Saturday, December 20th, 2008
Lincoln Magnet School Video Last week I wrapped up a video project for the school district that has been a few weeks in the making. One of our schools, Lincoln Magnet School, was nominated for the Apple Distinguished Schools Award. One of the requirements is to make a video about 5 minutes long that basically documents the school.



I visited Lincoln several times with my video camera, and each time I'd go, more and more kids would recognize me. The first time I was totally an outsider, which was weird. But the last day I taped, some kids were calling me Mr. Heinzel and asking when I'd be back. That was unexpected for sure, as I usually try to be a fly on the wall when I'm shooting video like this.

Click Here to see the video

One thing I thought would be neat to do was focus on a student or two rather than have a ton of different faces throughout. I did end up with a ton of different kids, but there are two in particular that are siblings that I focused on, especially near the end. I called their mom to set up a time where I could come videotape at their house, because the students have laptops that they work on at night, and I thought it would be important to show the home perspective.

For music, I used several GarageBand loops and what not. The second song is a Dave original, although it's heavily based on two songs (bonus point to anyone guessing either song). I have a hard time using anything that's not my own, but I'm getting to the point where I realize that my stuff isn't that good. It's OK for what it is, but I'm not a musician. Also it's super time consuming.

Anyway, the video was shown around Lincoln earlier this week, and I heard that it literally brought some people to tears. That was certainly not the intended result, but I guess when you're that tied to a school, it becomes like family. I really did fall in love with the school. The staff gave me an awesome Lincoln Magnet School shirt in exchange for the video, which I wore all day yesterday. I'll probably wear it every other day until it's threadbare.

I didn't want to post this video on Humzoo due to it being for work and having students, so please follow the link above to see the movie if you're interested. I think it's my most professional video to date, and I can't wait to make some more. I do have another one in the works that focuses on the district as a whole.