GEG Student Film Festival @ Google Chicago

At the end of January, the 2nd Annual GEG (Google Education Group) Student Film Festival awards were held in Chicago, IL at Google Headquarters. It was a great experience! This event honors the film and storytelling efforts of student groups ranging from elementary through high school levels. Each year there is a theme. This year’s theme was In Another’s Shoes.

Winning entries ranged from literal interpretations - What would happen if you put on another person’s shoes and became them? - to illustrating empathy through multiple perspectives, and even documentary-style interviews of individuals who optimistically persevere through circumstances others would find difficult. Topics covered included friendship, bullying, female athletes, and physical and mental disabilities. One elementary group even featured some digital animation!

In addition to screening the winning films, students, teachers, and families were treated to some demonstrations and speakers from a variety of filmmaking areas: improv, sound effects, digital effects, podcasting (via Nate Butkus’ The Show about Science), and even a couple of YouTube entrepreneurs:Mitchell Brown and Scotty Vrablik, creators of Clean Minecraft Videos.

I was given the opportunity to represent WeVideo and talk about some of my favorite features, so of course I chose GREEN SCREEN! In this presentation, I gave a few ideas for how to take the tool and create different effects with it (like supersizing something that would otherwise be very small, or using green screen as a tool to uncover and reveal parts of the screen). I want students to feel free to experiment with the technology and try out ideas, no matter how weird or zany it may seem at first. Well, then again, I’m a big fan of all things weird and zany, so…

via David Chan on Twitter

I had never been to the Google Headquarters in Chicago before, so this was super exciting! I live in the suburbs, so I took the green line and walked the few blocks over to the building. There’s no mistaking you’re in the right place! Once we checked in, we were brought upstairs where the conference room and stage were. Although it was a small stage, there were no less than four screens for the audience to watch on, allowing everyone a fantastic view, as well as a podium and timer for the presenters to stay on track! It sort of gave you the feeling like being on an awards show where if you stayed up there too long, you could get played off the stage! Ha! Each student group had the opportunity to give an acceptance speech after the screening of their short films. It was wonderful to hear the stories behind the work.

Outside the conference room, I loved all the various seating options and little “nooks” where you could hang out and work, or even just enjoy the view… or perhaps take a little power nap? The Google chefs made us all lunch, which was super delicious and had options for all of our varied diets. As a vegetarian, I very much appreciated that!

In the end, I had a wonderful day, and really enjoyed seeing all of the amazing work done by students of all ages and backgrounds. I love that there are services like WeVideo out there to help students tell their stories and make the otherwise impossible, possible!

Note: This blog post was first published on the WeVideo blog at: https://blog.wevideo.com/news/insiders-view-the-geg-film-festival-seen-from-the-big-stage/

- Mrs L.

Even MORE Green Screen Fun Time Ideas!

I’ve been wanting to try out this fun green screen method for a while now. I even got my buddies from my local Starbucks drive-thru to hook me up with a bunch of green straws (those extra-long venti iced coffee straws are perfect for this)!

Disclaimer: this is not my original idea. I got it from one of my favorite PLCs - Twitter!

Use @SUBWAY straws in your next GS Project.@DoInkTweets #recycle #savethearth #edtech #ipaded #doink #ipadchat #greenscreenguru #2ndchat pic.twitter.com/O3SvbrtzbA— Goodwinnovate (@amsgoodwin) June 28, 2017

A lot of iOS teachers love using the DoInk app, which is great if you’re an iPad school… but I’m a Chromebook 1:1 school, so I use WeVideo. Honestly, even if I was an iOS school, I’d still like to use WeVideo because it’s not device-dependent. Anywhere you can access your Google account, you can access and edit your WeVideo projects and video files! It’s so convenient, and they’re constantly adding features and upgrades to the service. I’m hooked.

So anyways, today I set up a mini green screen set: a piece of green construction paper as a “screen,” and a green straw taped to the back of an action figure - like a puppet stand, if you will. Once you add the green screen magic to it, you end up with a video that has an awesome low-tech effect that reminds me of Vitruvius floating around as a ghost in the LEGO movie:

(That visible string from LEGO ghost Vitruvius gets me every time! )

So, I tried out this method (items on green straws) using a Playmobil action figure, a red speech bubble cut-out shape, and a plastic Super Mario figure. I think I surprised myself by how well it worked overall! Can you see the shadow on some? Yeah. Is it perfect? No. Does it do the job? Heck yes! I’m a fan. 

Here’s what my playing around produced:

Fun fact: the skater that jumps off the curb in the last clip is me! I’m trying to teach myself to skate at the skate park. I’m still a very baby beginner, but at least I’m out there trying. :) 

Using the green screen method on a small scale like this is a fun alternative for teachers without space or resources for large green walls or curtains. And you can typically grab the straws for free! 

- Mrs. L.

Green Screen Tricks w/WeVideo

My 8th graders are currently working on their major video unit (I've talked about it before here and here), and we spend several class periods just shooting and editing... which gets me thinking about fun new things to do with WeVideo, and ideas that I haven't seen students try out yet. 

