Jennifer Coffey

This week I stared the pre-production process for my upcoming YouTube channel. Part of my pre-production process is creating storyboards, thought maps, and scripts for each of the four videos I will be posting. 

I first started with storyboards. Before I sat down to determine how I was going to film these videos, I checked out some example videos on YouTube. I determined that I want to go with a vlogger type of video with myself in the center of the frame. As I was creating the sketches for the storyboard, I realized that it was not going to be a storyboard you see in cartoons. They consisted of one image of me in the frame, but drawing it out made me think of the certain props that I will need for each video. 

Next, I started to but together thought maps for the information that I was going to include for each video. These took two different forms. I created ones with thought bubbles and connectors, and I also created traditional outlines. Although they were two different methods, they helped me gather the information that I wanted to include, but it allowed me to see the information from a different perspective. By examining the information visually, I didn’t spend as much time writing as I usually would. 

For the video, How to Read a Book, I knew that I needed to breakdown three important points that I needed to hit; about the book, author’s interpretations, and rules of criticism. About 90% of the information in this video is from How To Read A Book by Adler and Doren. It was the perfect source for a video like this. The only other things I needed to add were an intro and conclusion. The introduction, levels of reading, and outro were not included in this thought map because they were not as dense and as in-depth.

I first started off sketching what I was going to include in the video. Next, I turned to Canva for the final product. This thought map gives me great insight into how I was going to organize the information. I knew that the author’s interpretations and rules of criticism were going to be the most complicated. Both of these points had four parts. After I laid everything out, I noticed that some of this information could fit into the “How To Write A Critical Review” video. Still, I think it is more important to have this kind of information while reading a book, instead of learning it before writing a review. 

Lastly, I had to write the first draft of the scripts. When I first think of the word “script,” I think of a movie or tv script. Mine scripts don’t exactly look like that, but they get the job done. The scriptwriting took the majority of my time this week. Even though I had them broken down with the thought maps, I still needed to add my research to them as well. 

The video with the most research is all about criticism of book reviews, famous critics, and websites like BookMarks.reviews that feature professional reviews. These are the people and websites that aspiring reviewers to check out. 

This video is broken down into three parts. First, I discuss the positives and negatives of book reviews. I found a lot of articles on criticism and why reviews don’t matter, but they do matter for the small independent authors that rely on reviews to get their book noticed. Next, I mention a couple of famous literary critics to look out for. Lastly, I breakdown the website BookMarks. The Literary Hub website is my new favorite place on the Internet. It pulls professional reviews from a wide array of magazines and publications and puts them all in one place. 

Drafting one cohesive post was a bit of a challenge, but after I organized my research, the writing became very easy. I pretty much wrote down my stream of consciousness in order to write a script that sounds natural and conversational instead of a report or a presentation. 

In conclusion, this week wraps up the beginning of my pre-production phase. This is the first time that I have seen all of this information come together, and I am very excited about the next few steps. 

My next few steps include finishing my final drafts and start recording some test footage. Right now, I plan to record my first drafts to see how they sound and then tweak them for clarity, cohesiveness, and tone. I look forward to seeing how they turn out.