Medium Specificity

Click here :) You want your freedom?

    Surprisingly, I had never created a video on iMovie before this project. I know that may be hard to believe, but I’ve just never really been the artsy video maker type. Over the weekend, I went skiing with my best friend and we quickly became obsessed with what we call “ski train.” Ski train, simply put, is the practice of nuzzling up to your ski buddy and skiing for a short time down a gentle slope with your skis in between theirs. Clearly, we had to document ski train, so we took a couple of short videos. When we were driving home, we talked about making a short video montage of the shots we got and putting them together in a humorous way that might only make sense to us really. Little did I know, we were formulating the framework of what I would choose to do for this project! 

    Like I said, I had never used iMovie before this and surprisingly there was a bit of a learning curve. I had to have my roommate sit down with me and walk through some basic processes. However, overall iMovie is relatively user-friendly. Had my roommate not helped me out, I’m sure it would have just taken a little bit more time. Though it was hard to navigate when starting out, I quickly learned that iMovie comes with many affordances. 

    iMovie allows for a great range of creative freedom. The app is set up in many ways to allow users to create something unique and original. Unlike other creativity applications, iMovie forces users to manually put in their videos/photos, edits, crops, transitions, etc. There are a lot of elements that can be adjusted. While the plethora of elements made it difficult at times to navigate the video editing process, it also allowed me to get exactly the type of product that I wanted. Because I was able to carefully adjust the creation as I wanted, I have confidence that iMovie can be used for a wide variety of genres. I used it to make a simple, short, goofy video about my friend and me skiing together. It can also be used to create longer or more serious videos. I know that the next time I need to make a video, I can come back to iMovie and end up with a product that I really want. 

    While there were many affordances in the iMovie application, there were also some limitations. My roommate made a really good point as I finished up the video. She said something along the lines that you can definitely tell when somebody has used iMovie to make a video. Though iMovie provides you with options of font, color, crops, transitions, etc., the options are not limitless. We have all seen the wacky little transitions that take place in videos and we all know that they come from iMovie. A person may be able to create a video that is not so painfully on-brand for iMovie, but they may have to work hard avoid some cliché elements that are often included in the app. 

    I really enjoyed doing this project because I believe that it has helped me to learn more about affordances and limitations and how those things will affect my future students. It is essential to think about the affordances and limitations of various media forms because those largely determine the creative process and the final product. I am looking forward to having discussions with my students about these elements and figuring out what media forms would most effectively convey the ideas they are creating.