Are you interested in running a mobile filmmaking project? Download this guidebook (PDF) which is a summary of lessons learned from the M-Generations project.

Check out the finished group video. This was screened to the church congregation on December 5. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Yesterday was the last session we had to make final edits to the group movie. After making sure each participant had the clips they wanted in their respective sections, or chapters, I cleaned up the edit (and in some cases, added extra footage) to each section in Final Cut before showing it again yesterday. A few people made some requests to add specific clips, and we discussed the format of credits, and then we had fun with the camera.

We decided to incorporate video into the credits, and shot a few “outros” of the editing team talking about themselves and the project. I will add these in, make many DVD copies of the final film for all participants, and then upload the final video here so families can see it before the congregational screening at the church on December 5.

Not only am I impressed with the quality of video content produced by this group, but I’m also impressed by their commitment (2-3 hours of video training AFTER a 3+ hour church service every other week!) and their artistic expression. We passed the digital camera around yesterday and let everyone photograph one another. This group can do more than video production! Now I hope to find a way to let participants continue editing their own footage — either from home, on available software (often Windows Movie Maker) — or in another context, or online. Hopefully I will be working to build a platform that will host and organize mobile video content based on tags and filters, but I’ll keep you posted.

Last week, we met for the second editing session. Participants in the editing team each worked on laptops to edit their “chapters” for our group video (chapters include home life; church life; school or work; out & about). They worked for hours in iMovie to create rough cuts, selecting favorite or interesting clips and arranging them on a timeline. Some people went so far as to add transitions and titles.

And then tragedy struck!

I discovered, to my horror, that nearly all of the computers experienced a software bug wherein the video projects did not save. [Technical note: apparently this has been known to happen with iMovie 9 running on Macs with an older OS; my newer MBP and one other newer laptop had no problems auto-saving in iMovie.] Fortunately I had been able to export tiny versions of most people’s edited sequences before they disappeared. This allowed me to see what clips participants chose to include, and I made semi-edited versions of several chapters based on this footage.

I also added a few people’s footage to the online editing platform, Jaycut, so they could play with editing their own content from home. However, being free, online, and nearly the only service of its kind available, the system is often slow and buggy due to its relative newness as an open editing platform and the large amount of traffic bogging down its servers.

Today we met for a third editing session, this time working entirely on one computer, using on Final Cut Pro. The irony is that, while this is exactly what I didn’t want – being shackled to a proprietary and expensive piece of editing software – it is more comprehensive than iMovie and in many respects, actually easier to use (making simple cuts, for example, is much easier in FCP). It also allowed the participants to be exposed to a third editing system, identifying interface similarities across different platforms (bins, timeline, viewer, editing tools, tracks, etc.) and make decisions as a group.

At this point I’d like to reiterate that my original intention, to edit this project in a free and open source online platform like Jaycut, still stands. I just wish the platform could be stable, or that there were several to choose from. However, a collaboration is possibly in the works between me and a colleague at MIT to design a platform for mobile video content that doesn’t necessarily offer editing functions, but rather detailed filtering and tagging options (pre-upload) as well as drag-and-drop features to arrange one’s clips in a sequence. Stay tuned; this might be a great help for future projects.

Today was the first editing session for the editing team, which includes five teen participants. They got an introduction to editing systems and familiarized themselves with basic editing concepts.

I really wanted to use the free, online, open source editing program Jaycut for this project, but because it is still under development and has been quite popular (yet lacks the server space to handle its popularity), the platform isn’t stable enough for a collaborative editing project as large as ours. Because of this, M-Gen participants were trained on iMovie, but we explored how editing features exist across different interfaces (bins, viewers, timelines, etc.), using Jaycut’s platform as a comparative example.

We split up the 150+ clips into sections – home, school, work, church, and out other places – with each participant responsible for editing one section. Everyone received index cards with summaries of their themed clips, so they can review and arrange content when away from the computer.

Good news: Phones have been reactivated for another month for all participants (editors and non-editors), so everyone can film more content. Extra footage from non-editors will be added to the group movie in a few weeks. The editors will have three more sessions to finish their edits to the group movie, and will then be able to start editing a new project: individual short films using the video clips they shot of themselves. These will become short profiles of each person, and allow each participant to have more control over their own footage.

My wish list, as facilitator: for Jaycut or Kaltura/Stroome platforms to be stable enough to edit lots of video content online, so the kids can access their projects from any computer. Or for YouTube to expand its new online editor to accomodate more footage and offer more features. Or for me to launch my own video hosting + editing platform specifically for mobile content. Til then, it’s proprietary software for us.

At this session, we discussed how the filming process went for everyone. Some people filmed a LOT of videos, others filmed less. Some looked directly at the camera and narrated what they were filming; others recorded daily activities or events they attended.

We uploaded and watched a few peoples’ videos to get a sense of the variety of content. Participants filmed house tours, apple picking excursions with family members, football games with friends, and church activities. Some people are still filming mobile videos over the next few days, and those clips will be collected next Sunday, October 10.

We have also formed an editing group! Thanks to our five teen participants – Esther, Maureen, Martin, Nelly and Tracy – who have agreed to go through nearly 200 clips and learn to edit everyone’s footage into one short movie. First editing session starts October 17. We will be organizing clips on index cards and getting an introduction to Jaycut, the free online editing platform.

Thanks to David DiMaria for photographing and filming session two!

Today we kicked off M-Generations at the Kenyan Community Church in Lowell. To my surprise, extra people showed up, including several teens who hadn’t be at church on the day I came to recruit participants. If this beta project is successful, perhaps we can do a Part II in the new year!

For the next three weeks, all participants (11 total; 6 teens and 5 adults) will be shooting mobile videos about their lives. On October 3, I will collect the footage and we will form an editing group that will work to turn everyone’s video clips into one short movie.

Stay tuned!