I started messing around with green areas in videos and still photos (like putting green paper over my computer screen, inserting a green panel into a picture frame, or even just holding green construction paper in my hands) and layering and re-combining them in different ways. 

We always think of green screen as removing the background and putting yourself into a different environment... but have you thought of green screen patches as "portals" into another video or object? Or using green objects to reveal what lies underneath? Or stacking green screen upon green screen, allowing you to have an entire conversation with yourself?

...and those are just the first things that came to mind. Check out my sample video here:

I used WeVideo to make this movie - the green screen feature (aka color keying) is probably my most favorite feature of the whole service! Not sure how it's done? It's so easy - I demonstrate the entire process here in under three minutes.

I'd love to hear some of your ideas for using green screen in new ways! Please share below!

-Mrs L.

A Portable, Wearable Green Screen?

I've been asked a few times to give some more information about my DIY portable green screen for video production. Which is actually kind of embarrassing due to the extreme primitive nature of its construction... but here’s the scoop:

I was slated to do the Google Summit Demo Slam, and I had decided that my topic would be color keying, since it’s my favorite WeVideo feature. I was trying to figure out a way to demonstrate how to use a green screen without actually having a green screen, or somehow make it work to setup a green screen within a 3-minute Demo Slam timeframe.

I considered a 3-fold “science fair”-type project board, but this would have still required me to have a surface (like a table) in which to set it on behind me. I decided to instead try and paint a standard piece of foam core with green paint. The original idea was that during the slam I could just hold it behind me and film via webcam, then demonstrate how to do color keying.

I painted 3-4 coats of acrylic paint on the board and let it dry. It did, unfortunately, warp the board a little bit, which was less than desirable. But the color looked pretty good, so I pushed forward.

I logged in to WeVideo and tried recording from my webcam while holding the board behind me, but it became obvious pretty quickly that there was no graceful (or steady) way to hold up the board behind me while filming. Frustrated, I explained the situation to a group of my 7th graders and asked them what they thought I should do. We started brainstorming ideas for mounting or hanging the board behind me (like, “Can we attach it to a selfie stick somehow?” “How about putting it on a backpack?”), which inspired my very rudimentary solution: bend a couple of wire hangers into shoulder mounts and attach it to the foam core with tape!

If you look carefully, you can see the top of the hanger wire (you know, the hook part) underneath the tape.

This is what the final result ended up becoming: a curvy piece of painted foam core with haphazardly bent wire hangers as a shoulder mount. Embarrassingly primitive, but funny nonetheless, so I brought it with me to the GAFE Summit and used it as a prop in my Demo Slam. Fortunately, it got lots of laughs and attention, even if it didn’t end up winning the competition.

I didn’t actually USE the portable green screen contraption to film, as it still has some limitations:

• It’s not quite large enough to span the webcam’s view all the way to the edges of the frame.
• The foam core only reaches to the top of my shoulders, making the green screen only useful for neck-up situations, which is… limiting, to say the least. 

Therefore, I have some ideas for improving upon my design for the future:

• Buy colored foam core and skip the paint part, which would eliminate warping.
• Use a larger piece of foam core, so it will cover the edges of the camera frame. 
• Attach a green piece of fabric to the bottom of the foam core, which would create a “cape” of green behind me, which would allow me to film from the waist-up (ish) and still have green background behind me. 

I’m not necessarily convinced that the portable green screen is better or easier than just toting a green fabric sheet around with me (that’d certainly be more compact!), but it does make for a great conversation piece! So there you have it. If you decide to make your own (probably improved!) version, please share it with me!

-Mrs. L.

How To Use The "Green Screen" Effect in WeVideo

Eighth grade classes are working on a project right now that is quickly becoming my all-time favorite project. I guess I say that a lot. Pretty much any time we do a new project...

We're using WeVideo to create, well, videos. The theme for this quarter is Digital Citizenship and Internet Safety. I told the students that most of the videos out there about this topic are fairly cheesy, or talk down to you, or just feel kind of fake, and I challenged them to make a video about this topic that was actually BETTER than what's out there.

So far, I am seriously impressed with what they're coming up with!

One of the most fun features of WeVideo (we have a paid account for our district) is the green screen, or color keying, option. And it's relatively simple to do! I made a quick screencast showing the steps of how to do this here:

...and yes, I know that my lime green hair gets keyed out in the final version. It amuses the students greatly.

I've been messing around and having big fun being chased by Godzilla and hanging out "in the club" via green screen. If you're interested in seeing the full project outline/introduction that I show my 8th graders, you can check out my other video here:

I went all Spike TV on this one, including REALLY bad use of middle school slang, like "epic" and "lit." The kind of adult use of slang that causes students to cringe and never use that word again. Ha ha - bonus! 

I am really loving WeVideo this year for movie production. I've used iMovie, Adobe Premiere, and Windows Movie Maker in the past... what video creation software, apps, or websites do you prefer to use?

-Mrs. L.