I have been putting off doing this video for weeks but with the competition deadline looming in about 24 hours from now I finally got my entry together and uploaded to Youtube. I don’t think the video is that great or has any chance of winning the $1,000 first prize Alex Jeffreys has offered for the best entry, but I wanted to blog about my experience in finally getting this video done, rather than getting it perfect.
This wasn’t the first time I had created a video, I created a welcome video for my blog several weeks ago and as of today it has been watched about 200 times, which is very encouraging.
But, always one to push his students further, my mentor Alex set the students a competition to create a video mentioning both themselves, him and their blogs.
I am not great at creating videos and I felt my time would be better spent elsewhere on my business rather than slaving over a video which had no chance of winning the competition anyway.
The standard of entries I have seen so far has been high, with Sean Beardmore’s oozing professionalism and Matt Wolfe setting the bar extremely high.
That said, there was no way I wasn’t going to enter and decided to just get something going and not worry about it too much. This is what I came up with:
This was my first video produced in glorious HD and gave me an opportunity to use the Picture-in-Picture (PIP) facility on Camtasia.
While Camtasia is great for putting together video tutorials, its downfall is it is not the best video editing software and does not have the provision to create a decent title sequence. I could have done something on Powerpoint but that doesn’t quite cut it either, unless of course you want to create a presentation video.
I managed to find a great solution. I bought Bluff Titler for $39.95 to create my opening and closing credits and I think it worked out quite well.
You can create loads of professional effects with Bluff Titler but even though it tries to be user friendly, I found it a bit fiddly and I definitely need more practice with it.
As far as the actual content of the video goes, during the planning stage it seemed like a good idea, but now it’s done I am not so sure.
It is of course meant to be taken very tongue-in-cheek and hopefully Alex doesn’t take anything said during the video the wrong way!
He comes across as a pretty cool guy and not the type who takes himself too seriously so I may be able to get away with it!
OK, this is where you come in. Yep, feedback time! What did you think of the video? Was it any good or should I stick to the day job?
Oh yeah. This IS the day job…
Hi David,
Brilliant mate – simple as!
Andrew
ROFLMAO ! Fantastic
Roger
Utter Genius mate
Alex has a great sense of humour, I’m sure he’ll love it.
Rob
Hi Rob,
Alex appears to have seen the funny side of the video so I think I am OK!
David
Oh man! Alex is going to be pissed when he sees this! (j/k) Great video. Very funny!
Thanks for mentioning my video. And thanks for mentioning Bluff Titler. I’m going to need to get my hands on a copy of that.
Hi Matt,
I am glad you liked the video and thanks for leaving a comment.
No problem on mentioning your video in my post, it’s going to take some beating in the competition!
Bluff Titler is OK for the money, but not as easy to use as it should be. I found it quite frustrating at times even to just do my simple intro sequence.
David
Hey David,
That’s some funny stuff, man!
Matt & Sean did set the bar high for us, but I think you pushed further than most of us would, too!
You did it in a very tactful way, and I bet he’ll get a kick out of it.
And that picture and comment about AJ’s mankini at the end just put it over the top.
Hilarious video, my friend. Great work!
Joe
Hi Joe,
Thanks for leaving a comment and I am looking forward to seeing your video!
I didn’t want to just create a “kiss ass” video because I am sure plenty of those will get submitted and fortunately for me Alex has seen the funny side of what I attempted to achieve.
The mankini had to be included, you can’t put photos of yourself like that online with no consequences
David
I went an watched this video after AJ said something about it…
And I got a kick out of this, DW, real funny stuff!
I haven’t even seen that mankini picture yet – makes you wonder who we’re learning from, hahaha!
Now that there’s an extension with the video competition, are you going to do another one?
)
(not that you need to
Alex Lim
Hi Alex,
Thanks for leaving a comment and I am glad you enjoyed the video.
I rushed to get the video done because of the deadline but now there is an extension, I am still not going to edit it or submit something new.
There are far better produced videos entered in the contest which must have taken days, rather than hours to edit compared to my “rough and ready” effort but I don’t mind.
Creating the video gave me more experience in front of the camera, using Camtasia and I got to play about with some new titling software so as far as that is concerned, the video has been a success.
I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with as well.
David
Hi David,
Very cool video, I enjoyed your humor. Alex looked pretty cool in that picture.
Looking forward to seeing more videos from you.
Jeanette