This Capstone showcases an independently written, filmed, edited, and published crash course comprising three lessons about digital video relevant subjects. The process of deciding what I wanted to do for my senior year capstone involved me having to look back on my first days and experiences in the Digital Video program, and asking, what would have made my time in DigVid a little easier?

While thinking back to those days about two years from when I began working on my capstone, it occurred to me that a lot of the curriculum of the program had to be shown through youtube videos, or screenshots from films, or examples of professional photography. And obviously, this is only because that is the best way to teach a visual medium: show examples of things that already exist on the internet. It’s difficult, (next to impossible, actually), to teach a subject like film and video production without presenting a visual to back you up. Because of this, DigVid was often taught through things like Youtube videos to help explain these visual subjects. Then I thought, now that I know these things that we’ve been learning and applying for three years, I would be equipped to be the one explaining them now, and I could be the one making the Youtube videos. And that’s how I ended up deciding on what I’d accomplish for my capstone.

Annotated Bibliography

Studio VYV. “APERTURE, SHUTTER SPEED and ISO/ the EXPOSURE TRIANGLE MADE EASY!” YouTube, 31 Jan. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2HSoOq-rfo. Accessed 30 Jan. 2025. In order to create videos that are successful in ensuring that the skills and information that I will be passing along and explaining in my videos are honed and prepared properly to be shared, it is important that I study the videos that already exist in the topic areas that I intend to center my capstone project on. This is a video about the exposure triangle, one of the six video topics that I plan on reproducing for my project. I have taken notes on this video as well, highlighting specific things that I think makes the video a successful explanation to viewers who may be inexperienced in this particular area.

Aputure. “Lighting 101: Intro to Light Placement.” YouTube, 27 Jan. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqMQZG68Wkc. This is another example of the kind of information that I intend to share in my capstone. Another aspect of my note-taking and research process has been writing down the things in these example videos that I think are not exactly helpful or something that I believe I can improve upon in my own videos. However, for this video, I have very little to criticize because I believe that it exceeds all of my own personal standards and expectations for what I’m trying to accomplish with the resources that I have available to me. This video is quick paced, simple, and heavily visual-reliant which works great to convey its message extremely effectively to its beginner audience.

RocketJump Film School. “Intro to Storyboarding.” YouTube, 24 Mar. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQsvhq28sOI. This is a video that I have watched and known about for many years at this point. I believe that this is the most effective explanation of what storyboarding is, and the things that you are able to accomplish with it. There are two elements to this video; pictures of the storyboards, and the final product of the shot that was created from it. And on top of these visuals is just a casual narration that provides context, explains the process, and goes over the technical aspects. But for the most part, this is a visual explanation. I will take lots of inspiration from this video, mainly the intent to be as simple with the explanation as possible.

Interview with mentor My mentor works professionally as a pastor. He is very familiar with the process of creating a draft of his message, his sermon, and then delivering that message in a way that engages the audience and allows others to connect with his words. I thought that he’d be a great help in aiding me with the script-writing process of my videos, as well as the actual recording and public speaking aspect of talking to a camera. This will be a very major part of my videos that I don’t intend to ignore, the person that is explaining something to you has to be interesting to listen to, which my mentor is very good at in my opinion.

Interview with professional I’ve talked to a professional in the writing/producing industry about my capstone project and what I intend to accomplish with my videos. What I gained from this conversation was that explaining the topics in my videos, since the target audience is intended to be towards beginners, will force me to put myself into the shoes of the people who will be watching my videos, ie; the tenth grade class of DigVid students. Oftentimes people who are more experienced in an area might gloss over seemingly obvious things to them that are not inherently obvious to newcomers, or they might let slip some jargon that only a select few people will catch and recognize its meaning. So I’ve become more aware that I should focus on making my videos friendly to beginners.

Tarantino, Quentin, and Roger Avary. PULP FICTION. https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/pulp-fiction-1994.pdf?v=1729114975 One of my videos will be about how to write a screenplay. One of the most genius screenplays of all time in my opinion is of course Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. I enjoy the movie just fine, but oftentimes I come to the screenplay for my favorite scenes and just read the words on this script and I’m able to experience the movie in a whole different way that somehow enhances the experience of digesting this story. I think this is a great example of a screenplay because it’s not so by the books, or straight like it was written by a robot. The words are free and loose, there is slang in the scene directions; it is a very creative piece of writing that I will cite heavily when making this particular video.

Aaron Sorkin. THE SOCIAL NETWORK. https://assets.scriptslug.com/live/pdf/scripts/the-social-network-2010.pdf?v=1729115039 As opposed to the screenplay for Pulp Fiction, I find this screenplay to be a little more clean to look at in terms of its formatting. But that just goes to show the contrast between how writers choose to create their screenplays, and how much liberty they have in the way the screenplay turns out and eventually serves the production of turning these words into something visual that then becomes a feature film. There is no one way to write a screenplay, and I intend to show a wide variety of screenplays when I’m explaining in my video the process of creating one.

BrainBuffet – Self Serve Education. brainbuffet.com/. In the DigVid curriculum, we are given an account to Brain Buffet dot com, which has a bunch of different courses in basically all the types of Adobe sites. I’ve used it so far for Adobe Photoshop as well as Adobe Premiere. This is an incredibly rich and useful source for me as well because I intend to learn how to use another application called Adobe After Effects in order to edit my videos and provide helpful visuals to pair along my explanations. And I will also use these courses as secondary examples to study how professionals in this field might explain these concepts and topics to someone who is unfamiliar, like how I took notes on the three videos in my first sources.

“The Closer Look - YouTube.” Www.youtube.com, www.youtube.com/channel/UCI9DUIgtRGHNH_HmSTcfUbA. Instead of just one video to look at, this is an entire youtube channel that I have been following and been subscribed to for a while now. This source is intended to be used for the video that I will make about writing tips and coming up with ideas for stories that you will tell in your films. I believe that behind every great film, is a strong script, so in my opinion being able to think like a creative is super important for creating engaging and meaningful pieces of art/content. The Closer Look youtube channel is perfect for those who struggle with the writing process, and I have learned a lot from this channel and grown much as a writer from it.

Detisch, AJ. “5 Cinematic Lighting Techniques Every Filmmaker Should Know.” StudioBinder, 28 Feb. 2019, www.studiobinder.com/blog/film-lighting-techniques/. And finally, through the process of my research for the sources that I’ve included in my capstone production, I felt as though my knowledge was lacking a bit in areas, or was being stretched a little thin as far as how much I actually knew and would be able to explain simply. This led to me finding StudioBinder, a website for pretty much everything about filmmaking. This is a specific article about lighting, something that I believe I should sharpen up my knowledge on; this way, I’ll be more confident in sharing this info with others. And you know what they say, if you can’t explain it simply, then you aren’t an expert on it.