If you’ve been reading my blogs, you’ll know that my learning project for the semester was filming and editing videos. I am in a huge YouTube vlogger phase, so I wanted to make my own. Here’s how my project went:

Week 1: Capturing the Every Day

I discussed wanting to film a “Day in the Life” once a week using Tik Tok (which I haven’t had until this project). I wanted to do more short form videos and specifically learn how to:

• do voiceovers
• add background music
• choose the right things or angles to film something
• add text or other effects

And I wanted to take inspiration from YouTubers/Influencers I already followed like Jennica and Annica, Matt and Abby, and Maya and Hunter.

Week 2: My First Day in the Life

This week I finally downloaded Tik Tok and filmed and edited my first Day in the Life. I followed along with the tutorial that the app gives you when you first download the app. I realized that even creating a short video like I did needed a lot of time and work put into it. I did face some struggles with the length of my clips, and the mute/sound settings on the app, but otherwise I was proud of my first video.

Week 3: Using Canva and Loom for my Learning Project

This week I used Canva to make thumbnails for my videos because the one that Youtube picked for my first video was of my sandwich 😐.  I used Loom, which is a screen recording app, so I could record myself giving a tutorial for how to make thumbnails using Canva. I also made another Day in the Life video for this post.

Week 4: …My life is boring

This week I had filmed another Day in the Life, but I wasn’t that excited about it, it wasn’t any different than the others I had done. Therefore, I decided to scrap that idea and did a Google search for other video ideas.

• This article by Vogue suggested doing a “Get Ready with Me” (which I made)
• This article by ClipChamp suggests letting your personality shine through and playing music throughout
• This article by SassyBella gave other video ideas

I also made the thumbnail with my face plastered on there for everyone to see. And I cut 45 minutes of footage down to 10 minutes, which took A LOT of time. I began using iMovie this week to edit my videos.

Week 5: It’s been a VERY hectic week. 

This is where I started to fall behind.

I watched a video from one of my teacher YouTubers, Amanda Monroe, and she basically said that no one cares about personal videos when you’re first starting, so I decided to make a video on what to wear for pre-internship. I thought this would be helpful because all the girls in my ECS class had zero clue of what they were to wear. She also suggested having a cohesive feed (i.e. thumbnails) so I made sure to use the same layout as my last video which I made using Canva.

Week 6: Life of a University Student

I used the same resource as last week and decided to make another impersonal video with the same layout for my thumbnail. Although my videos are all unlisted, I wanted to keep the experience as authentic as I could. I also realized this week that I am not cut out for doing this long term, at least during the school year.

Week 7: Pros and Cons of Using iMovie

This week I wanted to write down the pros and cons of using iMovie for editing a Day in the Life and then compare it to Tik Tok (which I blogged about in Week 8). My list that I made is below:

Pros:

• Pretty user friendly and easy to get started
• You can easily mute certain clips or sounds, increase the volume, and it even automatically lowers the music you add when you are talking in your video
• Gives templates
• Lots of music and sound effect choices
• Easy to cut and edit clips

Cons:

• Not many transition choices
• Limited text placement and font options
• Not many photo filters
• Just lacks “pizzazz” and looks boring

Week 8: Pros and Cons of Tik Tok

This week I used Tik Tok to edit a Day in the life, wrote down the pros and cons, and realized that I still prefer iMovie despite Tik Tok having much cooler effects.

Pros:

• I love that Tik Tok makes it super easy to delete clips immediately after filming.
• I also love that the app allows you to immediately see how your clips will flow together/transition while filming.
• Filming takes place on the app so I don’t need to use a lot of storage on my camera roll.
• Tik Tok has so many effects, and as far as I could see, they are all free…
  1. Green screens, random generators that float over your head, face filters…
  2. Many original sounds and sound effects
  3. Text
  4. Camera Effects (like the one at the end of my video)
  5. Picture Overlays
  6. Voice filters
• Tik Tok uploads your final video a lot faster than YouTube does AND I don’t need to make a thumbnail for it (if I only posted on Tik Tok).

Cons:

• The actual clipping of each clip was very difficult, probably by the fact that it’s a vertical editing app which means there’s not much room for me to work on.
• I absolutely hate that you can’t clip the music you add to your video, which is very easy to do on iMovie.
• I found that many of the cool effects on Tik Tok weren’t relevant to the type of video I was making, but if I was doing a dance video or cool makeup transition they would be helpful.

Week 9: Lesson Plan Sharing with Loom

For my last post, I decided to record and edit using Loom. I made a screen recording of myself talking about the lesson plans I’ve made this past year as I thought it would be helpful to other education students (and it gets people to take a deeper dive into other areas of my ePortfolio). Loom was super easy to use, but I had a limit of 5 minutes to share everything. I filmed it in two parts, but couldn’t edit them into one video because downloading is a premium feature 😢.

Although I realized after this project that this hobby is not for me, I am glad I put myself out there. This was always something I wanted to try, I just felt like I wasn’t adding anything to the YouTube universe, and that I prefer to watch other YouTubers (especially during Vlogmas) than create my own videos.