7. Click the View link on the confirmation page to view your videoblog entry.
The entry shows up on-screen as a hyperlink to your video on the Internet.
Figure 4-18:
With embedded video, your videoblog is ready to play!
To save a frame of your video to use as the image, open it in your video edit- ing program and navigate to the frame you want to use, using the timeline or preview. In iMovie, select File➪Save Frame As and save the image as a JPEG.
In Windows Movie Maker, select the option by choosing Tools➪Take Picture from Preview and save the resulting image as a JPEG. Upload this file in addi- tion to your video.
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Chapter 4: Recipe for a Vlog
Avoiding technofrustration
Creating your first videoblog entry can take a really long time and be a lesson in frustration, but it doesn’t have to be. As you’ve seen in this chap- ter, computers made in the last five years and current operating systems have the tools already available to capture your video and post it to the Internet in a format that other people can view.
And once you get that first video online, the next one, and the one after that, will be easier, and pretty soon you’ll want to get more and more cre- ative with your content and presentation! That’s what the rest of this book is all about.
A word about technology and frustration:
Usually, if you find yourself tearing out your hair over something, it’s either because you’re over- thinking the situation and making it more com- plicated than it needs to be, or it’s because some other Web service isn’t responding the
way it normally does. It can be very frustrating when you’re new, because you just don’t know if you’re getting it wrong, or if something else isn’t working. Take a deep breath, pick up your video camera, and get away from the computer for a few hours before you come back to the problem. Most problems will sort themselves out in the meantime, and the ones that don’t will be easier to deal with when you’ve put some distance between yourself and the hassle.
Also, having friends really can help! Be sure to join the videoblogging communities mentioned in Chapter 14, and try to get to know a couple of other vloggers. Before you throw your camera or your computer out the window, send a question in to one of the communities. Chances are, some helpful Samaritan will have had the same prob- lem and can help you troubleshoot and fix it.
Part II
Step Away from the Camera
In this part . . .
As with all good filmmaking, videoblogging is more than just pointing a camera at some action and letting it roll. It’s about planning, and self-discovery.
In this part, you zero in on some behind-the-scenes techniques for making a better videoblog. You get some pointers about overcoming stage fright and writing a script for your vlog, as well as soliciting audience feed- back from your viewers.
Chapter 5
Finding Your Voice and Audience
In This Chapter
䊳Identifying your audience 䊳Soliciting feedback
䊳Practicing self-discovery through vlogs
The main reason people turn to blogging is to make their voices be heard — or in the case of videobloggers, seenand heard. Perhaps you already know who you want to reach with your videoblog, or maybe you have a mes- sage that you think the world should hear. Perhaps you’re an expert on some- thing and want to share your expertise. Or maybe your imagined audience is actually very small, consisting of just your friends and family who check your videoblog to see videos of your daily life. If you already have an audience in mind for your vlog, this chapter helps you target that audience and focus your vlog entries for that audience.
It’s entirely possible, though, that you’ve come to videoblogging without any pre-existing ideas of what you want to say, or who you want to talk to.
Perhaps you just want to express yourself, or you like playing around with the technology and want to see how far you can push it. You’re in good company — a lot of videobloggers just like playing with the technology until they find something else to play with. It that’s the case for you, this chapter helps you define an audience for your vlog.
Identifying Your Audience
One of the keys to successful communication — in any medium, forum, or venue — is to know your audience. Simply put, as a videoblogger, you are a speaker. You communicate to other people through your videoblog. The people who download your vlog entries, who spend time watching them, and who sometimes respond to you in your vlog’s comments, are your audience.
Your audience can be very interactive, talking back through comments, engaging you in a vlogging dialog (where they post vlog entries about your vlog entries), or just dropping you frequent e-mails or finding you in chat- rooms. But they can also be very mysterious, never commenting publicly about your vlog entries, or just being quiet in general about who they are and what they like about your vlog. You might wonder if they’re even out there.
Figuring out who’s watching can help you make decisions about what to vlog.
