I recently gave a short presentation to the
Housatonic Valley Cultural Alliance at their recent member event. The presentation, Creating and Sharing Video for Artists, explored some of the ways that photographers, artists and anyone involved in the creative arts can use video either as an expressive medium or promotional vehicle, or both. With the widespread availability of easy to use online video publishing, particularly YouTube, it is easy to create and share 'motion pictures' (another way to describe video) online as easily as it has been for still pictures. The presentation explored some the gear now available: low cost, easy to use and high quality output (HD, or 'high definition', that is) as well as some of the ways that sharing is accomplished: YouTube, Vimeo, Animoto, even Facebook supports video well.
I prepared the presentation for this group because the event that evening was another sharing session among the artists, a 'show and tell' of sorts. The members meet on an occasional basis to present their work and get feedback from fellow artists. In previous meetings the participants were directed to display images in a 'slide show' or 'PowerPoint' format with a video projector. Still images. I suggested that we kick it up a notch and allow the presenters to have the option of presenting video. The strategy worked well. Of the presenters who submitted content to share, four of the ten used video. We had several photographers, painters, sculptors, a jazz flutist, even an artist who creates beautiful digital art using an iPhone app. It was a nice blend of still images and video content among all of the presenters.
I was one of the presenters using video as a medium. What I set out to do for my presentation was to share several short clips of images from my
YouTube channel and present them as a sampling of some of the short segment video clips that I have posted to my YouTube channel to fill my 3 minute allotment of time. I needed them to play consecutively and without interruption. I created a Playlist on the YouTube channel but discovered that although it is possible to play each video consecutively, it cannot be done in full screen mode. Not wanting to have to take each of the six videos and re-edit them into a single file, which would then have to be uploaded as a new video, I poked around (in Google, of course) and found some HTML code that enabled me to create a webpage that does have the full screen mode feature enabled. I created the page and sure enough it worked!
https://sites.google.com/site/tomcurley/home/videoThere was one unexpected surprise when I presented the video to the audience. The fifth video shows bees flying around some flowers. When the video started a pop up banner ad appeared on the bottom of the screen. It was for Roundup weed killer and some insecticide products. That was pretty amazing to see because, while unwanted at the time, I realized that Google has figured out how to create algorithms that can visually catalog the content of videos and deliver context relevant advertising. It recognized the bees and flowers and figured that it was about gardening. I've seen this done with music... A song used as a soundtrack on a Google video will result in an ad to buy that song as a download on iTunes or Amazon. Example here:
http://youtu.be/m6hK7roRDus. So when creating and sharing video using YouTube, be aware that your content might be tagged with an advertisement, but at least it will probably be relevant. I've recently started to explore Vimeo as a platform to share video. There is less clutter and the presentation interface is very professional. Have fun with video and be sure to share online!
Posted via email from Tom Curley
