Do-It-Yourself Camera Slider Project

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013 by Jeff Gray, KET

Continuing our test-builds of do-it-yourself photography/video production tools, here’s a camera slider that schools and home users should have a good time building for little money. Using it is fun, it’s very portable, and it adds many possibilities for interesting camera moves for video production projects. Students will notice that the moves are used regularly in films and tv shows. Slideshow pics are swipeable in portable devices.

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Based on the Filmriot crew’s DIY Camera Slider design, our unit was inexpensive (around $20.00, including some used parts) and it helped to produce some nice test video right off the bat. Mods I added were: substitution of a raised metal electrical switch plate; addition of an inexpensive quick-release camera mount I found online; and felt strips to line the tubes for smoother sliding. If I can build this (think Homer Simpson BBQ project) I know you can.

Here’s the first quick video test. Could do better with practice and care, but the dogs, Precious and Bunny, were perfect with no direction at all.

Camera Slider Test Video
Camera Slider Test Video

Shot with iPhone 5; edited in Lumify app (to try); WiFi transfered to iPad w/PhotoSync app (on both); edited in iMovie app to add titles, stills, and music; exported to YouTube over WiFi; inserted into WordPress blog w/Royal Slider plugin.

See the earlier camera stabilizer project.

Coming soon: a camera crane/jib project for more super-silky-fun moves!

If you’ve made something useful for video production and would like to share it please leave a response, below!

Share | By Jeff Gray, KET at 3:41 pm | Permalink | Comments Off   Posted in do-it-yourself equipment, photography, portable devices, projects, video equipment, video production

Gallatin Middle Students Use iPads for Video at KET Media Lab

Thursday, January 31st, 2013 by Jeff Gray, KET

Ms. Michelle Lawrence brought students from Gallatin County Middle School to KET on January 17 for a tour of KET’s digital production facility and a workshop in the KET Media Lab on Using iPads for Video Production.



iPads, iPhones, and other portable devices with cameras continue to become useful tools for education, and using them for student video production is fun and efficient. The learning curve for video production as compared to pc-based software is drastically reduced — especially for editing — and the quality of the finished productions is impressive. A video project can be done from start to finish in much less time, with a minimum of equipment (iPad, tripod adapter, external microphone, iMovie or other edit software), and for much less money than pc-based solutions.

Here’s a great use of the iPad and the iMovie app by Camille Davis’ students from Lexington’s Christ the King School for the KET School Video Project: Election 2012.” Camille also started her students off with a KET Media Lab workshop on Using iPads for Video Production. Check out the excellent video quality and sound of the video these very well-prepared and charming young students made — all with just an iPad ($499) and the iMovie video editing app ($5.00), which includes graphic templates and free-to-use music backgrounds — and for much less than the cost of a camera, a pc with editing software, and other gear. Improvements could be made by adding a tripod adapter and tripod, and an external microphone, which could together add about $150 or so — still well below pc-based video production costs. That brings easy, effective, and fun video production much closer to more schools.

If your school is within driving distance of KET and you’d like a free workshop (and a tour, time permitting), contact Jeff Gray, KET Education Division at jgray@ket.org; 800-432-0951 ext. 7263, 859-258-7263.

And, if you and your Kentucky students are already using iPads, iPhones, or other portable devices to make student-produced video projects, please upload examples of your work to the KET School Video Project website to share (please list what you used to make your videos in the “Notes” field of the upload form). Call or email Jeff if you have questions or need help.

Jeff will also be presenting on Using iPads for Video Production at the next  KYSTE 2013 (Kentucky Society for Technology in Education) spring conference (Willis room, 3:45 pm, Thursday, March 14). If you’re headed for the very useful and entertaining spring KYSTE conference, stop in to see and hear about video project recording, editing, and sharing using iPads (and some new information on using iPhones), along with a demonstration of various useful add-on accessories and workarounds that Jeff has found that make it all even better.

Share | By Jeff Gray, KET at 7:04 pm | Permalink | Comments Off   Posted in featured schools, iOS for video production, Media Lab, portable devices, school video, video production

Storicraft: A Community Digital Storytelling Youth Project

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013 by Jeff Gray, KET


Ms. Felice Salmon, of Common Good (a local Lexington community service organization begun by John and Laura Gallaher), along with artist-assistant Jennae Legg, the assistance of KET Media Lab staff, and other volunteers, recently completed a LexArts grant-funded project to help under-served North-Lexington youth tell digital stories about themselves using still cameras and video editing software.

Called the Storicraft project, it served elementary through high school-level students in a free after-school program that put multimedia production equipment in their hands for a multimedia artistic activity combining pictures, spoken narratives, and video. Based on artist-educator Wendy Ewald’s book, The Best Part of Me: Children Talk About Their Bodies in Pictures and Words, the project resulted in a collection of self-affirming and esteem-building self-portraits that can be seen online at the KET School Video Project website grouped by 3rd-5th grader and middle-high school student video collections.

KET’s Cynthia Warner and Sara O’Keefe visited the Common Good location and used KET Media Lab digital cameras to give workshops in basic photography and to help the students shoot some of their self-portrait imagery. Ms. Salmon and others then helped the students take more pictures, storyboard their projects by arranging images, and prepare a self-descriptive narrative to record later over their pictures. Finally, the groups were brought to KET’s Media Lab for afternoon workshops in video editing for digital storytelling projects by Jeff Gray, assisted by Sara O’Keefe, Ms. Salmon, Ms. Legg, and Common Good volunteer adults. At KET, the students learned about timeline editing using pc software: importing and assembling content pictures, arranging them in the editor timeline, adding transitions, adding narration, adding music, saving and exporting files, and sharing their videos.

In addition to the Storicraft student videos appearing online at the KET School Video Project webiste, the videos will also be presented by the students themselves at the Farrish Theater in the Lexington Public Library (downtown location, free admission), on 2/15/13 from 6 pm to 8 pm during the first LexArts-sponsored Lexington Gallery Hop of the season — an evening of open houses for area artists and galleries.

poster design by Felice Salmon

Share | By Jeff Gray, KET at 5:55 pm | Permalink | Comments Off   Posted in projects, school video

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