My Story Documentary

Use the information about yourself that you have collected while working on the past three projects to make a compelling (interesting) documentary movie about your life. You may stick to the topics from the Personal Profile and Autobiography and/or add others. Maybe you have some super interesting aspect of your life that you'd like to focus on. Just know that others may watch your movie, so make sure it is something you don't mind sharing about you.  

Your movie should have pictures, captions, and narration in it to help tell the story, but you also need to have at least 3 video clips as well. The videos may be re-enactments, footage from something you are involved in (sports, awards assemblies, family gatherings, etc), or of yourself describing something you want us to know about you. 

Your documentary needs a title, music that you make (mixcraft, soundsation, or any other music making apps) in the background, and credits (be sure to site any outside sources of content that does not belong to you).

Specific Computer Skills That Determine Your Grade:

- Saving large images from the internet

- Adding photos and video onto a movie timeline

- Adding captions and narration on or in-between pictures

- Adding a title and credits 

- Adding music 

- Exporting finished project as an MP4.

When you save your work, name it "My Story"

Making the Movie

Go to Canva.com. Select Video.

Your video must have a title, pictures, at least 3 videos, captions, narration, music made by you, and credits (the URLs of your pictures)!

Add a Title

Once you have started a new video in Canva.com, select the "Text" button along the left column and add your title. There are a lot of design options. Pick something you like. 

Add the Credits Slide

Once you have a title, add a second slide using the "plus" sign at the bottom. This is where you will paste hte URLs (website addresses of where your pictures come from). If you only used pictures that you own, just state, "All images belong to me." If you used images from Canva, add Canva.com.

Add Pictures

1. Go to "Google Images" and start looking for pictures that relate to your topic. After the first set of images comes up, refine the search by clicking "Search Tools" then "Large".

2. Copy and paste the URL (i.e. www.allposters.com) of the websites you get the pictures from into your Canva project every time you save a picture to your computer. 

***Make sure you get the URL where the picture comes from. The pictures do not come from Google. Google is the search engine that finds the website that they really come from.***

 3. You must click on the picture thumbnail to open up the full sized image.

If your pictures turn out blurry, it is because you didn't follow the steps above.

4. Right Click on the picture

5. Click on Save Picture As 

6. Navigate to the Documents folder and create a new folder called My Story Documentary. Save all of your pictures in this folder. 

7. Every time you add a picture from the internet you should add the URL to the credits slide. 

Add Captions

In Canva you can add Titles in-between or on your pictures and videos to help tell your story. 

Add Narration

To add the narration, you can directly record into Canva.com while your movie is playing or use the recording studio in Room 50. 

Add Video

You may already have clips of yourself doing things you like to do or with your family. You can also use your chromebook to record clips of yourslef talking about interesting aspects of your life. You may also use a phone (upload your clips to Google Drive and convert them to mp4s). 

Add Music 

You will need to create a song using Mixcraft (Soundtrap.com is a free online alternative. Follow this link for a tutorial: https://www.soundtrap.com/home/creator/tutorials). When the song is as long as your movie with the Titles and Credits included, go to File > Mix Down To > MP3. In Premiere, go to File > Import to add your mp3.

Exporting Your Finished Video for Uploading to Canvas

Export your video as an mp4.

Student Examples