For example, while I was writing this book, I made a vlog entry that didn’t quite work. It was filmed at night, and was therefore grainy, and had a kind of hidden camera feel to it. It was a risk, different from my usual work, but something I wanted to try. My vlog was posted to two audiences — one that had background information about my inspiration, and the other consisting of videobloggers. The videobloggers didn’t really say much about it (they can be so polite!), but the comments from the other group were much more blunt. (One such response was “What the heck was that?!?”) To get such a strong negative reaction from that audience told me that the risk I’d taken had not paid off. I won’t rule out a similar style in the future, but I will know in advance that it’s a risk that my audience may not appreciate.
One way to find out who’s watching your videoblog is to look at your server logs. Server logsare a record of every time someone tries to access a file on your Web server. Unfortunately, server logs only tell part of the story, but you can learn a lot about your audience, depending on what tools you use to mine the data in those logs. See Chapter 16 for more details about reading your server logs to find out how many people are visiting your vlog.
You don’t have to sit back and wait for your audience to come to you before you decide who they are. You can decide in advance that you want to make your videoblog for an existing person, organization, or audience demo- graphic. (A demographicis a profile of your target audience, including infor- mation like approximate age, income, gender, family situation, and interests.) In fact, if you identify your audience in advance, you can gear your message and your vlog entries towards that audience. Over time, you will find ways to effectively communicate with them.
Predefining the intended audience is a common practice. For a business, defining the audience in advance helps it create a product that the audience will want to buy. Predefining your audience for your videoblog can save you time, money, or video time. For instance, at the very beginning of this book, I set out the foolish assumptions of who I expect to be reading this book. It’s not that the book can’t be read by someone else, but that I started out acknowledging what must be outside the scope of the book.
For instance, if your audience consists of weekend car enthusiasts who like fixing their own cars, and you’re going to do a videoblog about installing a lift on a Jeep, you know you don’t have to spend time creating a video showing how you check tire pressure (unless you do it differently from everyone else on the planet). Because you’ve predefined your audience as car enthusiasts
who know something about cars, at least the basics, you can assume if you say, “I checked the tire pressure already,” your audience knows what that means.
One thing that helps in designing a communication project like a videoblog is to create a model user profile— a typical example of someone you would expect to have in your audience. The model user can be based on someone you know in real life, it can be a composite of several people, or it can just be a list of certain traits you expect most people in your audience to share.
Here are some things to ask yourself about the people you want to talk to in your vlog:
⻬Why are they interested in my videoblog?Usually, it’s because your videoblog is going to be about something they like, perhaps a topic, political movement, or an aesthetic that they find intriguing.
⻬How old are they? You may have trouble figuring this one out, but if you can get a general idea, you’ll be better off. For example, if you want to get the enormous market of Baby Boomers, you probably won’t want vlog about college drinking games and trendy shows on the WB televi- sion network. Instead, you might aim for something more appealing to an audience of middle-aged and older folks, like a vlog about politics, health, or classic rock music.
⻬Are they male or female?Videobloggers are about evenly split between male and female, and there’s no reason your audience won’t be, too, unless you specifically choose to vlog a topic that tends to be more interesting to one gender or another. It doesn’t mean you have to hang a sign on the front of your videoblog that says “No Boys Allowed” or “No Girls Allowed.” Rather, you just know that in a gathering of a similar group of folks you’d find more men than women, or vice versa. If you think it’s going to be evenly split, then never assume a gender for your audience when you vlog.
⻬Do they work? What kind of jobs might they have?If you’re doing a professional videoblog, you can guess that most of your audience will have a job in the same industry or profession as you.
⻬What level of education does my audience have?This question is actually pretty important. Although art can be appreciated by anyone, how you deliver your art may be pretty esoteric. Additionally, if your videoblog is meant to teach people, then you automatically will have more knowledge than your audience.
⻬What other interests do they have?If you have a general, personal videoblog, you’re eventually going to start vlogging your other hobbies.
One personal vlog I know has a lot of entries about dog training and dog- agility trials — the vlog entries are fascinating and inspiring, but if the vlogger’s audience had no interest in dogs, they’d want to skip over those entries.
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