In today's high tech world, it only makes sense to create a YouTube video to spread the word about babies for us.
I found some inspiration on how to start when doing my homework for my very awesome teaching adults using Technology class at URI.
This video is an interview with Kurosawa, a famous director, talking about making movies. He says, to be a great movie maker one has to first write a script. Everything starts with words. First you start with a few words. He says to just get down whatever is in your head and then a few more words. Then the best thing is to go back and edit over and over again until you have something presentable.
Script
My script started with 5 essential questions to ask yourself from Dean James Ryan at Harvard.
1. Wait, what?!?!
2. I wonder why/if?
3. Couldn't we at least?
4. How can I help?
5. What really matters?
Of course all of these questions didn't quite fit into my video. So, this is what my script ended up looking like....
So as you can see, nothing crazy. Just a basic outline of what I wanted to say
I also remembered seeing this video:
I really like the format of it. How it's on a simple white background. Nothing fancy. It's all about the words and message. But each though is broken up by an edit.
Location, Location, Location
Next was the location. My moms living room was an easy choice. She has a large white wall and I could employ her to help me shoot it. Bonus is that my mom's house is very quiet. I didn't have to worry about background noise.
Shooting
So, a couple life lessons here.
1. No matter how short your script, life is so much easier with cue cards. When I first started, I would start talking then my mind would just go blank. No thoughts what so ever. Cue cards don't have to be anything extraordinary. This is what mine looked like and I just taped it to a lamp:
It's just some bullet points about what I want to say to keep me on track.
2. Just keep going. The few couple of takes are going to be awkward and you might babble a couple of times. But that's normal. Just keep going. Even if you stop talking, take a breath and keep rolling, don't stop filming and definitely don't stop and watch yourself. The more times you do it, the more natural it will feel.
3. Take full cuts and short cuts. We did the full runs until we felt like we had quality material. Then because of the style of video, we took short cuts of each point.
Here is our favorite of the full cuts:
Sound
I really mostly just used my own voice talking and clipped together clear ideas.
However, I wanted sounds of baby laughing at the end of the video. So tickled my kid and recorded him laughing on the "recorder" app on my iPhone. Which I was able to edit using iMovie. Super easy.
Pictures
I knew I would be able to insert still pictures at the end of the video and wanted a way to ask people to like us on fb and check out our website. So using PowerPoint I created the screen I wanted, screen shot it and inserted it into the video. Directions for that to follow.
Editing
I learned that you can download iMovie to your iPad for free and watched a few YouTube videos to learn how to use it. This is my favorite:
This video seemed to be the most up to date but also moved at a good pace. There were some that I found that were a little old and the app wasn't quite the same and still others that dragged on about simple things.
So, simply I uploaded the video I liked the most. Cut out the pieces I didn't like, then inserted better cuts. I then, added my picture to the end, with the baby laughter and added some theme music.
I hope you enjoy.
