Mim Conway, Executive Director of The Dream On Foundation, asked me to document the children’s holiday party in December.  

The foundation’s mission is to assist the Dream On Kids (current 2nd graders) to graduate from high school on time (2020) and to financially support the children in post secondary programs that lead to employment.

Conway and her collaborators organize extracurricular activities that lead to academic success, such as summer camp, tutors, a parent support group, arts and athletic activities. Other objectives are to develop a community of support including the children’s families and school as well as arts organizations and recreation centers.

This project has permeated my dreams, always a good sign. 'It Falls Away" is a track on my MONET'S ORBIT album. Lyrics are here.

Technical notes: I set up the project for release party footage from Spencer Kohan's Optura 200MC camera which provided 720 x 480 clips. For my Canon Vixia clips, I set Voltaic output resolution at 540p which created 960 x 540 clips, allowing some wiggle room while editing.

Input settings: Created new preset, DV-NTSC-SW720x480, based on DV-NTSC-Standard 48 kHz, only changed Fields from Interlaced to Progressive.  Left audio sample rate at 48 kHz, even though output preset uses 44.1 kHz. 

Output settings: Included a slight cropping on right and left, to line up with release party footage (inexplicably narrower than 720) and changing PAR from Standard 4:3 to (which stretched the vide sideways) to Square 1:1.  New preset for this: 'ReleaseParty'

My thanks to Stacy Goldberg for providing clips of my recent program at a nearby Head Start preschool. Although I'm spoiled by the high definition, color quality and focus/zoom capabilities of my Canon Vixia, this was good experience editing with a different camera's output.  Here's the program description:

Susan Weber is a professional teaching artist with Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio. In this program for young children, she brings to life the story of 'Rudy Raccoon's Beautiful Birthday' with puppets, guitar, fingerplay and movement.

Tempted by sugary snacks and rescued by humor, understanding and love, Rudy learns about healthy habits from his helpful friends. Susan's story, songs and nursery rhymes use rich vocabulary, alliteration and rhyming words to reinforce good hygiene, nutrition, exercise and rest.

A Revolution Pie outdoor concert provides the backdrop for this project.  This song sent me in search of public domain and publicly licensed photos that fit the theme.  My goal was to combine video and still images into a story about human contact.  I blog about it here.

This was the first time I used QuickTime Player to resize the 1440 x 1080 original clips into 1280 x 720 dimensions recommended for YouTube.  I opened video clips in QuickTime and exported with customized video and audio settings.  The resizing fills out the frame nicely.

This segment is the first part of 'Wide Open'.  Lyrics are here.  Listen here to all of 'Wide Open'.

The video is my contribution to a collaboration with producer Robert Kramer at Rainbow Babies & Childrens' Hospital, where I regularly perform for pediatric patients and their families both live and by closed circuit TV.  Robert suggested we combine scenes from my band's live show with my storytelling in a 'meet the artist' format.

Most of the available footage was from a stationary camera.  When I zoomed in to vary the perspective, I liked the graininess of the close ups.  So I decided to go for the black and white, jittery look of old footage.  Think CBGBs in the 70s.