In this video, I'm gonna show you how to use green screening to create videos
with your students. Done right, green screen is an excellent opportunity for
students to collaborate and work together on a complex engaging
project-based assignment. My name is Sam Karyy and this is my YouTube channel for
The New EdTech Classroom. As you can imagine, doing a green screen video with
your students does require a little bit more equipment, planning, and set-up.
Pre-planning with a green screen project is essential and will make or break
whether or not your students are successful. The first important thing
that you need to do a green screen project is a green screen. I have a
pop-up green screen that also has a floor cover. I've also tried putting up
green fabric and I know teachers also sometimes just use green paint on a wall.
I've tried different things with trial and error, but I found that by far the
best thing to do is to set up my green screen in the classroom and when we're
ready to film, I just have a screening party and we film our takes. If you have
the space, you could of course have students film in another room. It is
important that it's relatively quiet while students are filming, so that all
that other noise doesn't get into their videos. As you can see, I also have lights
and a microphone, though neither of those are necessary and I've made green screen
videos without both of them. The next vital piece of a green screen project
with students is that you are adequately preparing them. A poorly planned video is
not going to go very well. So I always have students work in groups on a
planning document, prior to film. As you can see on this document, I have students
decide some skills that they are good at and who has those skills, as a way to
make sure that everybody feels valued in the group. I have students choose
different group roles that they will be taking on during the course of the
project, then I have students plan for the main purpose of their video or skit.
They pre-plan the characters they are going to create, who that character is,
what that characters traits are. Then students plan the setting, so they can
think about that different types of backgrounds, and possibly
props, that they would want to bring. It's really important that you have them plan
out the different scenes, what will be in that scene, what kinds of props or other
materials will they need to set that scene up. Then I have students work on a
script which I have them mostly memorize, if possible, because it makes for a much
better video. And lastly, students plan if they're
going to bring or make props, other visual aids, or costumes. I've seen
not-so-great videos and amazing videos and I can tell you that the major
difference is how prepared students are when they're actually ready to film. Next
I'm going to show you the software that I teach students to use, called
WeVideo. I use WeVideo because we have Chromebooks and other green
screening apps, like Do Inck, are only available for Android devices or iOS, but
those would be a great option as well. Okay, so let's look at how we would
actually create a video project. I'm going to go up to 'Blank Edit' and now
that I'm in my video editor, you'll see that Wevideo is basically a layering
system that allows you to bring in different videos, audio, images, etc. I'm gonna
walk you through how I taught my students to create their videos, which we
did for an Egypt social class skit. The first thing students will need to do is
go to the folder with the star on it. They will click on the red 'Record' button.
Here, students will be given an option for how they want to record. Now, in this
case, because I'm using a computer, I have access to a webcam. Filming with a webcam
is okay. I have to admit that it would be better if you had tablets to film and
what I actually have done sometimes in my own class is use my own tablet and
then I share that media with my students. It's not the most ideal option, but it
works. Okay, so now let's say that I just filmed some footage through my webcam or
maybe I created it on a tablet. Students will then see the media that they just
filmed in their 'My Media' folder. The first thing
that you'll need to do is instruct your students to drag your video down into
one of the layers. I have them drag it into a top layer because if they're
going to bring in a background image or video, that's going to need to go on the
bottom layer. Okay, so let's say that a student sees that they have some footage
that they want to cut. The first thing that they can do is drag to the place
they want to cut, click the scissor, you'll see that I now have two separate
video clips that I can move around. I'm going to actually go to the first one,
hit the trash can, and it's gone. Okay, so let's now look at how I can use the
Chroma Key to remove the green background, so that I can put in a
different background behind it. I'm going to double click on the clip, I'm going to
click on the dropper, click where you see green on the screen, and you'll see that
it gets rid of it. Now, you'll notice that there's a little bit of green seeping
around the edges, so one of the ways that you can fix that is by sliding around
the 'Defringe.' It looks like I'm able to get rid of some of that green seeping by
sliding around the 'Defringe.' Now, the next thing that I'm going to need to get rid
of is that picture of the light on the side. If this happens, you need to go up
to the 'Transform' tab, click 'Transform.' If you zoom in a little bit, you can cut
that out and you can still move the image around
where you need it. Okay, so now I'm ready to put a different background into my
movie. I'm gonna click 'Save Changes,' I'm gonna go to the 'Star' tab, and I'm now
going to search for an image that I want in the background. Now, I knew from my
planner that I wanted a picture of the Giza Pyramids. So I'm gonna check it out
and see if there are any images of the Giza Pyramids. If I want to make sure that
I'm filtering for images only, I'm gonna make sure that I click the images and
there I see that I actually don't really have any good pictures of the Giza
Pyramids to be able to put in my background. There are some videos, but
that's not what I want right now. So, I direct students to go to other
third party websites. A good one is Unsplash.
