Do we need a video course?

In our face-to-face training, we find you can run workshops where people can move from not having touched a camera to making their first film in a few hours, and some quite nice small pieces in a day or two. This group had one or two people with an interest in film in it already, for example:

But this group started pretty much from scratch with just a little inexpert help on the edit (from me, my first edit ever in a workshop):

With a little more backup over time someone with an interest is away and off, the're a film maker.  A novice film-maker maybe, but they have the taste and the rest of their learning is different, more focussed on finding out how to do things they find they want to.  Of course that's in an intense, group workshop situation with enthusiasts, but do we really need a 100 hour online course to get to the same sort of place?

Well of course we do, or I wouldn't bother.  But I think the challenge is to get at what a good training does, within the framework allowed by online Open University learning. We pick on the best of the principles of the FtF training - exercises structured to raise enthusiasm , experimentation and peer learning, and apply that in new ways.

What we really don't need to teach is specific technical points to students. It's pointless for 3 reasons.  The first is that we'd have to force students to use a particular software package, and it might not be at the level that will make sense for them outside the course - pro editors are expensive and complicated to start with, and I can imagine a course filled with endless screen capture type tutorials.

Secondly anything specific like the options with particular cameras or the latest new thing as we were going to press (3D video or DSLR video, for example) would be out of date before the course was through it's first presentation.

Finally is it's a turnoff unless it's done really well and I'm just not that ambitious.  I thought the Digital Photography course had a nice mix and I did look at one or two of their tutorials about Photoshop Elements while I was doing the course. But it wasn't what I needed and the trouble with video is it's that much more complicated again - you'd need a mass of really well done walkthroughs every week.

So instead we're going to teach students how to find things out - build it into the bones of the course.  It's been a pleasant surprise in the last 48 hours to take another look and see the huge amount of tutorials and short pieces on everything under the sun is a huge avalanche now.  I'd be surprised if there's a single editing package out there without a cloud of introductions, specific tutorials or sets of tips and tricks to go with it.  Of course they're of variable quality, but that's what we can teach - how to find them, make sense of them, share them and judge them.