Right Online: The Rest of Friday

The final session of the afternoon was by Beverly Hallberg, titled Online Video 101. I chose this one thinking that it would be more of a “How to use YouTube” session (similar to the previous ones about how to use Facebook and Twitter), but it turned out to be more of a “Video Production 101” class. If you are interested in knowing a variety of technical suggestions regarding video production, leave a comment and let me know; I took the notes and will be happy to share…if you are happy to know. To her credit, the session was quite interesting and included a variety of examples of both bad and good video work.

Some points of interest for the non-professional:
· People watch video primarily for entertainment. Don’t make your video look like the reading of a policy paper.
· If you interview someone, be a “friendly interviewer,” even if you don’t agree with their position. She suggested having interviewees sign a release.
· Music has emotional impact; if you can include music in your video (staying clean on copyright issues, of course), that’s a big plus.
· Video for web should be short, generally no more than 90 seconds.
· The viewer should be able to “get the message” the first time he/she views the video.
· Copyright matters. Don’t let your good work be besmirched because you didn’t cross your t’s and dot your i’s.

The action then moved to a “Send Specter a Message Cap-and-Trade Rally” that filled much of the time between the final afternoon session and dinner. After you have been to a rally of freedom-loving, higher-tax-hating, patriotic Americans, you get a real feel for the state of disgust with what Congress is doing these days.

Dinner, by the way, was very good. The meal included a trailer for the upcoming movie, Not Evil Just Wrong; the main feature after the meal was Pat Toomey, conservative GOP candidate for the Senate seat currently held by the (much-despised) Arlen Specter. Pennsylvania Republicans seriously dislike Specter. A few other speakers got up and, in general, thanked the conservative online community for its work.

There was a screening of that movie this evening; it is intended to be the counterpoint to Al Gore’s ludicrous global warming propaganda piece. It is subtitled, The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria. I took a pass on that…had to get to work on blogging!