The making of a video

I've got to say, making a video ain't no walk in the park. As a group, a few of my classmates and I logged several hours into a seven minute piece. I suppose I can see why it takes so long for movies to hit theaters after they've been filmed. I have learned a lot about the process of creating a movie, though, and I really enjoyed the creative aspect of the project.
Our project started with an assignment. The assignment was to make a video that talked about technology in the classroom. We then had to come up with ideas as to how we were going to do that. Thinking of creative ideas is something I love doing, so I like this. After a discussion, we decided that the style of our movie was going to be relaxed, and we were going to transition by passing around the camera (in our case, our laptop cameras). The audience was intended to know that the we weren't actually passing the camera to the person next to us, but the editing was meant for the transition to be smooth enough so that they almost could. With a few doubts, we went ahead with this idea and agreed that we each would have a little less than a minute to talk about one implication of technology in the classroom.
We were each responsible for this one minute, and I like the mixture of individual and group responsibilities that this video required. The first thing we did was to add to our idea a bit and actually pass the computer around as we sat with our backs facing to one tree. That was a lot of fun, as you would well be able to imagine, if you knew the "kids" in my group.
In fact, the stress that's involved with making a video was a little relieved by the attitudes of the people involved. We allowed ourselves to make mistakes and we weren't afraid to laugh at ourselves. I can't imagine having to take such a task on as this without the capacity of laughter. It not only improved the time we had making the movie, but also the movie, itself.
Fortunately, even though we had our doubts, the passing off the laptop thing actually worked.  We were directed to include some WALLDO shots in our film, so we spent our conclusion including them.  We had to think of another way to shoot our film, which was fine. What we came up with also worked, even though the video camera we had would record the sound (we don't know why, it had a microphone) and we had to dub over with the voice over tool.  We were able to tease ourselves about that in the "bloopers"  by dubbing male voices over female mouths and vice versa. 
I hope our class enjoyed our film, even though it was long.  I have noticed that there are some elements to the film that we could go back and fix, and that has been a learning experience.  iMovie has been my favorite piece of software to work with so far, and I can see myself making use of film producing in the classroom.  For one, my brother (who is a teacher) has to go to department meetings and school meetings, as well.  I can see myself using iMovie if I ever have to pitch an idea to my coworkers or bosses.  I would also be more than happy to share the program with my students.  To me, literature is more than just reading out of a book,  It's about expressing ideas creatively and carrying on a cultural conversation. This is definitely a good way to do both.  I think that, therefore, this type of project is very appropriate for my content area.

 I will now enjoy several hours of sleep tonight. :)