Analysis #1 — Evidence
When researching online video practices, it was clear that YouTube is the forefront of how videos are authored in the online media landscape today. Because of this, it was an easy choice to choose a video, published on YouTube, as a case study. We looked at a simple, yet unique type of video, in a ‘Story of your Life’ type scenario done via whiteboard drawings, spoken through narration (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx6fwery65M). It’s simplicity, yet uniqueness, made it a stand out type of video, that works very well for the YouTube format. There is a lot of freedom to create a personal space with a YouTube channel, tell personal stories, and try different and unique styles of videos.
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When looking at collaboratively producing our own video, we first had to come to the decision of what story to tell. We chose not to recreate one of our own life stories through the whiteboard drawings, as we realised we could tell whatever story we would like with this type of format. The whiteboard element gives an opportunity to tell an existing story in a new and eye grabbing type of way. We chose to recreate the Disney animated film Finding Nemo, using narration and drawings. It gave us the opportunity to try and creatively tell a beloved story, in an extremely condensed form.
The production process was quite smooth. With only one simple location of filming the whiteboard, we just had to film over a long space of time as the drawings were being done. Once completed, several cuts were made to create smoothness, remove any drawing mistakes and to then speed up the footage into the small timeframe we gave ourselves. Afterwards, voiceover was added, and some appropriate (royalty free) music to give a rhythm to the video that runs only just over a minute. Having YouTube as a platform gave us a lot of freedom to change a lot from the case study video and completely do what we wanted to do, without many constraints. The next step after uploading the video to YouTube is getting the video seen, which is a challenge in itself. However YouTube offers many sharing options with other social media sites, so we can use our existing online media presence to spread the word of our video online. YouTube is the easiest and most effective way to author videos online, with also giving so much freedom to the video authors, to create the content they envision.
