Videochallenge: TIC and the Magic Planet

Hello!

I´m here again to show you our last project... We have work also in the same last group, composed by María, Gonzalo, Estrella, Celia and I. First I would like to say is that I´m very proud of my team! I consider that we had made a very good job :)

Well, regarding the current challenge, we become both writers and film directors! Yes! It sound amazing, and it was! We were requested to create a clip about the common e-project we are doing and the first thing we had to do was to plan what it would be about. Due to the fact that all our individual e-Projects were about the Earth and its features [Planets in the Solar System (mine), TheHydrosphere (by Gonzalo), Environmental care (by Estrella), The Mysteries of the Earth (by María) and Landcaping (by Celia)], we decided to create a character based on the Universe. And... What could be better than an alien? Everybody wants to know about life from outer space! That’s how TIC was born, our main character. Can you guess why he was called TIC? 

To plan our clip, we created a storyboard using the webtool storyboardthat which was recommended by our teacher María Jesús. At the beginning, we started to describe all the story, but later, we discovered that the free account we made only allows us to create six scenes, so we had to shorten it. However, it wasn´t a problem since the final clip will include the whole story (we thought that it also will make it scheming). Later on, we were surprised how amazing the pictures looked: the program has lots of backgrounds, characters and shapes, which allow you to create exactly what you want! Nevertheless, what we liked the most was the possibility to modify the position of the main character; TIC could put its arms up or down, it could move its head and cross its legs... and all these made the story more real! 

Here you can see our storyboard! Are you ready to meet TIC? 

From the storyboard, we brought TIC to live! We got down to work with the clip.

First of all, if you want to film a movie you need to write a script so we became writers! We wrote the dialogue using Word and we printed it in order to make Gonzalo ´s work (TIC) easier and show him what did he have to say. Our clip was divided into eleven scenes in which our alien would travel through the Solar System for discovering the Magic Planet. TIC was dying to find it out! but… What about TIC? We needed an actor! So... Gonzalo  became TIC thanks to our make-up team (María and I)! Look at that awesome result! I think we made a good group!!

  

Then, we were ready to record the video challenge... For this purpose we decided to use the chroma key technique and the webtool Camtasia, with which we could substitute the green background for a picture from our choice. Regarding Camtasia, we downloaded the free version with a free trial for 30 days. It seems quite difficult to use at the very beginning but after practicing with it for a while, we discovered all its possibilities. Thanks to Camtasia, we have learned how to use chroma key and how to organized the video clips, the pictures and the audios in order to get the final video. The only problem we have found is the fact that, because of the free version, a watermark appeared in our video and the quality of it decreased. 

Despite this little problem, the result was fantastic! We created a video in which TIC travels through the solar system and discovers the Earth and its layers. Tic also has doubts and makes questions during the video in order to encourage participation in our pupils. The teacher could stop the video whenever TIC makes one question to let the pupils to answer him. This video can be used to introduce a topic, so the teacher can know about their prior knowledge, or to make a review at the end of the topic.
 
I hope you enjoy it! Don´t forget to visit our Twitter profiles and the programs bedore mentioned by clicking on them. See you very soon!