Beyond Method #9: Tell a digital story

I wouldn't consider myself a videographer but I have done my fair share of videos in the past for a variety of different things. It's a fun medium. Since coming to Moore Memorial Public Library, I've been trying to rejuvenate the MMPL YouTube channel. The programming staff all pitch in with capturing photos and videos of our events. we don't have video cameras; we just use the video function on the library's point-and-shoot cameras. As a result, the resultant videos often are a mix of video and photos. The challenge is getting consent forms signed to show the faces of the people at the events. As a result, we often shoot without faces showing because we don't know who we'll get forms from, if any at all.

To put this slideshow together, I used a common free tools found on just about any PC with Windows: Windows Movie Maker. It's not fancy, but it gets the job done. I pulled a few of the photos we've shot over the summer, added some transitions and took advantage of some Creative Commons music from DigCCmixter. Then I put some titles on top of the images and at the beginning and ending. I exported it as a WMV file and then threw it into my Google Docs, which now makes it super-easy to embed video files into your blog.

The execution of the slideshow went smoothly because it was a simple idea with not too many parts. The most recent video I shot of our teen program Minute to Win It was a bit harder because there were so many activities and so many kids involved. I overshoot for footage and then try to be judicious in what I put in the final product. Like a written story, every piece has to have a purpose; it has to justify being in the end result.

One day I'd like to do more complicated stuff that involves narration, but in the meantime, I'm content to do relatively simple works. I hope to continue and expand our use of video with the library. Our patrons gravitate a great deal toward video; I see them signing up for computers all day to check out YouTube videos, among other things. Video provides another opportunity to reach them, tell our story and promote what we have to offer them.

Music: "Test Drive" by Zapac is available through a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 license.