Video
A Video is Worth Two Thousand Words
The
mainstream media would usually rather cover one celebrity walking down a
street all by themself than an empowered rally or demonstration with a hundred
regular community folks. A person can feel very isolated or that standing
up for oneself is impossible. Video on the web, especially of our communities
at our best, can shatter this myth.
Women of color affected and infected by HIV/AIDS got together on World AIDS
Day 2004 to demand that women's voices be heard. Check out the fierce sisters
of VOW at:
www.vownyc.org/12-1-04worldaidsday.htm (four video clips of varrying sizes).
The
first video in a graphic flash movie by a CBO! By cutting-edge, Junior Garcia!
Not to be outdone, check out the online video creations of Charley Dominguez of the Ignite Project.
Here
is a Trojan ad that
uses the same technologies (movie embedded in a graphic).
There are some other community-based groups in NYC starting to use good video on their websites. Made themselves (they're community-based); often by free classes from the fabulous Manhattan Neighborhood Network.
Check these out:
- 
Video by FIERCE
- 
Video by SMART Youth
- 
Video by Mexicanos Unidos
- Video by the amazing Sentinial (warning: takes a very strong broadband connection)
Cool! But how do you do it?
(1) Make your video in any video editting program and save it as a .mov file. iMovie comes free with Macs and MovieMaker comes free with PCs; both are great to start with.
(2) Download the free 30-day trial copy of Macromedia's Flash Professional Version 8 (works on both platforms). Uncompress and install.
(3) Note, there are two programs here in two different folders, Flash 8 and Flash 8 Video Encoder. Start up Flash 8 Video Encoder.
(4) Go FILE --> NEW. You will set a blank window with no files. Click "Add" and browse to where you saved your .mov file and click "Open."
(5) Then it will show up on the list. Click "Settings." Now you need to think of your audience and select settings based on them. Choose "Flash 7-Medium" if they are not techie; "Flash 8- Medium" if they a quick download won't freak them out. (Don't click OK yet.) Then click on the button "Show Advanced Settings." If 30%+ have dial-up modems then choose "Low" for "Quality" and "80kbps" for Data Rate and check "Resize video" and make the width "300" (hit tab or click in another field and it will automatically calculate the height). If the overwhelming majority of your audience has dial-up modems, then choose "Flash 8" and under "Show Advanced Settings" put "Quality" at "Medium (more than 1 min.) or "High" (less than 1 minute); also check "resize video" and make the width "400" and "Data Rate" at 96 kbps."
(6) Play around with settings and having users test it. 30 - 45 second PSAs are best for dial-up users. You can always format the video for dial-up and broadband and give users a choice. Test, experiment and test again.
(7) Open up Dreamweaver 8. Choose INSERT --> MEDIA --> FLASH VIDEO. Browse to the .flv file you just created and click "OK." If this doesn't work because of an error message about the template being locked, just do step #7 on a blank page and then IN CODE VIEW copy and paste the different peices over to your desired page. Remember, there are peices of code in the header AND body sections.
Or, nowadays there is an easier option. Just open up a free YouTube account, upload your video and they will convert to Flash format and generate a link where you can send out an email telling people where to watch the video on your website AND/OR embed the video on your website (with the hosting and expense actually at YouTube!). For example, here is video by supporters of Sean Bell