Creating a Storyboard

Anyone can pitch an idea. Children try to convince their parents to take them to the movies on a weeknight. Sales persons speak about the benefits of their products to get them in the shopping bag. We all can do it. But the people who can make the best story have the best chance of being successful.

I am planning to pitch an idea to a group of venture capitalists in hopes of getting investing for a project that has been on hold because of the economy. I have a lot of content to work with, but I need to narrow it down to my target audience. This is where my storyboard will come in handy.

A storyboard is basically a rough draft of a presentation - in my case, I will be using Microsoft PowerPoint to pitch my project. To get started, I had a sheet of paper with 12 blank boxes to mimic my presentations. Now, since this is a rough draft, I can always add or delete slides as I go. I decided to start with 12. It's simple really - I started how I would start any presentation - with some sort of opening. In my case, I chose a picture with a graphic image above with the name of my project. This is a music education project that is distributed through video format. The concept made it easy for me to be able to choose bits and pieces of video clips to add in as I saw fit. I really wanted to focus on visual presentation. Yes, I will pitch my idea verbally, but having some nice interim's of video and audio clips makes for a seamless non-linear presentation that takes away from awkward silences. After all, pitching an idea to venture capitalists can be intimidating. I chose a nice mix of video clips, audio clips, transitions, pictures, spreadsheets, and graphs to relay ideas and to allow my audience to easily understand this rather complicated concept that we are pitching.

The storyboard does a great job focusing my attention on the content rather than all the pizazz. Sometimes when preparing presentations, I get caught up in the graphics for hours on a particular slide and forget what the plan was for the next one! I feel at ease with the storyboard, and although technically I have not started my actual presentation, I feel more prepared and excited to start the fun stuff!

And this is my storyboard! Voila!

Excel Project

I just completed an analysis of heart rate measurements taken by my boss for 500 individuals during a particular workout at the fitness center. Heart rates were taken every minute starting at zero and ending at 20 minutes. My boss is interested in the heart rates of a variety of active individuals both male and female ages 20-49 before, during a 15 minute workout, and during a 5 minute cool down.  She was most interested in whether or not the subject reached their target heart rate for their age, as well as the average percent increase in heart rate from start to highest heart rate recorded. in order to find this information, I had to use a number of formulas that connected cells to each other to form easily readable data for my boss. I referred to the Help Button (upper right hand corner in Excel 2007) numerous times for reference.

First I had to find out which subjects reached their target heart rates for their age. My boss gave me a target heart rate of 80% which, if changed, would affect the numbers in the cells that were connected to it. The target heart rate would be 80% of the maximum HR. Since the Maximum HR for an individual is roughly 220-Age, I used the formula "=220-[subject Age Cell]" in order to get the Maximum HR, then I used the formula "=[MaxHR]*$E$1" where cell E1 is currently 80% in order to lock in that cell to find the TgtHR. Finally, I used the IF function to return a "Yes" if the HighestHR recorded was >=TgtHR, or return a "No" if the HighestHR was NOT >=Tgt HR. I created a Pivot table to refine the data by Females and Males that returned a Yes or No. Grand Totals are also displayed to show the bigger picture to my boss.

Then, she wanted to know the average percent increase in HR. I had to use the MAX function to find the highest HR recorded for each individual. We then used the formula "=(HighestHR-resting HR)/resting HR" to determine the percent increase that was achieved at the highest heart rate compared to the heart rate recorded at time 0:00. I then transferred the data to another worksheet creating a Pivot table more specifically grouping the data by Sex and by Age Group. The breakdown by demographic group will allow my boss to more accurately determine which groups benefit the most from these exercises.

Pictured below, I took a screen shot of the Pivot Table showing the Average Percent Increase in HR. *Notice that I suppressed the Grand Totals column and row that automatically show to leave only the information by demographic for my Boss.

This project allowed me to better understand the functions that I learned about Excel. I practiced manipulating and grouping data using different linkages throughout an excel workbook. I also took the time to learn about page layout and how to print a large group of data with many rows and columns and got practice with using tables to show only data that is most useful to the recipient. This project could easily transfer to a real world scenario and I will know how to use my knowledge of Excel to work through it, even if that means half of the time in the Help window.

Equipment for Video Production

If you are an amateur camera operator/ videographer, I have some tips for you that will hopefully eliminate some of the unnecessary double work that I found myself doing while working on the set of a Video Production company.

Like most people, I had no problem with the camera operation part (Well, at least after I found the on switch). After all, camera operation is a form of art. The issue came with how to transfer the video content onto the computer, how to backup terabytes worth of information,  and ultimately how to get the work done in the fastest, most efficient way possible.

1. Get the right equipment! When you are working with a small budget for a Quad-angle video production set (4 camera's and 4 computers) you have to settle for the absolute basics to get the work done. However, when you are dealing with high definition footage and a lot of it, like my crew did, you need to pay special attention to connectors, bus speed, RAM, Pixels, External Expansion. If we did not have the basic inputs and outputs to connect all of our devices together, or enough RAM to record our video without causing screen lags, time delays, or even loss of footage that was too big to fit, we could have wasted more time than it would have cost for superior equipment.
There are many resources that you can use when finding a computer that will fit the needs of its primary use. One site that I find to be helpful with video production equipment is a site listed below that provides reviews, downloads, training, and more to anyone who is  interested in video.

http://www.videomaker.com/

2. Know your Externals! We originally started the project horrendously underestimating the amount of Hard Drive space that was needed for the entire project. We started the project on a few 16GB flash drives, progressing to 256 GB Hard Drives, then into the higher GB's and even a couple of TB Hard Drives. Had we known that the project would have resulted in 12+ Terabytes worth of High Definition Footage, we could have saved hundreds of dollars and probably a few dozen trips to the local electronics store, by shelling out the dollars from the start on the large External Hard Drives. At one point I think we had all of the footage on about 30 different Hard Drives! Lesson learned - know your stuff! Again, using product reviews and advice from product experts at your local Electronics store will be the best resource if you do not know much about video memory.

3. Back it up! Do NOT risk your files in one place. Two sometimes is not even enough. When we first started our production, we used tapes. Not the best method for a couple reasons. One, tapes can only hold a very small amount of memory, and do run out of time. If you are standing behind the camera and watching it the entire time, you can keep an eye on the tape and the time remaining on it; however, if you set it up on a tripod, it could time out and you have lost the last couple minutes of footage with no backup. Two, tapes are very small, easy to lose, easy to break, easy to accidentally record over, etc..
When you are recording five people on the screen, there may be ten "takes" before there is one that is good enough to keep. When there is finally one that is good, you, the camera operator, do not want to be the one to break the bad news that it was not recorded.

After some weeks of trial and error during the pilot phase of filming, the best method we reached with our resources was to record via fire-wire cable straight from the 4 cameras to the 4 computers as well as the external Hard Drives (2 computers per Hard Drive). We were creating the file on the computer and then an automatic backup on the external immediately afterward. Checking the files at the beginning, middle, and end would then confirm the footage was recorded and that we could move on to the next segment. After the filming, the externals would be taken to a different location to avoid taking the chance with fire, or break-in. The external Hard Drives were also later duplicated and stored at yet another location to protect the footage.

Photo by Karina Mills, Pro Series Studios 2009