There’s no homework due today, but please make sure that you have an App on your laptop that you can use to make a movie. If you have a Mac, you probably have iMovie, and most PCs come bundled with some kind of movie software.

Alternatively, as BU students, you can request access to the Adobe Creative Cloud software package, which includes two useful apps for creating movies, Spark and Premiere. I personally prefer iMovie, as it offers more options than Spark without the complexity of Premiere. But Adobe’s software is really impressive.

Come to class with your laptop loaded with video editing software of your choice and with this package of photographs and video clips:

• a-roll
• b-roll
  These clips are taken from a class I taught this past summer. My goal was to demonstrate that the technical challenges of combining video in iMovie pale in comparison to the rhetorical challenges of Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory and Delivery—all of which I failed, to varying degrees.

Gather the materials you need to make your video: film yourself speaking your script, make a collection of photographs and film clips, etc.

Note: if you want to add clips from YouTube, you will need to download the file to your computer. As of Nov 28, 2018, you can do that using the site savefrom.net, and opting for 720 mp4 format.

For HW, post a brief progress report, as follows:

1. One ¶ detailing what you’ve done;
2. One ¶ detailing any setbacks or challenges you’ve encountered.

I realize that some of you are planning to avoid showing your face in your video essay. That’s something lots of YouTubers do successfully. Here’s an example of someone who makes cogent arguments in a pretty academic but nonetheless engaging style.

I’m particularly interested in discussing how Michael Tucker of “Lessons from the Screenplay” alternately mutes and unmutes video from the movies he discusses, how he quotes from stage directions to focus attention on the original screenplay, and how he introduces ideas from Secondary Sources—dramatizing that move not just verbally but visually.

Come to class ready to discuss.

Output a draft of your video essay—it doesn’t need to be full-length. I just want you to go through the process of exporting a movie to .mp4 format, uploading it to Youtube, and pasting it into a comment here on the course website. There will be complications, so it’s best to encounter those now, rather than when you’re up against a deadline next week.

For HW, post your draft video in the comments, below.