Video of the week: Turtles

This is one of my own. I hope you like it.  If you would like to see my prior selections for video of the week, visit here.

Who is YouTube?: my answer in 2 minutes

Here’s my next video.  I have a lot of YouTubers to thank for joining this project.  If you click on the video and go to YouTube, I’ve listed them all on the write up of the video.

The Real History of YouTube in 3 minutes

Hello, YouTube. Here’s my latest video. One thing about the title: the video was 3 minutes and 20 seconds, but I added credits at the end, which made it longer.

The original song at the end is “Song for Paige” by Lee Wadlinger, one of my former students. He’s great. Go here for more about his music: http://www.myspace.com/leewadlinger and http://nextbestrecords.com/

I hope to make a few more YouTube videos this month, so stay tuned.

my thoughts on making YouTube videos

As promised, I wanted to say a few more thoughts about making my first YouTube video (see below).  I had fun doing it, but I won’t be giving up my day job just yet.

Old tech:  Even before I could start editing, I consumed a lot of time.  As I said before, I don’t own a video camera and the one I borrowed was an old High 8 camera.  (I’ll spare you the details of how I got it converted to an editable digital format.)  Also, I shopped around for a video editing program and asked a number of different people for advice, so that took some more time.  I couldn’t figure out how to work the iMovies program on my old iMac, and was just about to plunk down some money to buy a Windows application when — lo and behold — I discovered I already own Windows Movie Maker on my new laptop.

Windows Movie Maker:  A very easy program to use.  I knew nothing about editing before using it.  WMM did the trick.

Telling a story:  Once I got the hang of editing, I had a lot of fun trying to tell a story from the raw video and photos taken by my students.  It also helped to have an amazing original song from one of my students that I really liked.  My goal was to make a very short, tightly strung video.  My long version was over 5 minutes, the shorter version a little over 3 minutes.  Still a little long by YouTube standards, but I needed to get in as many of my students in the footage.

So what did I learn?:  Besides editing, I learned that one of the real advantages of video is that it captures a memory almost like nothing else can.  A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a video may be worth a million.  When I watch the video of my class, the memory is priceless.  YouTube fits into the picture by providing an easy way for me to share the video with my class and others.  That’s the original idea — sharing video — that prompted YouTube’s invention.  That the YouTube founders perfected their idea so well is a blessing for innovation.

“Hallaween at Moritz College of Law”- short photo version

I made a condensed version of my first YouTube video.   I snuck in a few more pics, but took out most of the video except the cameo appearance from the Dean of our law school.  The original music is “Picture of Me” by one of my students, Lee Wadlinger — for more of his music, go here: http://myspace.com/leewadlinger. I promise I’ll have more to say about what I think about the process of making your own videos.

Video of the week: Hallaween at Moritz College of Law (my first YouTube video)

This is my first YouTube video that I put together. Please be kind. I don’t even own a video camera, and the one I borrowed is old. I’ve never edited a film, either, until now. I’m in the video, but that’s not me narrating. I’ll have more to say later, but, for now, all I want to say is something to my 1L students: Thanks!