Twitter seems to be down, which is a disappointment for the random thoughts I generally send into the ether that way instead of blogging them. I Twitter because I care about you, my blog readers, didn’t you know?
(Though if you’re getting this on Facebook, I suppose that means that you’d see it either way. But anyway…)
I’m working on making a video. I’d say that it’s the first video I’ve ever made, but I actually did help direct the Hallowmere book trailer, so I suppose this would be the second video I’ve ever made that doesn’t involve filming my cats (often the only interesting subject around my house!). But for the Hallowmere trailer, I had the help of several great people at Wizards of the Coast–the books marketing person, Shelly, and the AdCom guy, Adam, and his whole team. We didn’t spend any money on the video, but we had the time and resources of some very talented people.
This time, it’s just me and my little Sony digital camera, so it’ll be an adventure. The raw footage I can get, no problem. It’s the editing that I’m not sure about. I’d like to interview a couple of different people for it, as well as adding text to the video with the people’s names. I have a PC, which came with Windows Movie Maker. Yes, I know, it’s not Final Cut or anything, but here’s a question for those of you who might know: will it be enough to do the simple things I want to do with my video?
I don’t think I’ll even put music on it, because I don’t want to get into trying to figure out royalty-free music. I just want to be able to edit out parts (like the beginning and ends of when I’m recording myself!), splice together a few different pieces of video, and add text. Is that possible with what I have? Or is there a freeware/shareware program out there that might be able to do this?
I use a package called Vegas Video (perhaps a bit out of your price range). Sony Creative has a starter package called Vegas for $54.95 that will likely do everything you’d like to do.
I’m sure that it’d be great, but the idea here is that I have NO money to devote to this, so I’m looking for completely free options. Thanks, though.
VirtualDub is a good free program for editing video. There are extensions that allow almost every function that the big programs have, if they’re sometimes a bit harder to find and use (both the extension downloads themselves and the features).
What type of music would you not be using? I can probably point you to a few sites if you specify a genre. 🙂