I was fortunate enough to attend the Masie Center’s Video & Learning Lab from February 10, 2014 to February 12, 2014 in Saratoga Springs, NY.  I learned a lot of great tips for creating video content as well as some of the tools of the trade.

My name tag from the seminar.

In addition to chatting with Elliott Masie and some really interesting people from around the country (and the world), I participated in a number of exercises and projects that allowed me to “get my hands dirty” and really get a feel of what the potential is for video content at Stony Brook, especially since our society is shifting towards an “on-demand” need for content.

During the course of the seminar, I spoke to a bunch of people from around the world via video conference, and we saw how much video conferencing has evolved in such a short time.  It was really cool to see how Elliott Masie implemented video conferencing throughout the seminar to have us speak to experts on education and video production from around the world.  In addition to using the HD Video Conferencing Room, we spoke to various people in the United States and the United Kingdom via Skype.

Some of the exercises we participated in required us to shoot video for a variety of reasons.  One was to shoot an object, and the other was a person.  I learned that the two are very different.  For an object, its up to the cameraman to bring the object to life, whereas a person brings personality and life to a video.  We also learned some key tips to shooting video such as the importance of lighting and that you should always shoot videos in short segments (with pauses in between shots) which makes it easier to edit the video later on.

Overall, there were a lot of cool technologies at the Masie Center and I learned a lot about video as content.  As we were learning about the various hardware and systems at the Masie Center, I kept thinking that “that would be really cool at Stony Brook,” or “how would this work with what we have.”  I’m really excited to see how we can apply and implement the cool things I learned!