Like blogging, vlogging (video blogging) is a way to share your insights on a subject with an online audience. However, vlogging goes beyond the text of a blog post, transforming your content into an audio-visual broadcast. If you’re interested in vlogging, but don’t know how to start, here are some tips:

The first thing you’ll need is the right equipment, and the good news is you don’t need much, just a camcorder or a web camera and a good microphone. Also, for a vlog that has a more polished look, you’ll want to learn how to use video-editing software. This will enable you to add music, subtitles, etc. to your vlog. There are numerous online programs like Wax or Zwei-Stein Video Editor that you can download for free. Also, Apple iMovie and Windows Movie Maker are both easy to use and come pre-installed on Macs and PCs.

Once you’ve assembled your equipment, I recommend experimenting. Test the sound quality of your microphone; make sure there is sufficient lighting where you’re recording your vlog and figure out how you want to look on camera. Remember that vlogging is a form of communication, so you want to not only be visible (no low lighting), but also intelligible. Most vlog “episodes” should be one to three minutes, keeping the amount of bandwidth needed to host them to a minimum. Therefore it’s a good idea to rehearse your content. At the very least, I recommend preparing a script or some type of plan before each video so that you can deliver concise, focused content. Finally, don’t be afraid to have fun with your vlog. Depending on your audience, you’ll want to be more than just informative; you’ll also want to be candid and entertaining. Like blogging, it’s important to pick subjects you love and can explore in a series of posts. One episode doth not a vlog make.

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Loved this tongue in cheek article in the latest issue of Wired:

The film industry is slowly but steadily being forced to part with quaint artifacts like the “hero’s journey…”

Of course in my Storytelling & Digital Media class, we meet Joseph Campbell and Aristotle head-on, cos’ you need to know the “rules” before you can break them.  Many of my students reached for the stars with our latest exercise: shoot a 2-minute film with a beginning, middle and end (Aristotle), doing only in-camera edits.

Here is just some of our work (all of our films are up on our class social networking site, www.mcdmspace.ning.com). Read more…

Not so long ago, video experts would tell you that you didn’t need an High Definition camera if you were going to only upload your oeuvre to the Internet.  Compression was so bad on sites like YouTube that your video resolution really didn’t matter: it would still end up looking like pixellated hash.

Not any more.  It seems as if everyone has gotten HD religion in the last month or two: with the proliferation of inexpensive HD cameras (such as the Flip Mino HD and Kodak Zi6) and an upgrade of various video platforms.

Take a look at this Facebook video, shot on my Pentax W60 point-and-shoot camera (lousy for still images, but it’s waterproof and takes 720p video at 15 frames per second). It showed up with an “HD” icon on my Facebook profile:

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