To calibrate your growing video making artistic and computer skills, submit a video to any of the online contests. Not only can you see if you can place in the upper ranks, you might even win a prize.
We just got home from an 11 day trip to Seattle for the annual Microsoft MVP Summit followed by our now routine 6 days in Carmel, California. The first thing I did after unpacking was catalog the 5 hours of new mini-DV camcorder footage, and copy them to my latest 1 terabyte external hard drive (Western Digital MyBook). I’m using the
optional downloaded Windows Photo Gallery to copy the files to individual DV-AVI files auto split into scenes.
As the transfers go I check my backlog of emails…. there’s one about a Microsoft sponsored ‘Share Your Passion Competition’ with a submittal deadline of tomorrow at midnight, and I haven’t started yet. There’s no hurry, as they provided 3 MP3 music files to use for background music, and the maximum length of the video is 60 seconds. I can whip up an entry later tonight. The great thing about online contests is that no-one knows you, even those voting on the entries. If you don’t place high enough, you learn from the experience, and you needn’t tell anyone. If you win, you have earned bragging rights to send the link to the world, and enjoy the prize.
The last contest I entered, I got 4th place… and if you ask how many entries there were… being open and honest, I’d have to say 5. But, hey, I wasn’t in last place.
Read the contest rules… for this one it’s original work that becomes owned by Microsoft… in English or French (interesting)… approximately 1 minute in length… use their provided music (no need to think about copyright issues)… a wmv file made by Windows Movie Maker… and tomorrow’s deadline of midnight.
I’ll align the subject matter with my new footage. In the Carmel area, nature is a central theme. From the hours of video footage of beaches, surf, fish, birds, seals, and deer, I’ll share my passion of taking video of nature. The #2 downloaded tune best fits what I’m thinking about. It’s 65 seconds long, with sort of 3 main sections, so I guess that’s how long my video submittal will be… maybe water, fish and birds aligned with the 3 parts of audio.
On May 19th, 2008 the top 25 submittals will be online for open voting of the winners. If you don’t hear more about it, I didn’t place, and we can move on to the next contest.
---------------- zzzzzzzz ----------------
It's now after May 19th. From the about 180 submittals, mine didn't make the cut, to the group of 25 being voted on... It's time to find and enter the next contest.