FNQ Screen and Media Teachers!
Join ATOM OLD and Essential Screen Skills for a gathering to discuss how we can support FNQ Screen and Media Teachers!
Saturday 15th October • 3pm
Central Hotel
9 Macrossan st, Port Douglas
RSVP email gateway@essentialscreenskills.com.au
We have complimentary tickets to Port Shorts Film Festival - please indicate if you’d like a Saturday ticket
Hi there, I see this is a meeting in Port Douglas, is there a way for people outside of this area to listen in via zoom perhaps?
Thanks.
Hi Matt, this is a Far North QLD (FNQ) meeting for us to connect with our FNQ teachers. However, if anyone is in Port Douglas for Port Shorts you are most welcome to join us 
Thanks for your enquiry.
HI, new media arts teacher.. Anyone have open source sites you can share with me. audio, footage, FX please thankyou Kate
Hello Jam
Thanks for emailing and good for you on starting out in media! And welcome to the forums…
I have two things for you…
In essence, there are probably two sources to help with your problem:
YouTube
At this late stage in the game, YouTube is more a repository than a cultural artefact. Ten years ago you had to search for ages to find a sound effect or video asset, whereas now, there are millions of high quality options. All you need to do is browse for a short time, then download the video file. You will find audio, footage, and fx files in abundance in here.
Canva
Since Canva onboarded their AI model, their functionality has exploded. Like YouTube, you will have an unending supply of audio, footage, and fx files to download. Remember - to have full, 100% free access to all premium features, you MUST sign up with your “.edu.au” email address. Otherwise you won’t have access to AI. Attached is a guide I put together for staff here at school, it shows how to access AI features to make endless stock footage etc and so on:
LINK (Google Drive open link)
Yes there are actual media websites advertising free access to this and that, but in all honesty, YouTube and Canva have overtaken all these other options. In other words, there is nothing in these alternative websites that you won’t find in YouTube or Canva today, despite what they might advertise.
Hoorah for “res publica”…!!
Lol.
Feel free to ask further questions etc and so on.
Chat soon.
Enjoy.
Thanks Matthew !
As a teacher I can feed them youtube, being a public school the students
do not have access to youtube. Canva is the only thing we use, hence the question.
(I want more)!
LINK – this is new, will check it out.
Might you share what units you have covered..
We are doing a Prem Pro music video,Prem Pro a commercial and stop motion sequence using Animate. Lots of digital going on. Although we have some great filming equipment.
Im right into animation.
Thanks Kate
Hello
No problem thanks for replying.
Let me just respond with a couple of things - When I was talking about YouTube, I wasn’t just talking about playing YouTube in front of the class. There’s much more to do here so I’ll provide some extra suggestions…
Here’s a workflow suggestion:
-Locate the relevant video (for example, using StudioBinder on YouTube) and download the file to make it available online for students. This is so students can have access to the information at another point later.
-On YouTube itself, obtain the transcript of the YouTube video and create a pdf file for students to read. I use the Google Chrome Extension “YouTube Summary” to generate the transcript. I then copy and paste it into Word and then save as a pdf file.
-I then upload the pdf file into ChatGPT and ask it to “generate a dot point summary” as well as “generate a question and answer worksheet of at least 15 questions” (including some other additional prompting to shape the worksheet). The summary would go into a powerpoint or something like that.
-If your school is onboarded to QLearn, I would use the same pdf transcript file in Canva and use Canva’s AI to code out an interactive lesson on the topic of the Hero’s Journey (as per the file), to then embed into a Module’s QLearn Page. I won’t elaborate on this step here, unless you want me to demonstrate how this is done.
-Next step is to jump over to NotebookLM and use the same pdf transcript file to generate an infographic flowchart of the discussion of the Hero’s Journey. I also make this infographic available online in something like OneDrive etc.
The LINK I included: yeah this is a simple Canva guide on how to make endless stock footage videos basically, so check that one out. It’s extremely handy to know.
On your units question: of course! I’m very happy to share anything and everything. I’ve been making content and units of study for almost two decades, so there’s alot there. Feel free to provide a list of topics that interest you, and I’ll dig around in my files to see what I can find. My filing system is not good, but I’ll search any topics you provide and see what we get!
I’ll get started on searching for:
Music Videos
Advertising (is that what you mean by “commercial”?)
Stop Motion
When you say “lots of digital going on” - do you mean a unit of study about digital media?
I’m glad you are into animation! Have you considered teaching a unit on Anime?
Anyway, get in touch.
my email: mbeat43@eq.edu.au
Hope that helps.
Enjoy
Hi Matt,
I’d be really interested in your workflow for using Canva AI. After reading this, I went in and had a bit of a play around but my initial creations were underwhelming, so wondering how you use it!
Morning Adam
Hope you are travelling well!
Thanks for getting in touch.
