Treatment:

Title: What A Character!
Topic: Character Analysis through Fictional Interviews
Objective/Purpose: To describe a character's traits and provide evidence
Target Audience: Classmates
Running time: 5 minutes
Talent/Characters: Talk show host and Character(s)
Location(s): Talk show set
Style(s): Talk Show
Tone(s): Dependent on character's personality
Content Outline:

• Introduction by talk show host with a brief description of the character.
• Welcoming character onto the set by the host
• Handshake or hug depending on tone
• Questions from host and answers by character that develop a sense for the character
• Optional - cut aways to comments about the character from the other characters in the book OR to scenes reenacted from the book OR allowing the audience to ask a few questions
• Host thanks the character and describes who they will interview after the commercials
  

Videography Tip:

Your camera comes with a decent microphone, but getting good sound requires a lot of forethought and probably extra microphones. In all likelihood, your talent is more than a few feet from the microphone. That means other ambient sounds will make their way into your video (fans, traffic, classmates, etc.). If your talent is not significantly louder than the ambient noise, your audio may be useless. Without purchasing extra eqipment, you will need to find ways to lower the ambient noises and get your talent to loudly project their voices as if they were performing in a play in a large theater.

Since it is often difficult, if not impossible, to lower the ambient noise and because most talent are uncomfortable projecting their voices, you will probably need to purchase a microphone or two. The two most common microphones for school use are a handheld microphone and a lavalier (the small type you clip onto a shirt collar). You can purchase wired or wireless versions of either.

Link to AZDEN

If you wish to connect two 1/8" mini-plug microphones, you can purchase an adapter at Radio Shack that will combine two mono microphones into a stereo input. They also sell a mono to stero adapter that will double the signal from a single microphone.

Don't forget to wear headphones to monitor your sound!

So, you have a video clip that you want to adjust the volume for, but you want to adjust it up, not down, because the voices are too soft. By clicking on the clip in the Timeline Viewer, you can adjust the volume. Unfortunately, iMovie does not let you adjust the volume above 100% (probably because it is likely to introduce extra noise since it would boost all sounds including any hiss. But fear not, you can extract the sound from the video clip and edit it in another program.

1. Select the video clip in the Timeline Viewer
2. Select Extract Audio from the Advanced menu (it takes a minute)
3. Double-click on the new audio file in the Timeline Viewer
4. Write down the name next to Media File (not the editable name)
5. Quit iMovie
6. Open a audio editing program (like SndSampler)
7. Open the audio file from Step 4 (it is located in your movie's project folder, inside the Media folder)
8. Use the audio software to adjust the volume
9. Save the file (not Save As)
10. Open iMovie. Your audio file should automatically play at the adjusted volume
    

Product Review(s):

Software - Moving Picture

Moving Picture from StageTools is a tool for panning, titling and/or zooming (rotating too if you buy an add-on) on high-resolution images. It takes images up to 4,000 pixels and allows you to easily create video clips of pans, tilts and zooms of a still image (think Ken Burns). You can either run the program as a stand-alone or as a plug-in for Final Cut.

In the stand-alone version which plays nicely with iMovie, you basically: 1) load in your still image, 2) drag and size a framing box to set the starting image, 3) select how long the clip will clip will take and set the location and size of the ending image, 4) save the clip as a QuickTime movie, 5) use QuickTime Pro to save the movie as a DV stream, and 6) import the clip into iMovie or Final Cut.

Cost: $199.00