Two Videos!?? 🙁
I couldn’t decide if this activity should be the first week, or the last week. Probably because we’re really got 2 different goals here:
- First Week: a vlog to introduce you to the class – where you are this summer, what’s going on with your life, major, career, etc
- Last Week: a vlog to welcome visitors to your website. A short, professional “hello” to people interested in your work
So here we are in Week 2. Let’s make 2 vlogs. One for our Art 110 summer classmates. And a professional welcome for the website that we’ll be making in week 8.
Don’t Worry! 😀
Just like speech class, this is something that can be stressful for many of us. And just like speech class, if you get a bit better at it, you’ve gained a powerful skill. Imagine going on a job interview and not making eye contact with your interviewer, but looking at the ground instead because you’re nervous and embarrassed. Many of us feel this way. It’s intimidating. But if you can give someone a confident handshake, and make comfortable eye contact with them as you talk about yourself, you’ve gone a long way to forging a real relationship with this person.
Designing Your Life
Four of our summer activities revolve around Designing Your Life:
- Design Thinking applied to Your Life
- Portfolio Website
- vlog
- Environmental Portrait
Design Thinking applied to Life is a chance to sort out your goals. Portfolio Website is a place to show what you’ve done. Projects you’ve worked on. Things you’ve learned. Vlogging and a Portrait of You in Your Professional Environment are powerful elements to bring that Portfolio Website to life.
Step 1: Vlogging
Even though we haven’t done our Life Design or Portfolio Website activities yet, let’s go ahead and try making our vlogs. You can use your
- Phone
- Laptop
- Or any other Camera
3 tips 4 more watchable vlogs
- Use a Microphone
- Use a Tripod
- Have a clear outline of what you want to say and keep it short
Most of you won’t have microphones. If you can get close to your phone or laptop, that will be a lot better sound than if you’re far. You also might try recording a few sentences in different rooms and outdoors. Outdoors could have jet noise or other distractions, but it won’t sound like you’re talking inside a trash can as many rooms can.
Most of you won’t have tripods either. But you can tape your phone to a chair or ladder. Or if you have a selfie stick, you can tape that to a chair or ladder. Or you can set your laptop on a table.
Give it a shot!
Record your 2 videos (“Hello to Art 110 classmates” and “Welcome to My Website”). For the Class Hello, really, just share anything about yourself, your college experience, what you’re up to this summer, your goals, or whatever you’d like to talk about. It’s not required, but if you’re able to include a couple images or shots of where you are this summer, that’d be awesome! 😀
For Welcome to My Website imagine that this is the “hello” video for your Engineering, or Fashion Merchandising, or Criminal Justice website. Introduce yourself briefly and talk about why your field excited you.
Pro Tip: For your 2nd “professional welcome” video, don’t say “I’m a student.” You’re not denying that, but let’s focus on you as a professional. Even if you’re just starting out, or will be in school for a few years still, your professional identity is not “student”, it’s Child Development, or Theater Art, or Graphic Design, or Nursing. So talk about how excited you are to be a young professional soon to enter your field. (unless your current goal is to apply to a program, like Nursing or Film, etc, then your hello video can orient in that context).
Pro Tip #2: Now that you’re talking as a (soon or future) professional, how about talking about results instead of tasks:
- Instead of: I create user guides, process documentation, and multimedia training.
- How about: I create documentation that helps my customers inform, teach, sell, streamline, and succeed.
(example from Doug Sasse’s Amazon review of Stephanie Palmer’s book Good in a Room ).
Post Your Videos
Then upload your videos to YouTube (or Vimeo).
Then make a new post on Medium, and paste the URLs for your videos on the page – they’ll turn into embedded videos on your page.
In your Medium post say a few words about:
- What you were going for in your videos
- Did you accomplish it?
- What would you do differently next time?
- Do you think you’ll ever vlog again?
https://youtu.be/hqHGhdaPHjs
