On Tuesday, March 30, DIIA will give us an overview of iShowU and iMovie, applications that will allow us to record and edit sound and video.  With the skills that we learn from this tutorial, we will create short videos related to our work in Rhetorical Peaks - Second Life.

To successfully complete the Rhetorical Peaks Video Project, you must create a 30-60 second text with images/video taken from Second Life and a narration that you write and record yourself.  You must post this video on either Vimeo or YouTube.  The project will be due on Thursday, April 15.  You can find more specifics about the assignment below.

As you work toward completing this project, I would encourage you to divide it into different sections.  Here are the different aspects of the assignment that you will need to complete:

- Write and record narration voiceover.  In your narration, you should provide an introduction to your character in your character's voice.  In the other words, the narration should be written from your character's perspective.  Your narration should identify your character's name, but beyond that, you have quite a bit of flexibility.  You can use your narration as an opportunity to describe your character's history (e.g., how they came to Rhetorical Peaks, how they became interested in rhetoric, what their role in the town is, etc.); you can describe your character's relationship with Lisa (e.g., what your character's relationship with Lisa was, how your character feels about her death, what your character wants to do in response to her death, etc.); you can describe your character's position on a critical situation relevant to Rhetorical Peaks (e.g., how your character understands the notion of community, what your character wants to do to help the town trust one another again, what your character thinks about evil, etc.).  When read out loud, your narration should last about 30-60 seconds.

In our tutorial with DIIA, we will get instructions on how to record audio using iShowU and Quicktime.  You can record your audio on your own, at DIIA's lab, or with me in my office hours.  Keep in mind that the narration will be in your character's voice, so you should think of the recording itself as an embodied performance of your character.  For some of you, your own voices might not fit your character's voice.  In this case, you are welcome to have someone else perform your narration (you can ask someone else in class to help or someone from outside of our class).  However, you are responsible for writing and recording the narration even if someone else performs it.

- Collect images and/or video footage from Second Life.  Your video should include at least 5 different images or videos taken from Second Life, although you are welcome to include more.  At least three of these images/videos should include your character (it is fine if your character appears in every shot).  As you capture these images and videos, you might consider capturing your character from different angles and from different distances.  You should also consider what you want to have in the background of the image.  You can take these images and videos from our Rhetorical Peaks space in Second Life, but you are welcome to use other locations as well.  The locations you select should be relevant to your character in some way.

When you capture images or video footage from a computer, most applications will capture the whole screen, not just your Second Life viewer.  When you are editing your images and video in iMovie, you should try to edit out the parts of the images that are outside the frame of the Second Life viewer.  This will make your images look cleaner.

- Edit your audio and images together in iMovie.  You will probably have to do this in DIIA's lab, although we might have some time in class to work on this.  This stage of the project will ask you to think about how you want to match the audio and visuals together.  You will have to consider what visuals to pair with different parts of the audio, how long to keep up any given image or video clip, and how to transition between visuals.  Keep in mind that different approaches to editing will have different effects on the audience and will thus communicate different things about your character.  You should aim to edit your video in such a way that is appropriate for your character and the narration.

- Upload your finished video.  Once you have completed your video, you should post it to either Vimeo or YouTube (you will have to create an account if you do not already have one).  Once you have posted your video, email me a link to it.