Kimberlie Kranich's Blog

Jai’Elle and Ta’Nasja edit their spots!

Today was one of those days when nothing went as planned and a lot got done!

Jai’Elle and Ta’Nasja downloaded the video they shot last week for their PSA onto the computer at the Club.  Henry and I showed them how to import their clips into Windows Media Maker. Kenneth, as it turns out, is pretty good technically.  I asked him to help us out.  When there was no audio coming from the downloaded video, he trouble-shot and pulled in some external speakers and connected them.  When it came time for Jai’Elle to dissolve between two segments, he pulled up the video effects editor.  It was so nice to work with Kenneth in this way.

I worked with Jai’Elle and Henry worked with Ta’Nasja. Both girls are quick on the keyboard and fast learners.  They learned how to edit video, add titles and color to the end of their video, dissolve between two shots and raise the level of their audio.  Their piece is done. Edited.  Finished.  All that needs to happen next is for the video to be uploaded to YouTube and added to this website.  I don’t know if they’ll do that before the celebration September 1 or afterwards.  It’ll be up to them whether or not they want to show the video PSA before the end-of-the-project party.

The original plan for the day was to videotape the gaming scene and the scene in the van but the rain and thunderstorms prevented us from videotaping outside and one of the kids forgot to bring the Wii. What I thought was going to be a bust turned out to be quite the opposite because all of us adapted and were flexible and committed!

Worms, Poison Ivy, Kayaks and Canoes, Oh, My!

Today the youth and teens returned to the park and shot video for their public service announcements.

Cheerleaders with worms, sassafras, a family canoe outing with a reluctant teenager, a nature party, hide-and-seek with a tree and real live fishing are some of the scenes that will appear in their spots (I won’t say too much more and give it away!).

We shot each scene twice: once with the FLIP cameras and once with the professional high definition camera.  Henry shot with the broadcast quality camera while the youth shot along with him with their FLIPS.  Everything looked real good!

Ta’Nasja and Jai’Elle arrived this morning with a script they created last night with the help of some family members.  It’s clever, simple and cute and was videotaped in one shot!

All of the scripts have something in them that is interesting, fun or different.  I think their peers are going to like them.

It was another 11 hour day and it flew by!

Kickapoo Landing provided the canoes and kayaks again for free. 

Jacqueline let us use her fishing poles, tent and cheerleader uniform (from when she was in high school seven years ago).

The ever present John, park superintendent, was there to get us anything we needed. 

Adele returned to take more photos and showed us the cover of the magazine in which we appear as a group canoeing!  It was taken in June when the youth had their two days of fun activities at the park.  The photo looks great! 

Rickey made sure the kids got here and did some videotaping himself while Ms. Pam was an actress in one of our scenes.

I enjoy working with Henry.  He’s calm and fun and a good shooter and has lots of interesting stories.

What a day!  I’m in heaven.

The Creative Process

“Kickapoo:  Get Away From It All!” was the theme the youth came up with for their PSAs about Kickapoo.  The idea got generated in our meeting today with Shelley, Zavier, Aarian, Tre’Shaun, Ta’Neill, Jai’Elle and Alexandra.  Today’s session was a real-life example of the creative process and the tension between ideas and the reality of time lines and budget constraints.

We started with them sharing their ideas and storyboards. The group gave constructive feedback for each idea.  I think that it took a lot of courage for them to present their ideas and then trust their peers’ reactions. 

Then we wrote down a list of the scenes for each script idea and talked about what they needed to line up before next week’s return to the park for videotaping.  They’ll need props such as pom poms, a Wii, a van, super hero costumes and a classroom setting.  They’re going to tape fishing, canoeing, hiking and camping at the park.  They need “extras” for their scripts and are considering family, peers and themselves.

Between now and when we meet next Tuesday, I’m going to send each person their script back to them formatted in the storyboard WILL uses and then on Tuesday they’ll fill in the blanks and learn about how to visualize shots for sequences in their video PSAs.  Anything that isn’t feasible given the time and resources we have, they’ll discard. 

