Video-filled weekend

I started working on making my videos for the Real Women of Philadelphia contest this weekend. My husband helped me film four videos so far. I have ideas for two more recipes already, but I need to try them out first to make sure I am happy with the proportions. The whole process was fairly difficult, I know I can be shy, but I didn't think I would have quite so much trouble getting started. I honestly had to have a little bit of wine before starting my first video, which was for spinach dip. I did two practices with the camera rolling and miming the steps and felt alright but when I went to do it for real, I got fairly anxious.

I watched the videos back later that day and thought I didn't stutter nearly as much I thought I did. But I did say a few phrases repeatedly, I need to work on that. For the remaining videos, I just went for the real thing on the first take.

The other recipes I filmed were a spicy shrimp dip, mashed butternut squash and my peanut butter sweethearts.

For the sweethearts and spinach dip videos, I had to do it in two pieces because of the 10 minute time limit. We stopped the recording during some of the baking steps to save time. So I had a few videos that I wanted to combine into one clip. I could not believe how difficult it was!!!! The software that came with the camera won't join clips, a free download program that is supposed to just join clips wouldn't join things correctly. It would repeat one of the clips twice and then run the second, or it would save it as a file extension that nothing else could read. Then I found some software on the computer and thought I had it figured out. I combined the clips like I wanted and hit 'make movie'...and waited...and waited...and waited. After an hour, the movie was done, and I was excited. But that didn't last. I checked the size and it was 4 times the allowed size and for some reason it made my 9 minute 40 second video into 15 minutes by adding all these effects that I didn't want. I spent an hour trying to figure out how to get rid of those, but to no avail.

I finally found a program that would work to join my clips the way I want. It took a few tries to get the file the correct size. This was a 4-5 hour process to get this far. Now I could start to submit my recipe...at 11PM on Saturday night. The videos were due 9PM Sunday, so I wanted to get it done on Saturday so that I would have some time in case something went wrong. Then uploading the video to youtube took another hour. But around 12:30 or 1AM, I got it completely submitted. Hopefully the rest of the recipes will be easier.

I am excited to keep making my videos and hopefully they will get better each time. I can submit as many recipes as I want for each week. I very much hope I end up being a finalist, I am working as hard as I can. I will keep thinking up ideas and keep trying. Something has to work out.