As most metacognitive assignments, this one, to make a video about our own writing process, had to be pondered first. How do you describe, much less put on film, one’s “writing process” ? Fortunately, we did some activities and watched some videos from last year that helped the creative juices to flow. We devised an overhead with rough sketches depicting how we go about writing. As usual, there were some very creative versions in our class. Inevitably, there was pain and suffering, as well as procrastination (or, to put it in more PC terms, rumination), involved. And, just as inevitably, there was a time of reckoning.
I wanted to include scenes of distraction, thinking time, frustration and eventual commitment to putting words on paper/computer. I also wanted to use scenes with my cats to portray distraction. During a lesson on uploading U-Tube videos, I was inspired to use video clips to portray the actual writing and revising processes. So I developed a two part approach for my video. Using scenes from my home, the library, the English computer lab and shots of the quad, I produced Part I, a narrative description of my process ending with the commitment to begin. In Part II, I used video clips of cat antics from U-Tube to depict the writing, editing, and revision process.
I really enjoyed editing and adding features to the video. This was a skill I had long wanted to learn, and how better to learn it than playing with a project like this. I was enthralled with the basic skill of splitting a clip as it brought so many future possibilities with it. Learning how to download music, add, move, change volume, speed, and many special effects, such as aging the film, putting in rain, sound effects, repeating and many more, was just icing on the cake. As the description of our demonstration emphasized, we were to learn approaches, not just discrete lessons. This was also the case with this project, with all the technology we learned. These are skills that are now ours and can be used in infinitely different ways. As Gail reminded us, teaching a man to fish goes a lot further than giving a man a fish.
