Posted by Paula Richey on March 17, 2014 at 6:07am
The contest is over - and the bad news is that I didn't quite place. On the other hand, though...I didn't have a YouTube channel, not many Facebook friends, and hadn't even uploaded a video before I started this challenge. For this particular segment of the tiebreaker, I reached 115 views on the second YouTube video I have made in my life. I have no email list, no business contacts, no movie-making knowledge, and no prior success in social media whatsoever.Of the people in this challenge - who, I might add, have businesses and email lists to reach out to - I got the second most views on my video!!!Views are still coming in - I'm at 131 this morning!I was three points shy of placing - and that was me, I missed the mark on the other tiebreaker, an essay on actually implementing my strategies. I chalk that up to inexperience - I don't know what I don't know since I haven't tried it out.What all this means to me is that even though I did not win a prize, I instead got a miracle.Two of my biggest doubts - "I don't think I can do this" and "Does anyone even care?" - slain in the same event.Wow.Also, I did win a book in the "gamification essay" challenge and y'all might like that one because I want to bring you in and publicize your comics with it. It's on www.otherrealmstudio.tumblr.com if you want details ;)So, on to making the video:I had just listened to a free webinar about how to create professional quality videos using an iPad. I was super excited to hear this class because just prior (for another scavenger hunt challenge) I had made a 15 second video with my niece and borrowed steampunk accessories and while I was really proud of it, I knew it couldn't end there.I took pages of notes, and scribbled recommendations for apps. For this video, I bought iMovie for the iPad ($4.99) since mine is old enough that it isn't standard. The new ones have it already!I had to have something classy, short, and *right now,* so I went straight to templates for movie trailers. I agonized over which one to pick. "Fairytale" was too twee, "Superhero" too campy, etc. so I used "Expedition." I felt like I was embarking on a big crazy adventure, anyway :)Then I chose clips and edited the wording - over, and over, and over again. I lost count of how many iterations I went through. It helped some that I had already written so much about OtherRealm's mission, but I had one 15 second clip and no art for one story, and loads of art but no movie clip for another! So I pulled in even more art from other projects and made the trailer about OtherRealm Studio's mission and purpose.Choosing words to go with the art in the next section - and revising both - took a lot of time and I'm still not entirely pleased with it. Some of my art is a bit grainy in the photos and where I converted the pictures to grayscale (to help continuity) didn't always work. Weirdly, the Instagram filter I used to make the movie clip black and white stuck, but not the iPad's own image editing.Also, observant viewers will notice that the same inked page shows up about three times! I totally did not intend that and was trying to focus on different parts of the page for each of those shots, but it didn't work out that way. Maybe in actual movie editing rather than the trailer template I could get that adjusted properly.I will definitely be making more of these! Because even with the difficulties, it was so very fascinating and utterly cool :) And every time my son sees it, he asks if it's coming out in theaters :) He's eight, and knows how to flatter Mommy, even if the process of getting a movie in theaters is all a mystery to him. ;)Next time, I will focus on just one story, maybe raid some public domain pics, get my model/actress for a longer video shoot, and try to rig some kind of tripod for the iPad. If I go with speaking parts, I'll have to invest in a microphone too. Also, there *is* a green screen app... :) which would be all kinds of awesome.
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