Last Summer (2014), we had the opportunity to put our educational video expertise to good use by shooting and editing two college courses for the College of San Mateo. These videos are part of their XL Online program, a new project aimed at creating more dynamic and engaging online college courses. For this first set, we shot a Health course and an Intro to Chemistry course, both general education courses with very high enrollment.
This project was unique for us, as it was shot over the course of several months, but on the same set, a classroom on campus. So we started with a test day. We packed up pretty much all the gear we had, got it in the room and created our set. All of the desks were moved to one side of the room while we found the best angles to shoot both courses from, then we lit. Our main goal was to find a lighting and camera setup that could be quickly switched from Chemistry Course mode to Health Course mode, so we could shoot as many segments as possible in a relatively short amount of time. Once our set was lit, we took careful measurements of the room as well as desk, light and camera positions so we could re-create the same set on each shoot day. We were then able to pair down our equipment list to the essentials and acquire equipment we found useful, like a second teleprompter for the Health course taught by two professors.
Thanks to our test day, the rest of the shoot days went smoothly. Our set and lighting was decided and we could focus on running our two cameras, two teleprompters and checking the script all with a three man crew. Over the course of several months in the summer and fall we worked on the editing, incorporating graphics and screen captures into the final pieces. In all we shot over 40 segments, ranging in length between 5 and 20 minutes. We had a great time working with the folks over at the College of San Mateo and look forward to seeing the courses go live and shooting more courses with them in the future.
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