Posts Tagged ‘video’
Su Yon’s Post Mortem #4 – truly multimedia-based videos
Posted by: suyon in Saturna Project on April 11th, 2009
Having come from a traditional filmmaking background and currently working as a multimedia designer, one of my goals during my education at Masters of Digital Media is to learn how to incorporate ever-changing digital media tools into my multimedia storytelling methods.Santa Saturnina on the ocean in Unity
The videos on exploresaturna.com are composed of “conventionally” shot interview footage, archival footage, photography, digital motion graphics in After Effects, and video capture of a 3D model in the game engine Unity. Personally, it was an extremely valuable experience to produce the multimedia-based videos. The present and future of the digital media realm has (and will have) so much to offer in terms of diversity of its formats. My objective is to learn how to tell a story using these tools in the most compelling, effective, and convincing way.
Su Yon’s Post Mortem #2 – rich storytelling resources from the community of Saturna Island
Posted by: suyon in Saturna Project on April 11th, 2009
Initially, Aerlyn and I planned to create three short videos for exploresaturna.com under the themes of 1) general introduction to the early Spanish exploration, 2) the East Point Fog Alarm Building, and 3) the Santa Saturnina.feral goats on Saturna Island
The core concept of our storytelling was to tell the stories from the past by relating them to the current community members’ perspectives and passions. We wanted to convey the message that “history does not have to live in the past” throughout our videos. This was why it was crucial to interview the residents of Saturna Island for the videos.
During our visit to Saturna Island, we filmed a Saturna Heritage Committee meeting, the tour of the East Point Fog Alarm Building led by the last East Point Lighthouse keeper Ian McNeil, and several actively-involved community members.
Once we returned to Vancouver with the precious footage from Saturna Island, we realized that there were too many interesting stories and we shouldn’t make just three videos. That was how seven, instead of three, videos came about exploring 1) vision of the Fog Alarm Building (FAB), 2) the Santa Saturnina and its on-going Spanish heritage on the Gulf Islands, 3) the FAB as an artistic inspiration, 4) renovating the FAB, 5) the East Point Lighthouse keepers, 6) early Spanish exploration on the Northwest Coast, and 7) Canadian-invented diaphone fog alarms. Not to mention that, if the time frame for our team was longer, we could’ve created more videos because of the abundance of stories from Saturna Island.
The community of Saturna Island is the owner of exploresaturna.com. I hope that the Saturna Islanders will continue to update the video storytelling contents and showcase their everyday “heritage-making” process to the rest of the world on a regular basis.
I dare to suggest that a video making class would be an exciting part of the curriculum for Saturna Ecological Education Centre (SEEC) where young students can learn about how to tell a story via video and produce videos about what is happening on Saturna Island.
Su Yon’s Post Mortem #1 - starting off with research
Posted by: suyon in Saturna Project on April 9th, 2009
Our video making team, Aerlyn Weissman and myself Su Yon Sohn, started off our Saturna Project by researching some unique characteristics of Saturna Island, British Columbia. As our team’s two main focuses were the stories of the East Point Fog Alarm Building and early Spanish exploration on the Northwest Coast, our research topics varied; 1) what different stories has the Fog Alarm Building (FAB) had? 2) what motivates the community of Saturna Island to rehabilitate the FAB? 3) what are the stories of the demolished East Point Lighthouse? 4) where did the name “Saturna” come from? 5) what kind of living conditions did the Spanish explorers have on the ship Santa Saturnina? 6) what was the route of the Santa Saturnina’s journey when she discovered the region around Saturna Island? 7) what was the Spanish interest in the Northwest Coast in the 1700s? 8) what sort of political tension did the Spanish, the British, and the Russians have on the Northwest Coast in the 1790s? 9) who are the current residents of Saturna Island? 10) what kind of vibrant culture have the Saturna Islanders created? 11) what has made Saturna today’s Saturna? 12) What makes the Saturna Islanders proud of themselves? 13) how did the Fog Alarm actually work back in the days when GPS didn’t exist?Team Saturna in our project room
The goals of our research were 1) to come up with compelling storytelling ideas for under 2 minute videos which the community of Saturna Island would recognize themselves in 2) to become as knowledgeable as possible before we meet the residents and interview those who have been actively involved in rehabilitating the FAB and who have a passion for tracking Saturna’s Spanish heritage.
How to get video into Drupal 6.
Posted by: mark in Saturna Project on April 9th, 2009
This might seem like an incredibly easy question to answer, but as a first-time Drupalist, with this being the first feature I tried to add to our site, I ended up experimenting with several different module combinations and ripped out all of the hair I had left before I finally got the videos playing.
To actually get the video files to play in Drupal, I followed this tutorial from Drupal Therapy: http://drupaltherapy.com/node/50, which uses the FileField and jQuery Media modules, running the videos in the free JW Mediaplayer http://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/.
The JW Mediaplayer is probably the best bet in terms of a player, and its customizability was ideal for streaming video online as well as creating an off-line video gallery that could play in the Fog Alarm Building.
Once you have videos playing with jQuery Media and FileField, you'll probably want to get rid of the annoying FileField icon that appears just below the video. There are several posts in the Drupal forums about how to do this with PHP code, but it's simplest to just add the following code into your CSS file:.filefield-icon {display:none;}
