I Used to Want to be a Filmmaker

This week's video assignment fell on the same week I needed to travel for work to San Francisco and attend a conference on Responsive Classrooms. It's a five day conference, with nine co-workers. Here, let me make an illustration:

I really wanted to be that person who was on top of their homework before going to a conference where I would be expected to extrovert and critically think.

Sunday I finished the required reading. More inspiring then the previous two weeks but still a bit too "embracing an idea without questioning it" for my taste. I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid here. There is still plenty of research that shows negative effects of social media on society and after this frustrating week I am about ready to break all my computers. But let me focus on telling you the narrative of creating my video.

Sunday I also shot the footage for my video, my dream was to have both the reading and the video finished before the conference so I could just focus on my learning and planning with co-workers, and squeeze in the two Daily Creates as I had time.

Oh, but the fun was just beginning.

I did finish collecting the footage and transferred the data from my phone to the computer. Which turns out DOESN'T have Movie Maker on it. I can't download it either because this is a work computer and I don't have administrative permission to download programs. But the school iPad has iMovie so I try transferring the videos from the computer to the iPad.

But that doesn't work.

So I upload the videos to Google+.

But then I can't get them to download to the iPad.

So I upload the videos to iCloud.

But now I have to go to the airport.

Which does have really good Internet service and I am able to download the videos to iMovie.

Yay.

I edit together the footage and the song.

It looks great.

It will not save.

It will not upload.

It will not export.

I asked the Internet for help.

I asked my friends for help.

I got frustrated and create this video of my video at 4:30 in the morning while sitting in the stair well at the hotel.

But when I go to upload it at 4:30 in the morning, guess what does not work? The Internet at the hotel! Or at least it's not letting me upload the video.

I decide to go to the conference center and try there, but, and I'm not joking here, I ran into an issue connecting my laptop (that I don't have permissions to download or update anything on) to the Internet at the conference center. But I brought the iPad, so I try all over again to get iMovie to work.

Still nothing.

I get back to the hotel and I decide to give YouTube a go even though I can't use my song with it.

But hey, here it is.

And now, I'm going to go meet my team and discuss how we are going to use Responsive Classroom practises in our middle school next year, and specifically how I will use it in my sixth grade classroom. And I'm glad I didn't become a filmmaker because this little video has taken me four days to create and it's still not what I wanted it to be.

But I'm okay with that.