I just got a tip about Animoto from Scott Quillin (am I giving away your trade secrets, Scott?) of New England Multimedia. As part of our package to redo my site and integrate the blog inside, he was going to take all my cool world-travel snapshots from the website and package them into a slide show/video.
I had no expectation what that would look like; in fact, it made me nervous. Late two nights ago, Scott turned me loose on Animoto. I first attempted the free unlimited :30 clips; then I upgraded to Plus and finally took the nosedive to the Pro version (all in 30 minutes) to create this video below — Hire Soulati Media.
I used my own photography to create each screen shot — I’d like Sean McGinnis to watch for some pickle action in this movie! I added text to tell the story and transition to each image. Where there were too few images, I combed my collection for something else handy, but went off to Fotolia to purchase three extra images. (I also love Fotolia for blog images, website photography and now my first professional video.)
I also owe a huge thanks to eCairn for the image of my cloud tag shared in a blog comment recently by Arthur Huynh. If you haven’t checked these guys out; they’re worth a few visits. eCairn is doing some amazing work in the sector.
With no tutorials or hours spent trying to figure out what to do, I built my minute-long movie in about five hours total (tweaks, embedding code, waiting for software kinks, buying images, writing text, etc.) The initial phase of the project was the most fun – selecting a background template and music to coincide with the images. The Pro version provided the most versatility with these important elements – more templates in high definition and certainly hundreds more songs to choose from.
I had no idea what I was doing; had never done anything remotely similar. It was like making a scrapbook – you look at a blank canvas and start. I’m going to try my hand with a few more of these, and then take a closer look at client needs. Animoto is a wonderful find; I hope you’ll check it out, too.
And, Scott? I think you unleashed a monster.
