Thank You, Michael Stevantoni
We are in the Age of Technology -- there's no doubt about it. Cell phones, Ipods, MP3 players, DVD's, Kindle, Wii, Blue Tooth, huge flat screen TV's and, of course, computers to name just a few household innovations. Even we dinosaurs find ourselves immersed in technology. The fact that I have a website and this blog, and that I shall be presenting to high school students in Minnesota next week via Skype are proof.
So when the organizers of The Forest of Reading Awards asked nominees to create a short video promoting their nominated books, I took a deep breath and agreed to do it. How? I had no idea. I knew I could take videos with my digital camera, and I thought I might be able to do something with the camera built into my computer, but I had no clue how to proceed. The content wasn't a problem; it was the process that was a mystery.
Upon mentioning this to my writing group, one member said that her fourteen-year-old grandson (Michael Stevantoni) was an amateur movie-maker, and she would ask him if he was interested in helping me out. He was! Yahoo!
We had a preliminary meeting to set up a plan, and then two days later we did the actual filming. It was such a relief to leave the HOW of it all up to someone else. I had checked out a few of Michael's creations on YouTube and was confident he knew what he was doing.
The filming took about 2 hours. The editing took another day. And then Michael uploaded the finished video on to YouTube for the world to see. It will soon be embedded on the promotional website for the Forest of Reading too. And after that? The Sundance Festival, I'm sure!
In the meantime, go to YouTube and check it out. Here's the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnJPGA_GySs
At the moment you'll have to copy and paste this into your browser, because I don't know how to activate the link. I'll have to get my computer guru son to do that for me. (Don't act surprised. I told you I was a dinosaur.)