The Teacher's Side of Where in the USA?
by Keith Mack, 8th Grade Core Teacher
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The Seven Day Schedule to Complete our Project

Lynden Crew Nov. 23 - Script and Story board started Nov 24 - Script complete, road trip to Lynden for  remote shoot Nov. 25 - digitize video and start editing Nov. 30 - continue editing Dec. 1 - Finished editing (approx. 2 min) School Crew Nov. 23 - Brainstorming and researching Nov 24 - Script and Story board started Nov. 25 - Script complete, parts assigned Nov. 30 - fine tune script and rehearse parts Dec. 1 - shoot scenes, digitize video, start editing Dec. 2 - finish editing, start to make VHS master Dec. 3 - finish VHS master, collect resources to bring to presentation, meet to discuss last minute strategies Dec. 4 - Project 8:30-11:00am at our high school campus

We are fortunate at Meridian to have some pretty neat technology. We got our connection to the Washington State K-20 video system in mid-November. On Friday Nov. 20th, two of my friends at Learning Space convinced me to take part in their next "Where in the USA?" project on Friday Dec. 4th just two weeks away. With Thanksgiving break thrown into the mix, that gave me seven school days to pull off a presentation.

Monday morning I started to pull together the finest minds our 8th grade class (no easy task!) and I ended up with about 16 students from four different core classes. Two groups then planned for a video (only the 2nd one we'd done) - one group would go on a remote shoot to Lynden and our other group worked on a script that would incorporate the appropriate required hints to our location. The remote crew (all guys!) jumped in my van after school on Tuesday and we invaded Lynden for various shots of the locals. Our other group finished their script on Wednesday (a half day) and we made plans for rehearsing parts when we came back on Monday and then shooting scenes here at school on Tuesday.

Editing the video occupied every moment of class after Thanksgiving. The Lynden video was edited on Monday and Tuesday morning while we were shooting the school scenes. Completing the school scenes on Tuesday morning meant we could digitize the video before lunch and then get to work on editing it in the afternoon and then finish it on Wednesday. Our goal Thursday to was to use our Studio 400 Mixer to lay down the finished product onto VHS tape. Of course the technology was not flawless so there were long hours before and after school to bring the production to its final form.

Video
I had made one unremarkable video and a couple students made a video of a roller skating party a week earlier. So we were "green" on the whole video thing, but confident we could pull it off. The original idea my writers came up with was to do a video like "Mystery Theater 3000" on the Sci-Fi channel with two people sitting in front of the movie making fun of it. The final product ended up a bit more like "Beavis and Butthead" hence our name "Mavis and Mutthead". I think one of our time saving features was to film "clips" of scenes out of sequence (nonlinear). This made good use of our limited time and kept moving things and students around to a minimum. Of course we had fun editing the clips, adding music, transitions, voice overs, and sound effects. We even included some bloopers and credits at the end. The Studio 400 software worked very well for the most part though parts of the sound track are uneven. We compensated some of it by "overdubbing" the audio in a couple places where the music track was split over many scenes.

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