Videos – Sunila Samuel

Art Lesson: Using Video Demonstrations to Teach Sketching Skills
To assist the art staff at the distance learning school where I work, I created a short video explaining warm-up exercises and line styles. I worked with the in-house subject matter expert (the head art teacher, Dorothy Emry) to develop the storyboard and script for the content. Using a basic Panasonic video camera, I recorded Dorothy demonstrating specific sketching techniques. Then, I edited the video files in iMovie, including importing music, adding a voiceover, and optimizing the audio. In the video, she demonstrates ways to hold a pencil while sketching as well as different line style techniques.

To be an effective teaching tool, the video follows the learning objectives for the course unit in which these skills are covered. The video is currently a supplement to the drawing course’s print-based instructional materials.

Here is a clip:

Golden Gate Bridge – A Short Video
Using iMovie, I created a short video montage of some photos I took of the Golden Gate Bridge when I was there last fall. (I also added some quick facts and a quote from a poem by Joseph Strauss, the Bridge’s chief engineer.)

The images are typical, iconic views, but I added some some soaring royalty-free music that adds some cool drama. The piece is by the very talented Kevin MacLeod, music composer and owner of the site Incompetech. Kevin deserves an abundance of thanks and donations for providing his fantastic musical pieces to the public; they’ve been a boon for educators in creating instructional and informative videos for all levels of learners.

iMovie is an extremely simple-to-use video editing program that comes with every Mac. It’s a useful application in quickly creating learning bites to gain attention (the first step in Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction).

Golden Gate Bridge: Some Quick Facts from Sunila Samuel on Vimeo.