More Development

My friends and I decided to expand this project to more than a personal video; we will try to make this into a hobby and hopefully some day provide this service to other people for a nominal fee.  As briefly mentioned in my previous blog, our target audience will be people who want an affordable short video about their relationship, pet, or a special events as a gift or simply as a memento!  We are going to compose some sample videos first as advertising tools.  But we need your help in providing us some advice about  --- what you think will help us succeed?  What will make you purchase our service? 
I was browsing through some articles the other day and came across an article about how to promote your videos:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574435020939186220.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_smallbusiness

I thought it was very informative and I will definitely implement some of these methods when we complete our test videos. -- Does anyone else think these methods will work?  Or have any better ideas?

Experimenting

An interesting personal discovery -- I now find myself going on Youtube during my free time and simply browsing through other people’s movies! I mean, I know of Youtube and have gone to the website once in a while, but never really spent “quality” time clicking on random videos. But I've found a lot of amateur film makers who are really creative and some of the videos simply inspirational. And then there are videos like “The World’s Biggest Zit” that is simply unbelievable and gross, yet too intriguing to look away! (Warning: Definitely don’t recommend watching and eating at the same time!)


My own project, on the other hand, is progressing slower than I originally intended, but I am gathering my thoughts and need maybe one day to just sit down and compile everything.

So far, I opened Magix, the program that I am going to use to edit the videoes. But I was wondering if anyone else has any suggestion on other programs that is better or easier? I want to be able to combine slide shows with video recordings, so any advice would help!

Thanks! 

 

A New Idea in the Brewing

I woke up a week ago with a panicking thought in my head!

My anniversary with my boyfriend is only two weeks away!  After three years of being together, I was running out of ideas of what to give him as an anniversary gift and I'm running out of time!    Being a grad student, I am also financially challenged (aka broke), so I wanted to be able to give him something cost effective, personal, but creative. 

So, I started thinking about what I can give him.  Then I pondered what other people give to their significant others after already gaven so many gifts over the years?  So I did what everyone else in my situation would do...  I googled gift ideas.  But that didn't help, as all the results were just generic, non-useful, and just not personalized. 

Finally, after exercising my brain for a while, a light bulb came on! 

What could be better than a composition of our wonderful moments into a short movie with picture slides, vacation videoes and a personal message at the end?  It's cost efficient, as I will finally learn how to use the video editing program installed in our computer years ago, it's personal, and creative! 

As I am working on my gift, I wondered if other people have the same problem finding gift ideas for their anniversary, mother's day, father's day, or for any meaningful event in their life?  All the existing video companies focuses on major events such as wedding, or company training.  Wouldn't it be great if there is a service that helped people who doesn't have the time or skill to compose their own short but unique video? 

**Please let me know your thoughts about my project idea -- whether it is definitely desired and you want a video of your own, interesting, not helpful at all, or a waste of your time reading.** 

Thank you!