The youth will shoot their PSAs using their FLIPS and Henry will shoot them using the broadcast quality camera.  They’ll edit their PSAs using Windows Movie Maker and Henry will edit using Final Cut Pro (so that the spots will meet technical standards for broadcast).  The youth will remain as producers throughout the process. And just as we do at WILL, the other jobs (editing and videography) will be done by another person (Henry). 

I’m excited that they will get a realistic picture of how it works in “the real world” while also having the hands-on experience of doing all of the jobs themselves. We hope they’ll continue to shoot and edit videos after the project ends in September.  And all of their PSAs will appear on this website as well as their My Space pages after being uploaded to YouTube.

I was impressed by their ideas, their interactions with each other and us and their commitment to the project.

Gratitude for Another Awesome Day at the Park

Ta’Neill and I shared a canoe for the group canoe ride down the river at the end of a day full of activities.  Although she was in the bow position of the canoe and I was in the stern position (the steering position), she did most of the work while I videotaped.  She handled the boat like an expert. She has such poise at her young age. 

The excitment of shooting a real gun hooked everyone it seemed to me (me included) and yet the tranquility of fishing and kayaking in the river and getting up close to nature with the camera were equally compelling to us all. 

The experts John lined up yesterday for day two at Kickapoo (professionals from the DNR as well as volunteers) to teach us gun safety and shooting, photography, canoeing and kayaking, fishing and exploring in the river were excellent teachers.  They were gentle and engaged and really know their stuff and how to teach it to others.  I’ve learned new things and I look forward to teaching those things to my neighbor kids the next time I take them to Kickapoo. My father, who hunts and shoots at targets, will enjoy this website and the video of everyone in action.

We’ve started to create some educational videos with this project on gun safety, caneoing and river education and its so easy to do with the FLIP videos to capture the instruction.  I wonder if the youth would be interested in making such videos for the website?

Day two at the park was perfect.  I enjoyed being with everyone—youth and adults. I missed Aarian yesterday who overslept and missed his ride to the park. I hope to see him and the others on Tuesday when Michelle starts teaching them about making their PSAs.

I cannot adequately express how wonderful it is to work with these young people and every adult from our partner organizations.  I am grateful!

Banding Together

Today was one of those experiences I’ll replay over and over again in my mind. When I wasn’t photographing or videotaping the activities, I was participating in them right along with the youth from the Boys and Girls Club of Danville.  I loved being with everyone in the park. 

I learned so much!  I got to hold a goose during the goose banding activity.  By holding it close to your body, the goose doesn’t flap around as much.  The goose I held felt warm and was slightly heavy like my 14-pound cat.  The goose’s feet felt like leather.  The youth were hesitant to touch them at first but all of them did and some of them held them, too.  I got some great video of Brandon releasing a goose.

During the fish shocking (electric spider-like tentacles are dangled in the water to shock the fish and the shocked fish are retrieved in a net when they float to the surface alive but shocked) we were told not to touch the water or we would get electrocuted.  Brandon asked our guide why the shocking doesn’t kill the fish but would kill us.  The DNR instructor told us that since we are so much bigger than fish and so much of our body is water and water is a great conductor of electricity, that the electric current is too much for us but not for a small fish.

I didn’t know that poison ivy can grow up a tree as a big vine!  Jacqueline showed us the three-leafed poison ivy flower on the ground and a huge thick vine that had wrapped itself around the tree. The vine had the green three-leafed poison ivy around it and that’s how we knew that the vine itself was poison ivy.

Both WICD-TV and WCIA-TV came out to interview the youth and Glynnis from Prairie Rivers Network. They all did a great job.  Amy Reiter from the News-Gazette is coming out tomorrow along with a photographer to do a story. 

The youth from the Club did every activity wholeheartedly.  And, to my surprise, they had no problem sitting still for the meditation and breathing exercises from yoga instructor, Mary. I thought for sure they would be fidgety.  They said they enjoyed the calm.  So I get to drop that stereotype that youth can’t sit still!

