JEA Curriculum Highlight: Stock Video Footage for a Final or Class Project

 

Photo by Richard Thornton / Shutterstock.com
Photo by Richard Thornton / Shutterstock.com


From time to time we look at what the JEA Curriculum has to offer.If you’re a JEA member, you can access the lesson talked about below with the link listed if you are logged in to http://curriculum.jea.org/. If you are not a JEA member and would like to access that lesson and the rest of the curriculum, you can join the Journalism Education Association here.


In this post, I’d light to talk about how I use the Video Storytelling and Advanced Methods lesson in the Multimedia Broadcast strand.

In my introductory broadcast journalism class I have students edit together stock footage into a story for their final. They all get the same stock footage and edit it individually into a story. The footage is comprised of some b-roll, some interviews and a few standups.

While the students have their own projects they do throughout the semester where they shoot and edit their own footage, I decided this semester I was wanting to have them edit an additional stock footage project together in class to more closely simulate what their final was going to be like.
I searched my hard drive and didn’t have another similar grouping of footage (b-roll, intervews and standups). I thought about asking my Video Editor in Chief if she could piece a few things together for me. I even almost reached out to some of my broadcast friends to see if they could help me out.

Then, the question hit me.

“I wonder if the JEA Curriculum has some stock footage I can use.”

header-cyclocrossI logged into the site and within two minutes I found exactly what I was looking for. Within the Video Storytelling and Advanced Methods lesson I found 83 Cyclocross videos. It’s a variety of b-roll with some great natural sound within some of the clips. I downloaded all 83 of the clips and filtered a group of them into a folder that I will share with students. I decided to not share all with them as it’s quite a bit of footage for them to go through in the 90-minute class period I plan to give them. Additionally, I wrote, recorded and added seven voiceovers to the footage folder for the students to consider using when putting their package together.

The files make a great project and allow me to hit all the targets I’m working on with my students through this project.

What was I reminded of here?

Visit the JEA Curriculum first, because the help you seek is likely already there.

Aaron Manfull

Aaron is in his 26th year of advising student media. He is currently the Director of Student Media at Francis Howell North High School in St. Charles, Missouri. He is the Journalism Education Association Digital Media Chair and co-Director of Media Now. He is the 2023 JEA Teacher Inspiration Award Winner and is a former Dow Jones News Fund National Journalism Teacher of the Year. He is one of the authors of the textbook "Student Journalism and Media Literacy." You can find him on X and Instagram @manfull. He's a proud father. A transplanted Iowan. And an avid Hawkeye Fan.

Aaron Manfull has 862 posts and counting. See all posts by Aaron Manfull

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.