Preparing for Filming

Since the filming of the outreach video will take place on this coming Thursday (December 16th), I have had plenty of time to prepare for the filming of the video.  This past week, I have had plenty of time to prepare for the filming, editing, and creation of the video.  One of our goals for the video is to include images of student records from previous eras that have already been collected at the archives to give student groups an idea of what sort of records we collect, and to generally generate interest in the concept of archives and student records.  So, over the past few days, I have identified various examples of student records that should be included in the video and scanned them onto our hard drive.

After the filming of the video, I will identify certain points in the video where the still images that were scanned will be inserted.  The audio of the person speaking on camera will play while the video will be replaced by the scanned image.  After searching through some of our collections at the archives, I am excited about the examples of student records that will be included in the video.  For example, I scanned the cover of a 1968 edition of The Spectator, a student newspaper at IU, which featured a political cartoon.  I also scanned a flyer for the Jordan River Revue, a student production, from 1959.  Also featured will be a program for the IU Glee and Mandolin Club from around the turn of the century.  My co-intern Amanda was kind enough to take a photo of several minute books from the IU Board of Aeons from the early 20th century.

The goal in selecting different records to include in the video was to represent the wide variety of organizations as well as the wide variety in types of records that we are interested in collecting.  Photographs and posters will be represented as will minutes, publications, and more text-based records.  This balance between more visual and more text-base records will demonstrate the variety of student records that are of interest.

I also spent some time this past week learning how to use the video-editing software with some hands-on practice.   Since I have no previous experience with video editing, I felt that it was a good idea to use some time this week to get acclimated with iMovie so that, once the actual film has been created, I will have a better understanding of how to edit the various clips into a cleanly-produced full movie.  On Thursday, I took a few sample clips using the SLIS camera up in the archives processing room.  I then took the camera down to the Information Commons in the Wells Library, where many of the computers are equipped with the video editing software needed to create this movie.  After a bit of trial-and-error, I learned how to export the video clips into iMovie, edit the length of clips, add transitions between various clips, and add titles and captions to the video.