I am so very grateful for all of the youth and the partners working with us. And John is just top-notch,  he had recruited so many people from the DNR to help teach the youth. And Marc Miller, the new director of the DNR, came by special to welcome the youth.  John told us that this was the first time in 20 years that a DNR director has visited Kickapoo

Tomorrow the youth get to learn gun safety and shoot at clay pigeons, take photographs, canoe and fish!  I am too excited to sleep!

Counting the days….

Met with Rickey, John, Jacqueline, Glynnis and Michelle today at the Club to further plan the activities for the teens’ June 25 and 26 days at the park.  After nearly 30 years working at the DNR, John has quite a few contacts.  He’s lined up people to teach the gun safety/shooting, duck banding, fishing, and more and some surprises that I won’t blog about now!  As project partners, we get to do the activities along with the teens.  That will be fun.  I’m so glad the teens are now blogging on their own.  Most are first time bloggers.  I brought copies of the June Patterns magazine to give to everyone because it has an article in it about the project and photos from the April clean-up day.  We all need and deserve attention. I once heard that children don’t care what you know. They just want to know that you care.

First Interviews

Yesterday, Henry and I went back to the Club to interview the teens on videotape.  We are trying to get a baseline snapshot of where they are today in terms of their communication and media skills and use of technology, the quality of their relationships to their community, family and self and their school and career goals.  We believe this project will positively impact all of these areas.  By interviewing them at the end of the project and asking them the same questions, we can learn from the teens’ own words, how their perceptions, knowledge, goals and skills have changed.  I was impressed by their understanding of community, their desire to make the world a better place and their deep appreciation of our relationship with them. 

Cleanin’ Up at Kickapoo

Henry and I got to Kickapoo at 8am for the clean-up. He took video and I shot still photos.  The atmosphere was laid back and friendly. There were lots of different kinds of people participating:  families with children, couples, lots of kids, Caucasians and African-Americans and multi-racial people, some from Vermilion County and others from Champaign County.  Michelle was there with her lovely family and kids and so was Brandon and Rickey.  I spoke to a couple of people who had come as part of their church. Many folks I spoke to found out about the clean-up through WILL’s promotion. That was cool.  I thought it would be so easy to paddle the paddle boats while Henry sat in the back with the video camera.  Was I wrong!  It was a work-out the entire time! Thank goodness, Don, a regular at the Landing, offered to steer and paddle the boat with me.  We got lots of good video and stills.  I love to anticipate the next action for my shot.  I got lots of photos of bags of garbage flying into the dumpsters, hands dropping garbage into bags, piles of garbage in canoes, canoeists, and families hiking the roads picking up garbage.  The day went fast and was fun!

The Energy Builds

Our team conference call to process how the dinner went and plan the next steps with all of the project partners was inspiring.  All were jazzed after the dinner.  We decided there was just too much to show the young people to do it in just one day and so we lengthened their day at the park to 1 1/-2-days.  I think each of us was surprised that photography was the optional activity that all of the youth picked.  Mountain biking was the least picked.  John has so many contacts with the DNR and he is calling on many of them to work with the youth on various activities such as duck banding, fish shocking, gun safety/shooting, and more.  I continue to be grateful to all of the partners in this project who are donating their time for the sake of the young people.

A Good Group

The day of our orientation dinner with the youth, families and project partners was an overcast day and fairly cool.  I was afraid none of the young people would try out the paddle boats at Kickapoo Landing.  But when asked, many hands shot up.  Teams of two and three got on the boats and paddled around in their life jackets and smiles.  They made it look easy.  When the chain on one of the paddle boats came off, Bob canoed out there and put it back on.  Glynnis brought her kids. They sure are cute! When we shared after dinner about what the project was about, many of the young people stood up and spoke, thanking us for giving them this opportunity.  We forgot to add “gun safety/shooting” to the list of activities they could select. Some of the parents looked worried. All but one of the youth signed up for this activity.  I went to bed feeling like we have a good group of young people and a committed group of partners.