Unsplash is a great place to get pictures where you can feel safe about not
violating any copyright. Here you can download a picture and then upload it
into your WeVideo, so that you can use it as a background. I'm gonna grab this
picture, I'll go up to the green import media cloud, click 'Browse to Select,' find
my picture. Once my picture pops up, I can drag it down into my video editor and
there you'll see that my image is superimposed over the Giza Pyramid.
Pretty cool! If I need to drag the clip so that it covers the entire distance of
the video that I created, I can just simply click the edge of it and drag it
over so that now my green screen video is overlaid onto the pyramid. The next
thing I'm going to show you is how to use some of the transitions and other
features, like audio and text in WeVideo, that will really improve the quality of
your students' video production. So the first thing that I will do is grab both
clips and make a little bit of space in front of my video. I do that by hitting
'Shift' on both clips and dragging them forward.
And here I'm going to look for the different media they have for Egypt, but
this time I'm going to look for videos. So here we'll see that there are lots of
different videos that I can add. I'm gonna grab this animated growing ancient
Egypt, drag it down. Now this video does not have sound, so if I want to add some
background audio, I can search for audio. Here I see there's a trap called 'The Sun
King of Egypt,' so I'm gonna drag that down into the audio clip, I'll shorten it
so it's just the duration of the intro, and now you'll see that I have a cool
little video with some audio in the background. Awesome! Okay, so now the next
thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to add a scene transition, rather than
just jumping right into the footage. So the way that I'm going to do that is by
going up to the 'Text' tab, I'll look for a 'Motion' text, I'll try one of these out
like 'Layer Cake,' drop it into the studio. When I double click on that text, I'm
gonna see that I'm allowed to edit the text, so I'm going to change that to
something like 'Egypt Skit Scene One at Giza Pyramid.' I'll click 'Save Changes' and
now I'm going to bring those two clips that I made earlier back over, so that
all of the clips play in unison. The next thing I'm gonna show you is how you can
teach students to add a cool transition to start their scene. So here I'm going
to go up to the 'Transitions' tab, I'm gonna find a transition like 'Curtains,'
I'll drag that curtain transition down, right in front of the first scene. Okay
so now I've added my own video footage that I Chroma Keyed out, I put a Giza
pyramid background behind it. I also added a short video introduction, as well
as some audio to play behind it, and then I put a transition right before my scene.
So let's see how that turned out.
There are a couple things that I need to fix up, but for the most part, it makes a
pretty awesome video. Once students are done, they're going to click the 'Finish
Video' and students will actually have fewer options than the options that are
given to me here as the administrator. What I like to have
students do is connect their Google Drive, since I use Google Classroom. So
they'll click on the Google Drive icon, click 'Export.'
After they've exported their file into Google Drive, they can easily upload it
into Google Classroom to share with other students. Green screen videos are a
great way to get students to collaborate on a fun, engaging, and complex task. In
addition to learning how to work together and to plan a skit, they'll also
learn some really cool video editing techniques. If you have any questions
about how I've used green screening with my students, please ask in the comments
below. Thank you so much for watching my video. If you found it helpful, please hit
the like button, and if you'd like to see more of my education technology
tutorials, check out those other videos and subscribe to my channel. Thanks and
have a great week!