Vocal Point: Creating YouTube video no problem
I mention I’m thinking of going on YouTube.com to my husband and he gives me a vacant stare in return.
“You’re going tubing?” says he. “There’s no snow.”
“No, no,” I tell him. “Not that kind of tubing. Brr.” I try to explain.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says in a resigned tone of voice that tells me he’s quit listening.
But he’s hit on the problem. I’m not absolutely positive I know what I’m talking about either. Here’s the deal.
YouTube is a Web site where people publish homemade movies on the Internet. For free. They may be teenagers singing like American Idol wannabes; 30-year-old clowns with new coin tricks; or even grandmas establishing bragging rights over the world’s most darling infant. A few are rather crude. Anyway, they (whoever they are) say anyone can make these short, simple video clips. It’s easy.
And so, the YouTube wheels started spinning in my head.
You did hear me say it’s free, didn’t you? I like free. There’s just one teeny little thing. It’s technology. I can feel in my bones that it’s going to be a hassle. Of the examples above, there’s probably only one group that is going to breeze through the experience. You guessed it. The kids. They’re right on top of this sort of thing. The rest of us?
Well, I like a challenge, so I set out to see if I, too, could master the necessary skills.
Here’s the story.
I want to use the Internet for a little free online book promoting. I’m a credulous person. I truly believe I can make my own video. It says right here on the list of my PC programs that Bill Gates and Company has supplied me with the means necessary to put together a movie. I’ll be setting out on a new adventure.
First roadblock: no video camera. No problem, they say. All you need are still photographs and titles. Movie Maker helps you put them together – and so they do. Nobody mentioned how blamed long it takes. As the first step, I type up titles on my computer, print them out on colored paper, and then scan them back into my computer as picture files.
Second roadblock: Each title should’ve been on a separate sheet of paper as the Movie Maker thingy didn’t let me select specific parts of the picture. It was all or nothing. Sigh. I go into some program I’m not familiar with and several hours later, after duplicating each original four or five times, I cut away the parts I don’t need. Bingo. By George, I think I’ve got it.
The next step is selecting the pictures I want for my movie. The story is about losing a horse in a poker game, so I take an empty booze bottle and half-fill it with apple cider and take a picture. Looks good. I create a fake certificate for the horse and print it out. I dig up some old silver dollars, and a double eagle and scatter them on the papers. Then I deal out cards into appropriate hands, snapping pictures along the way. Bingo again. There’s my poker game in the can. Everything goes into the movie file. I put in transitions, intersperse pictures with text and fiddle the order until I think it’s about as good as it’s going to get.
Third roadblock: The movie is still a little blah. Music. My movie needs music. What am I going to do? I don’t sing; I don’t play an instrument, and wouldn’t know how to transfer it to my computer anyway. It’s illegal to play commercial music without paying a fee and you can be sued for copyright infringement (rightfully so). Back to the Internet I go, looking for free music I can use. Three days later, I find just the right piece and download it. Try to insert it into my movie. Turns out Movie Maker won’t use MP3 files.
After an entire afternoon, I find a way to convert the MP3 file to a .wav file. How? I have no idea. I only know that when I finally add the music to my storyboard, the darn thing actually works.
Cost of my free movie for free Internet advertising? Hmm. All I can say is it’s a good thing I don’t charge labor.
I call my husband downstairs to see the movie. We sit through all one minute and thirty-six seconds.
He says, “Why didn’t you let me star in it?”