So I probably should start with a disclaimer - I don’t use Canva for developing anything cinematic, if I can use that term here, but really just stock footage. In other words, just bits and bobs.
If you are chasing something Orwell, or Kubrick, then yeah…hard no.
Lol.
As for simple, stock footage though - absolutely yes!
If you need some rain drops on a leaf? Done. If you need kids playing in the park on a sunny day? Done. Canva AI excels at the simple, vanilla shot that a student might use in say a social media video, a montage etc and so on.
This is what my advice is steered toward. If you are chasing simple shots for free, then Canva is the best on the market. I wasn’t referring to cinema conventions. I just assumed we all knew what I was talking about…my fault.
Canva AI will not produce an “in-line” shot for a scene or sequence that sustains a visual look, consistent lighting etc and so on. It just doesn’t have the memory capacity to decode a prompt that long, and it doesn’t have the functionality to support continuity by uploading images.
In fact, pretty much no AI model out there can do that to the level of (your) satisfaction. Even paid stuff like Runway, with all its gimmicky promises, still fails in creating continuity for cinematic shots that matches the sequence perfectly. The hardware requirements (such as memory) is just not there yet.
You can see this problem in ChatGPT where conversations are getting too long, and the AI output starts to “forget” things you had in your original prompt - this is the hardware problem. All AI models suffer the same thing.
So what does this mean?
Use Canva if you need free, good quality stock footage. The generic type of filler. If you want something cinematic, then you’ll just have to shoot it yourself I’m afraid.
My prompting…
Because I use Canva for simple shots, I tend to only type in what I need in terms of basics and I defer to the model to fill in the gaps. For example: Long shot of dog running along in the park on a sunny day. There are two reasons for this simplicity: 1) I don’t have the time to dig into the prompt and 2) It’s just a simple shot I’m chasing, so I can’t be bothered.
Lol.
In essence though, your prompt will reflect your needs for the project really. When I was discovering this endless supply of stock footage, I needed some nature shots for a video the School Admin requested. So I grabbed some “rain on a house gutter” and some “rain on a leaf” type shots. They came out perfect (in my opinion) and well, it worked. This impressed me so I wanted to share it.
And that’s basically my workflow for Canva.
If I missed something in your questions, please let me know.
Here are two video samples I created in Canva using AI:
Link (Beach Waves)
Link (Rain on Gutter)
Hope that helps.
Chat soon.
Thanks a mountain Matt. Its great info.
I am generally a visual arts teacher but this has led me
into media arts over the years .
I went to SAE and studied animation.
Its my first time teaching MA as a full load.
Perhaps I could have your term plan for one year.
for year 8, 9, 10 just to give me an overview .
just the unit topic.
I think the teacher before taught film making from basic to advanced,
using Prem Pro to edit, in each year group at Mossman High.
I hope to do film making and animation. We have just bought 10 wacom
tablets.
Where do you think film making is heading re: ai ?
We use it for inspiration but that’s about it.
Thanks a mountain .
Kate
Blockquote
Hi Matt ,
Possible to see your unit overview , i dont need details just the topics you teach in one year for years 8,9,10 , you might do it by term or semester ?? eg:
year 8 sem 1 sem2
year 9 sem 1 sem 2 etc etc .
Thankyou will be super helpful .
Kate
Morning
Just responding to the request for our unit list here at Bellbird:
Year 8 (on rotation every semester)
Introduction to photography
Social media production
Year 9 (on rotation every semester)
Music video production
Australian cinema
Year 10
Genre movie trailer
Close analysis of a Hitchcock film
Close analysis of villains in film
It’s not the most ideal group of units I think, there needs to be some swaps and changes made to make a more relevant course of study (I don’t think villains belong in year 10 for example, and national cinema is a complex topic, perhaps too much for junior school). If you are starting from scratch, I think you need to consider the relevancy link between learning and real life, by targeting the big societal topics and issues - social media being the most prominent of all. The younger grades need to study social media more than the older grades, so target somewhere around grade 7 or 8 for a social media unit of study. The other big societal issue is artificial intelligence. However, since “AI Literacy” is such an incoherent body of work, it is best at this stage to just immerse AI into existing units of study (which is actually what ACARA recommend at the moment). This means making small half-lesson learning bytes to teach every now and then, where you progressively instruct students on the ethical dimension of AI use, such as responsible use, verifying output, as well as literacy skills such as evaluation, analysis etc. The important thing to note about teaching about and with AI in media, is that you need to keep the tone positive and avoid any punitive language - all of the research in AI Education at the moment is pointing out that punitive approaches actually have the reverse effect - it increases the likelihood that students will use AI to cheat. Therefore the recommendation about teaching AI is to teach students how to use AI effectively to supplement their learning, not replace their learning. If that makes sense.
I think what I’ll do today is source unit plans for you to look over. I’ll post another reply later today.
Ok hope that all helps so far.
Enjoy.
