I was totally blown away when I found that HVX Silverstar (a wonderful machinimist who taught me how to get started) captured my session on machinimatography in Second Life this week! Machinima is a portmonteau which combines the words “machine” and “cinema” and means capturing video within a computer simulated environment. Machinima can be used for digital storytelling, visual poetry, archiving digital content, and capturing simulated learning experiences in virtual worlds and online games.
There are a couple of audio glitches (when I lost sound) but most of the session can be viewed here. Just fast-forward if there’s a lull. I do not consider myself an expert, but I hope my session helped other beginners who want to learn how to created videos in this creative format. Video formats and editing tools continue to change and are now readily available for home use.
I’ve worked with editing videos for my school news show for years but only started editing them on the computer a couple years ago. I made a couple of videos to compare video camera choices. I am sure that there are numerous other video cameras available now, but here is a video created with the RCA SmallWonder (a very small and inexpensive model) and another filmed with a Sony HandyCam (edited in Adobe Premiere 2.0). Hey, by the time you read this, they will both probably be obsolete! I bet you can tell which one I like best.
I am so frustrated with my stupid videocamera! After a year of working with a digital video camera (between the full-time job as librarian, part-time job as choir director, pianist/organist, sunday school teacher, graduate school student, writing trainer, webmaster, school television show producer, student council sponsor, poet, composer, band leader, guitar player, gourmet cook, homemaker and so on….just to let you know why I haven’t had time to figure out the stupid videocamera) I still have not figured out how to use it!
I love my laptop but, I guess a laptop is just not powerful enough to handle huge image files for making movies. So, I will have to explore moviemaking on a bigger computer. I am venting.
OK, now that’s over. I suppose we all feel the frustration of ever-changing technology. We have to keep learning, always learning. That is what life is about…learning.
I have always had an interest in storytelling and I have collected some tales over the years. I think sharing stories is a part of the purpose of the library. In this age of information, I think digital storytelling will provide new opportunities and new audiences. I have examples of digital storytelling projects that I created (just for fun and as an example for students) at http://www.janestorm.com/ethridgelibrary/Writing.html Maybe someone will stumble upon them and want to create a tale of their own!
