Adobe-Fallstudie

Silence falls in the gym at A.C. Mosley High School whenever the school’s 2,200 students watch a video about drinking and driving that was produced by their fellow students. "The drinking and driving video is probably the single most powerful project my students have created to date," says Ray Wishart, video production instructor at A.C. Mosley. "People who watch it get lumps in their throats and tears in their eyes. It’s amazing what students can do when you give them a chance to tell stories through video."

Although Wishart is eligible to retire—he began his 30th year as a teacher in 2006—he prefers to stay on because he finds teaching storytelling and video production skills to students so rewarding. His enthusiasm is infectious—several of his students have gone on to professional careers in video production, on camera and off. Wishart makes it a top priority to foster professional-caliber skills, which is why he incorporates into his curriculum the same tools that the professionals use: Adobe Production Studio software.

"Adobe Production Studio is the industry’s video production standard,” says Wishart. “Students who know how to use Adobe Production Studio have the skills they need for college-level courses or careers in the video industry."

Vorteil

• Students are prepared for careers or higher education in video and broadcast
• Integrated workflow and stability of Adobe Production Studio enables students to focus on storytelling and creativity
• Students can create professional-quality work and compelling portfolios
• Students master sophisticated audio editing with ease

Projektdetails

An integrated, stable suite of applications
Wishart teaches Adobe Production Studio rather than other video production options for several reasons. One is the strong integration among its components and their similar user interfaces and commands. Wishart notes that students save a tremendous amount of time and can work with fewer stops and starts because Adobe Production Studio works like one unified, consistent software package. He adds that he’s never had any Adobe Production Studio product crash—so students can develop their ideas without technical interruptions.

Introductory students have a fast way to learn the software: They can start with Adobe Premiere Elements software on projects like video slide shows and then quickly graduate to Adobe Production Studio, including Adobe Premiere Pro, to tap into more advanced features.

"Adobe Production Studio is incredibly stable and reliable, and it is far more than just a bundle of individual applications," says Wishart. "It really behaves like one piece of software, giving my students a streamlined workflow."

Wishart and his students consider Dynamic Link among the most powerful features in Adobe Production Studio. The students constantly work in both Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro software. Explains Wishart, "What’s great about Dynamic Link is that students can incorporate After Effects compositions into Adobe Premiere Pro without having to render them first. That level of integration is what makes Adobe video software so exceptional."

Learning via real-world projects
Each year Wishart teaches four video production classes to approximately 200 students. The classes cover basic, intermediate, and advanced video production techniques. In the most advanced class, the broadcast class, students produce two daily news shows for the school. Each show is about 5 minutes long and is produced entirely with Adobe Production Studio. Students in the broadcast class work on a number of other projects as well, including music videos, travelogues, and documentaries.

Just like professionals who work in television, students at the start of each year design the entire broadcast graphics package for the school’s daily news shows, including onscreen visuals such as lower thirds, opens, and animated logos. The news shows have a CNN-style look to them, with sophisticated transitions between reporters’ stories, use of different camera angles and graphics, animated text that flies on and off the screen, and other professional-quality effects that make the shows interesting to watch.

Students use Adobe Photoshop CS2 software to touch up images and still graphics as well as create backgrounds used in frames. They use Adobe After Effects to composite professional-looking title overlays and other elements. Once the on-air look has been established, students working as reporters and camera operators capture live-action footage and interviews covering relevant school topics from what’s showing at local movie theaters to new teachers and sports segments.

Editing and playback in one application
The students’ mainstay tool for editing news broadcasts is Adobe Premiere Pro software. Wishart deems the power and flexibility of Adobe Premiere Pro "excellent." Students can use it for basic editing as well as special effects such as speeding up or slowing down frames, or stretching or distorting screen images. They can shoot multiple cameras to make projects more interesting and use Multicam editing in Adobe Premiere Pro to combine video from different cameras together with ease.

Students also use advanced Adobe Premiere Pro features like Garbage Mattes to produce music videos and other projects. With Garbage Mattes, students can create effects such as placing the same person on screen twice and having the mirror images interact with each other.

"What’s amazing is that after we edit our news shows using powerful features like Multicam editing, we play them in the morning and afternoon by scrubbing on the Adobe Premiere Pro timeline," says Wishart. "It just confirms how powerful and stable Adobe Premiere Pro really is."

Being heard clearly
Obtaining clean, clear audio is among the biggest challenges with producing the school’s news shows. When Wishart’s students interview other teachers and students as part of projects, the resulting interviews often contain background noise such as air conditioners or other students talking in the hallway. With Adobe Audition® software, students can remove distortions and extraneous noises to improve the quality of sound used in their pieces. This 
is especially important because the news shows are typically played either on the school’s aging television sets or through the school’s outdated PA system—both of which require exceptionally clean audio to avoid hisses or other distracting noises.

At the end of each term, students create DVD-based portfolios of their work using Adobe Encore DVD software. "Adobe Encore DVD is a great way for students to create project-based résumés that really make their work shine," says Wishart. "And Adobe Encore DVD is intuitive enough even for my introductory students to learn and use."

Constantly raising the bar
For Wishart, there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing students learn to tell powerful, stories using Adobe video software. Several entities require that new driving students watch the drinking and driving video before they apply for a driver’s license, and Wishart has received local TV coverage for his work with students. Each year, his students see what other students have created in the past and strive to make something even better. Thanks to constant improvements in the power and feature set of Adobe Production Studio, student projects just keep getting better. "I don’t even have to really teach my students the Adobe software—they can typically figure it out on their own,” says Wishart. “Best of all, with Adobe Production Studio, students can focus on telling stories versus making the technology work, and their projects rival the quality of virtually anything seen on television today."

---

Möchten Sie uns von Ihren Erfolgserlebnissen erzählen? Am Kundenerfolgsprogramm teilnehmen.