TV commercial using at least one character. Your commercial will promote a product using your character.  Remember, your character should […]

Video Editing: Historical Perspective on Linear and Nonlinear Video Editing

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Computers completely revolutionized video editing. Before computers, video editing was more expensive and slow.  It took tons of expensive equipment, a whole roomful if you got into big-budget production. The skills and techniques used were completely different from modern computer editing.  For the most part, video editing on these old systems was only done by […]

How to Create Original Characters for Your Movie

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BUILDING CHARACTERS FOR A MOVIE When creating characters for a movie, consider the many different ways people behave, look and speak. Do you know anyone like this in real life? It always helps to follow the writer’s adage: “write what you know.” You can learn by imitating what has been done to create popular characters […]

Why Reality and Facts Matter. A Well-Functioning Media is Critical for Freedom in America

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“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Thomas Jefferson When he uttered those famous words, Thomas Jefferson knew if the brand new, innovative idea of a government run by “We the People” […]

Thoughts on Fixing the News Media

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WHY IS THE NEWS MEDIA SO DESTRUCTIVE AND HOW CAN WE FIX IT? When I contemplate the full repercussions of the 24-hour, anything-in-the-world-goes information cycle, it scares me a bit.  In my observation, as well as shown scientifically, humans are alarmingly susceptible to succumbing their will to authoritarian information and directives.  It seems to be […]

Hi, I’m Lorraine Grula, News Nerd

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I’m a proud, middle-aged Okie who grew up with a solid foundation of science and politics.  Recombinant DNA was dinnertime conversation at our house.I enjoyed a lengthy career as a journalist and video maker. I’m a news junkie and jokingly refer to myself as The News Nerd. Both of my parents were PhDs in microbiology. […]

Video Opinion: Supporting Government Services and Workers

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? FIREFIGHTERS HELP US ALL!  Does anyone doubt that? Apparently so. An apartment complex next to mine caught fire the other day.  I was relieved and grateful when the fire department quickly showed up and extinguished the blaze.  I shot the video above and added some commentary. WHY I SUPPORT A DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST APPROACH TO […]