SUMMERS IN FLORIDA-FINAL VERSION. MY FIRST VIDEO.

I am so excited!  This is much better than the way I felt last night or this morning.  I have a found a place where I can upload up to 10 mb of video to for FREE! 

I posted a very rough draft of the first video I was working on many months ago.  I don't even know if it worked correctly.  I do know it was horrible quality and I didn't even get all of it to render or upload correctly.

I've since refined that video, added a bit more footage, added some cool transitions and other stuff, faded the music to go with it better and even burned it to CD and showed it to some of my friends.  I was disappointed at the time because the file is over 300 mb for almost 8 minutes of video, which is fine on a CD or a hard drive, but impossible to upload anywhere for free and a pain for anyone not on broadband to probably view.

So I rendered it to a smaller wmv file that is less than 10 mb.  I was able to upload it to this site and now I get to share my finished video with my Internet friends.  I had to lower the quality some to get it under 10 mb, but I think it's better than the quality of the rough draft I posted before.

Here is a bit of information about this video.  The poem at the beginning (which may be too fuzzy to read) is "High Flight" which I've posted on my blog here:  "High Flight". 

The airplane in this video is the one that our friend Rick died in.  Some of you might remember hearing about this small plane crash down near Miami in December of 2002.  It crashed into a Federal Reserve building where some employees were having a Christmas party.  So there was talk of it being a terrorist attack at first because of that.  No one in the building was hurt.  It was later ruled as an accident by the FAA.

The scenes from the video were shot at many different times over several years.  I am the one running the camera most of the time.  Hubby ran it for most of the airplane footage.

Casper is the water skiing Cocker Spaniel.  He seriously loves to ski and he loves to ride on the jet skis as well.  The thing that Becky and Casper are riding on is a big circular piece of plywood.  The 'dog ski' we made for Casper consisted of an old knee board on top of two old wooden water skis.  The time he went before this one that I got on tape, he made it all the way around the lake.  Of course as soon as I got the camera out, he ends up wiping out fairly quickly.

In the scooter racing scene, hubby and his friends painted some lines on the street, setting up a makeshift 'race course' in front of our house.  The parts that are filmed in a more black and white hue were at night.  I have night vision on my camcorder.  So I can actually film things at night without any light at all.  Sort of helps you see, too. 

The scene with all the old cars is from Turkey Rod Run.  The last car you see in the scene is what my first car was: a 1947 Chevy coupe.

All the fish in the tank swimming were from my salt water tank.

And lastly, the guy with the hat on and with the black poodle on a leash is NOT gay.

So this is the finished version of my first video of stuff we like to do.  I called it "Summers in Florida" because most of the footage was taken during various summers, and also because of my old neighbor, Johnny, who is briefly seen in the scooter racing scene riding the one scooter with a headlight.  He lives in that green house you see in that same scene.  He is a real redneck and a professional alcoholic.  He does it for a living.  Seriously.  Anyhow, he'd come over to borrow something and it'd sound something like this:  "I can't find no chain lube fer my chainsaw.  I know I had it here summers (instead of 'somewheres'.  Ya'll got any?"  He'd always thank us after returning it by saying:  "Preshadit" (or "I appreciate it" for those of you who don't speak redneck).  So all these scenes from my video were taken 'Summers(somewheres) in Florida'.  And just like my neighbor Johnny used to say:  "Jus' Cuz".  He got annoying at times because he liked to watch us work and he was ALWAYS there.  But now that we've moved to a new neighborhood, sometimes I miss old Johnny.  Sometimes.

Here is the link to my video:  Summers in Florida (final version)

 

I welcome your comments.  Remember, it is my first try at this.