Video Assignment #2

School Spirit: "What makes Southern a good place to go to school?"

Your second video assignment is similar to the first in format but more open-ended in topic. Like the first assignment, you will need to create a 5-minute video that is both informative and entertaining. Your task in creating this video is to find something distinctive about Southern, perhaps something that others have overlooked when thinking about "what Southern is" or the opportunities it offers.

Choosing a Topic

What comes to mind when people hear "Southern"? How is it seen by its own students and by people outside of the university community? In INQ, we talked a lot about how people often dismiss or disregard Southern as "not their first choice" or "not a good school." However, many students choose to come to SCSU and/or stay at SCSU for a variety of reasons including the academic community, the student body, the faculty, the athletics, arts, and other organizations, the city of New Haven, the partnerships and professional internships, etc.

Your video should focus on one major theme and should try to capture some aspect of Southern that people may not know about or may not realize. Also consider how to make your video topic original (I am hoping that I will not have to watch 40 videos on the outstanding Nursing Program, for example, especially since there are so many other things that SCSU has to offer.) Your topic can cover a "big thing" that Southern is known for (like the Nursing Program) or it can explore something "smaller" that not too many people know about (the community garden, hiking up West Rock, the types of people who come here, the attitude toward X here, the Latin Jazz band, the Oceanography professors, the ability to go to school here and also....., etc.). Do a lot of creative brainstorming before you choose a topic, and maybe take a survey to get other people's ideas.

One inspiration for this assignment was the "Call Me Maybe" Video made by the SCSU OAs this summer (if you haven't seen it, search for it on YouTube and watch it). This video stood out to me because 1) Southern hasn't always been known for its school spirit, and 2) the people in the video were having a lot of fun and that was fun to watch. I don't expect your videos to be the exact same as this video, but try to capture those two elements in your videos if you can.

You can use interviews for this video project if you want, but you aren't required to do so. You can use other forms of research as well or take quotes from SCSU's website or offices/staff on campus; just be sure to cite them at the end of the video. Think about what other elements you can include to illustrate your points and tell your story: photos, music, skits, narrative, comedy, a TV show backstory, etc. Creativity will be weighted highly in this project in terms of the topic you choose as well as the way you present/format the information.

Creating a Video

The video must be 5 minutes and include a title and credits, just like the first video. Similarly, the project should have a clear beginning, middle, and end that moves through the following elements:

1) framing the topic and providing some context for the project,

2) exploring the issues and ideas of your topic in a creative way,

3) providing some closure from your perspective, some “so what?” or “what have we learned?” to leave the viewer with at the end of the video.

This project requires you to create a short video, not a set of PowerPoint slides. It is not a presentation project; your video needs to stand alone and run on its own. It is possible to create such a digital project using PowerPoint, but it is much easier and more professional if done in iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, or other video creation software. In past experience, iMovie has provided the best results and is available in any Mac Lab on campus. The final video uploaded to your blog; it can be first uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo and linked to on your blog.

Due: Oct 30