In Which I Become a YouTuber

One of the best parts of my job is that I am constantly learning new things. Most of the new skills are from my daily challenge to create fresh and engaging content for our social media accounts. I am forever indebted to Professor John Kane and the Graphic Design 1 curriculum for whipping me into shape and forcing me to learn Adobe Illustrator. So far, I have brushed up on even more Illustrator skills, learned a thing or two in Photoshop, dipped my toes into web design, and now this week, learned how to edit videos in Adobe Premiere Pro and upload to YouTube. 

Before I get into things and elaborate on this adventure in technology, I have been informed that I left out some very critical family members from my blog post last week. I am ashamed to admit that I forgot to include all five (YES 5) dogs. 

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Sweetie Pie (3)- Female. Tiny fluffy toy poodle. Extremely easy to trip over. Jasmine loves this dog more than anything. She carries it around, calls it "Sweet Pie balooshkies" in that awful baby-talk voice, and will scold you for days if you accidentally step on it. Sweetie Pie is currently battling a bad case of the fleas, so she couldn't take a break from itching for a photo-op.

Coco (3)- Female. Giant black lab/ boxer mix. Although she was an insane puppy just a few years ago (when I met her on my first trip to Belize with NU ASB), she's become the wise old soul of the pack. To add to her grandma-like persona, she gets a cough every time it rains. I think if I were reincarnated as a dog, I'd end up a lot like Coco.

Husky (2)- Male. Husky is a husky. I guess kids aren't very creative with the naming thing. Doomed to forever look like a teenager, Husky had a growth-stunting virus last summer that seems to have ruined his prospects with the ladies. He now spends most of his time sulking and ripping up potted plants. I feel partially responsible for the adoption of Husky. The first time I came to Belize, my Alternative Spring Break team voted to give the kids our stuffed animal Husky mascot. Apparently they begged and begged for a real one... and they got it. The real husky eventually ate the stuffed animal.

Shira and Asim (Age??). The rambunctious female and male Afghan hound duo. They are the only Afghan hounds in Belize. We think. I can't say much about these two as they currently live on the roof deck because they are incapable of getting along with the other dogs. 

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Anyways... back to the scheduled programming for this blog post:

This week I taught myself Adobe Premiere Pro CC- the video editing software that comes in the same line of products as Photoshop. When you first open this program, it just looks intimidating. With four different work spaces and lots of little symbolic buttons, I was immediately lost. Luckily YouTube has a lot of videos about how to make videos for YouTube. It's strangely meta, but also very helpful.

I quickly realized that this was going to be one of those things that takes about fives times as long as you anticipate it taking. For example, I had completely forgotten that music copyrights were an issue and spent 30 minutes looking through the free YouTube audio library. Then, after I thought I was all done, the rendering and uploading took another two hours. Then when I was sure that I was done, YouTube asked me for a custom thumbnail and account verification...

Several hours later and I finally had a video complete with "inspirational electronic dance" music (the category under which I found the free music) and footage filmed by our last volunteer group, The Global Convoy. You can check it out here: 

Now that I have a good grasp of the basics, I'm excited to make more videos! I've already started on some projects with some footage that I've taken on my weekend adventures. More on these adventures in the future! Stay tuned for next week's episode: