Taking the Scenic Route Video Story

Don't worry about a thing

'Cause every little thing gonna be alright

Singin' don't worry about a thing

'Cause every little thing gonna be alright

(Three Little Birds by Bob Marley)

For the past few years, I have been half-jokingly saying (mostly to myself) that I was writing a book.  There is a difference between writing a book and having a book published. Recognizing that, I am more willing now to tell people that I am writing a book, even if I just print a copy for myself.

I have binders full of notes, thoughts, research, passages and quotes from books I've read and copies of my blog posts and emails. I haven't quite figured out what to do with it all and how to present it in book form but I'm working on it.

Last week, I was watching a video that my husband made when we went for a day trip to Elora that included a patio lunch in September 2020. I loved the moment at the 1:47 mark when I exclaim: 

"It is exciting to be out!!"

We discussed how it had been 6 MONTHS since the pandemic started and how crazy it was that it had been that long. The week before, there had been around 100 new cases per day in the province of Ontario (population 14 million). Looking back now, this was the start of the numbers going up again, but we didn't realize it at the time. 

Now that we're 4 more months in, I love that we captured that moment and those feelings.

Here's what I wrote on Friday morning after watching the video:

"I watched the Elora sunflower video earlier and how precious is that? It shows us at a moment in time, a moment of hope, that the worst was behind us, but it wasn't. A moment of 'it's been 6 months!'!! Who would have believed it - and now it's 10 months.

I love these types of glimpses of our lives and maybe love them even more than photo albums. They're more real and you can feel the emotions more.  [okay I wrote that but I still LOVE my photo albums]

I love the written word, but maybe there's a place for video.

What if my book was a visual book. I have tears in my eyes at the thought - is that possible?

Have either written words on the video - or have videos that go with the PDF?

Have written words/passages on the video that you can pause on...and as the story gets to a place that has videos or photos, add them in.

Can I try that with a story I already have - to see if it works?...

There are books, e-books, audiobooks...why not

videobooks? vlogs with written pages?"

I spent that afternoon working on my first videobook clip about the time when we got off at the wrong station in Switzerland that serendipitously worked out for the better. I thought it was a short-ish story and it was timely. We were in Switzerland 3 years ago to the day so I loved to revisit that memory. I already had a blog post written, so it was a matter of copying the words and adding photos and videos.

I also really loved the music aspect to adding videos to the stories. A lot of my blog posts on My Life Is Like A Song start with lyrics. Often times, I wondered if people read them, knew the song or sang them in their head. With a video, I can play them or maybe if I get brave enough, can even just sing the lyrics myself to start the stories.

On Friday night, I published what I had to tell my husband about my new idea and to show him what I had created so far in iMovie. 

I was frustrated with the lack of flexibility with the titles and ways that I felt could make the clip more interesting. He showed me what is possible in Final Cut Pro and I decided that I would learn it and start using it to make my future videobook clips - including part 2 of this story. I figured it wasn't worth continuing it in iMovie. 

I have to add, that I didn't want to google videobooks that day. I didn't want to know if it was already a thing. I just wanted to create something without being influenced. It turns out that videobooks and vooks exist and are especially popular for kids books. I'll look imto it more but for now, I just wanted to enjoy my process and storytelling.

Here's the first demo clip:

I look forward to seeing how the clips evolve as I learn Final Cut Pro and figure out what works in the storytelling and what doesn't.

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