Video Project Progress

What an education this has been.  I backed off of my original concept and instead am working on a short video about one set of my great grandparents.  I'd originally thought that it would be easiest to use as subjects, the family I know least about.  Couldn't get past square 1.5.

Movie Maker is free from Microsoft.  It is relatively new and I thought that MS would provide very user friendly basic video software.  Wrong. Not for me. I struggled trying to figure it out and finally gave up.  Instead I reloaded my 10 year old Adobe Premier Elements. It was written for Windows XP so I kept my fingers crossed that it would work on Windows 7. It does.  I don't even know if Adobe makes an "Elements" version of Premier anymore.

I also learned just how important it is to do a storyboard - something I'd had no experience with. Some internet research helped a lot and I found a free storyboard template that uses MS Word.

This is a Ken Burns kind of project. I have no actual video footage,  It will be a series of graphics and still pictures with my narration.

This project will cover only the time from 1850 when my great grandfather was born, to 1887 when the family emigrated from Poland to the United States. And I really know nothing about their lives in Poland.  It should be less than 5 minutes long.

It has taken much longer than I expected to select the visuals.  If time wasn't an issue, it might have been easier to just include everything I've found, but I don't like videos longer than 5 minutes so that's my limit..

Script writing has also been a challenge.  How to I tell a reasonable short story?  What is important information and what isn't.  Can I make it interesting? Probably not.

Next step is to record the narration. That scares me.  How is my voice quality?  Can I speak clearly enough and naturally enough?

When I finish, will I have the guts to let anyone else  see it?

Time will tell.