Prior to shooting our 20 shot video, I was skeptical. I could come up with a good 2 million places I'd rather be than on the recording end of a camera. My group members Tim and Sami were kind enough to step up and be our actors (a role that they both excelled at despite what they'd tell you) leaving me to be on the other side of the camera. Though I claim to have no tangible skills with a camera, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The project opened by eyes to another medium I was waving my hands at. It made me really visually dissect the mental pictures the short story made in my head. In order to do this, I had to read and fully comprehend the story. This is always step one of any reading project. Moving on from that, a project should make you think about and better understand the message and tone of a piece. This project did this particularly well. We weren't going to simply capture the plot of the piece when we had be armed with the knowledge of different types of shots, angles, and camera motions. This information is what made the project. I have participated in other video projects where all we did, more or less, was set the camera up on a tripod, hit record, acted the scene out, hit end, and turned the thing in. This barely even grazes the surface potential of a short story. If I can give my students these basic ideas on cinematography, a video project can actually teach interpretation skills rather than simply allowing students to act.
Besides this benefit, I've noticed through talking to others who have completed similar projects that these projects are memorable. You don't put hours into a five minute video and just forget about. I think if I can assign a project that will instill knowledge in my students that they won't forget, I may just be convinced to stop waving my hands at projects that move away from simply paper, pencil, and a marker or two.
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