Zachary J Baehr

Year-end video might best start on day one and continue throughout the year

a second look

How many of us recently finished a year-end video to celebrate the school year? Yes, that video that likely required some digging through archives and scattered video samples. Last summer I decided to approach the year-end video differently. I knew from previous school years that I could always have done better in collecting and organizing (!) content throughout the year.

Well how about we start now (or soon) for next year’s school year video? Find a way to get 1 second of video of each school day next year, and organize your clips along the way, and you can end up with an approximately 3-minute year-end video full of different events, faces, and highlights by next year’s end.

How to do it? Here are some tips:

  • Plan out events (homecoming, first day, open house, theater productions, etc.). Perhaps one day a week you’ll have a regular event that you will have video needs for, and mark those days covered.
  • Have a separate plan to visit a classroom each day (varying subject areas and class types – (labs, speeches, lecture, etc.)
  • List out the various parts of a school day that don’t fit in with a traditional classroom (lunch, passing period, evening concert, play or ballgame, etc.) and place those on the days you don’t have anything else

From here, you’ll want to pick your favorite organization solution (Drive, OneDrive, etc.) and store. 

Remember: As you are editing videos throughout the year, take a minute to export that most perfect one-second clip so you can stay ahead of the game. 

It’s possible to tease out parts of this year-end video, maybe doing a preview of five seconds each quarter along with an explainer. This can build intrigue, awareness and excitement toward the final product.

Can we get away with two seconds a day? Yeah, maybe. Just find something you can stick with.

Can we use a photo instead of a video? Yes, absolutely. Though I think the video piece is the ‘coolest’ because of the moving picture concept, a photo-a-day is pretty close: lab, lecture, groups, computers, hands-on, etc.)

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