I have been giving trainings within my district for years on how to film on greenscreen. There are many apps out there, but I'd say the easiest to use would be DoInk and using an iPad. I have taught kindergarten to fourth grade and they have all been able to do this. If you only have Chromebooks you can get WeVideo from the Chrome Store, there is a monthly fee. I have played with that app once, so I'm not as familiar with it, so today's blog will focus on DoInk. The DoInk app looks like this:
The app is a one time $2.99 at the time of this posting, but as compared to apps through the Chrome Store, this is cheap. Once you have this installed all you really need is your iPhone or iPad and a green piece of butcher paper, once you start playing and if you use it frequently you will want to start making a few investments. These are my recommendations:
Again, none of these things are necessary, it just makes filming easier and easier if you are allowing the kids to do this themselves. A microphone should be one of your first purchases, as you begin to film you will see how handy a microphone is, if you are filming in a workstation or center, you will be picking up the other students in the background. If you have a microphone this eliminates A LOT of background noise. You want to find one with a long cord, this way students can stand close or far from the iPad. I had a teacher at a training, say, "Well, I'm going to be filming my small group, so I'd need to buy 5 microphones, right?" No, your iPad only has one plug source, they do make a dual lapel microphone, for two kids. If you are filming a group, then students can pass the mic to one another OR a great microphone, is the Yeti. I love mine, but it will pick up background noise, so I use this only when I have a group presenting to the class and the class is a silent audience. All of these things add up. Write a DonorsChoose for a greenscreen project!
A tripod should be your second purchase. When the students start filming, you'll see it is quite shaky. An iPad or iPhone, won't just mount to your typical cheap tripod, you will have to get an iPad tripod mount. Most of these are adjustable in size, I know mine will slide down small enough for my phone and large enough for my old large iPad.
You can always use green butcher paper as your background, but you will need to watch if it has wrinkles in it. The wrinkles sometimes reflect the light and you will then get see through parts, or the wrinkles are visible when you are taping. If you purchase green fabric (cheapest) the wrinkles are not picked up, because the cloth does not reflect the light.
A gooseneck iPad mount is helpful, if you will be filming students using puppets or other small items at a table. I have a pizza box that I have covered in green butcher paper and then they can film in front of it on a table top. The gooseneck mount can be mounted on the table and used as a tripod.
Again, all of these things are not necessary, but all can be found on Amazon. If this is your first time, I'd suggest using green butcher paper and see if this is something you even want to attempt a second time.
OK, let's get to the fun part. Once your app is installed you are ready to begin.
Let's first practice by taking a still picture.
This is the next screen:
You are now ready!
Congratulations! You've taken your first greenscreen picture!!!!!
Video recording is the same steps as above, just make sure instead of image you pick video:
Now pick which type of back ground you want, you can either film a background, insert a background or movie from the internet, or take a photo of a drawing or any photo.
You must have the layers in the correct order. What you want to appear in the front will be your first layer, your background the second. You can have up to 3 layers!
That's it!! Even if you can't figure it out, give it to your students for a little while, they'll have it figured out in seconds. :)
I get a ton of my ideas from following @doink on twitter. People are so creative!
If you liked this blog you might want to follow me or following me on twitter @gina_hickerson.
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