The Presentation

With the video finally done, it was time to burn the video on a dvd. Luckily, the video was able to fit on one of the blank dvd's I already had at my house. With the dvd ready for viewing, it was time to organize a presentation of my video to some young basketball players. I figured what better example of young atheletes than my younger brother and his friends? So I called around and asked if they would be interested, and I was able to get a few of them to agree to come one weekend.

The presentation went well; I was hoping to get more people to come but I did what I could. I showed the video, and at the same time explained to them what was going on and gave them additional information on the subjects. My mom was the one who took most of the pictures, but I also took some myself.

I am very grateful for the people that came and spent their time with me to help with my senior project. I am also very thankful for the help of Mr. Kish, Mrs. Buse, and my advisor(my dad). I am finally done with my product and I already feel extremely relieved that I'm on the home stretch. I am looking foward to the presentation to the judges and I hope all goes well from this point on.

Editing

All of my footage was now gathered and I soon realized that the most difficult part was soon to come. First of all, I had to get the footage from my video camera to a computer to edit. After trying unsuccessfully on my home computer, I went to my mentor for help. Although he was as unsuccessful on his classroom computer as I was on my home computer, he got Mrs. Buse to help me out. She enlightened us that we were using the wrong chord for the camera and showed us the right one. It took about an hour, but I finally got both the first and second videos from my camera onto the computer in the library. I then transferred the videos from the computer to an mp3 player I owned so that I would be able to work on the editing at home if I had to.

At this point I had all of my footage that I would need on one storage device. I started staying after school with Mr. Kish to work on my editing. This was the point when I realized that editing video is way harder than it looks!!! It took me hours to do this part of the project. I had to finish the editing at home, and I ran into some other problems. My computer is not a very top notch machine, and the amount of patience it takes to make a video on it is enormous. The thing froze multiple times, and I had to frequently restart my computer so that I could actually work. When I finished the video, I had been working for about an hour and a half. I clicked to play the final video and the computer froze again and shut down without saving. I had to redo the last hour and a half of work before I could be finished. I was not very happy to say the least.

I eventually finished, and although I was not completely as happy as I wanted to be with the video, I was proud of what I had created. It was now time to organize and present my video to a group of young basketball players.

Shooting the Video

After all of my equipment was gathered, it was now time to go out and get some footage. Having played basketball for fun for most of my life, I decided that I would be able to record myself shooting the basketball and still get some good footage. I wanted to go and just shoot around, trying to use as many variety of shots as possible to get as much information as I could. At first, I thought the school gym would be an ideal place to record my video because there would be no issue with lighting or uneven ground. Unfortunately, neither me or my mentor was able to get a hold of the athletic director to schedule a gym time.

My second option was to go to my neighbor's house to record video. He owns a full court in his back yard, and I was able to get permission to use it for my project. I went to the court with my girlfriend so she could help me with the camera. This was when I found out that this was not going to go as planned. First of all, I couldn't seem to zoom out far enough on my camera to get the complete shot I was going for. The highest the shot could show was maybe one or two feet above the backboard. With that limited view, the arc of the shot could not be seen, and the footage taken was not nearly as useful as I needed. Second of all, my girlfriend seemed to be doing better than I was, and I was NOT going to have my girlfriend show me up on my own project. We got about thirty minutes of video that day, but I was not satisfied.

A couple days later, I decided to go back by myself and try to use the other side of the court to zoom out further. I was hoping I would also play better so that I had some made shots to go along with all of my misses. This attempt at recording was much more successful. I got all the shots I needed from the right angles. I also played alot better than I had the previous days. Now that I had my footage, it was time to start organizing it in Windows Movie Maker. I also had to find some NBA game footage from both the past and the present.

Getting Started

After I finished typing my research paper, I started gathering the equipment I would need to make my product. I was to make a video on the physics of basketball that had both homeade footage and NBA game footage. I planned on taking the footage and breaking it down frame by frame to explain the physics involved which each shot.

To do all of this I would need a video camera, tripod, basketball equipment, video editing software, a computer, and a dvd burner. Luckily, I already owned almost everything I would need. The only thing I didn't have was a tripod to fit the video camera I had. I talked to my mentor, Mr. Kish, about it and he was able to get a tripod that fit my camera from Mrs. Buse, the Media Director at school.

After I had the equiptment, it was time to get some footage. My first order of business was to spend time with my mentor to discuss what I would need to record in my homeade footage. After figuring out what I needed to record, my next step was to go out and get the footage I needed.