Time to share why I feel Canada is special. Yay. Over the spring break, the teachers found a great way to torture us through it by assigning a video for the My Canada contest. The contest wants us to make a video that would have us reflect upon something about Canada. It had to be no more than 30 seconds and must be all original work. With nothing in mind, I enjoyed my break instead.

After I got back from spring break, I came up with an idea that I felt really suited me. Something with very little time of my face, has to be about technology, and make use of the apps on my iPad as promised in my SLC blogpost. My reflection topic is how Canada builds machines for sea, land, air, and space. I avoided brand names so I would not feel like a sellout in the video. My plan in the beginning was to use photos of the actual machines but the images had to be my work. So I just decided to draw them all out using Paper 53. Once I drew up my sad looking pictures, I attached them to backgrounds made by Explain Everything. I decided not to draw them in Explain Everything because I felt that Paper 53 has better drawing tools. I then put all the slides together into iMovie to string the slides together and recorded my voice over the slide show. I then realized that I needed to put some music in as well as a small bumper at the end of the video for the contest. I decided to put the video I made into the app My Canada provided because they automatically put the bumper at the end of the video. The app also let me choose music to play over my video which was nice but when I was all done, the app would not export the video the My Canada. Time to transfer the project over to my laptop (Ahem Mr Hughes what do you have against Dell). I found a program online for video editing installed it. I had to take a bit of time to learn the system but I got it done and attached the bumper. I had a huge problem with copyright free music and choosing a track to fit my video. I found one I liked after almost an hour. I adjusted the volume of the track an fumbled around near the end of the video to get the music to fade out. It did not really work but it did not ruin the video. I went their website and then submitted the video which worked unlike their app.

This project was a real exercise in problem solving and my drawing skills. The drawing was tough as I am not a good artist but I think the pictures get the point across. Figuring out what to do after the My Canada app did not work also poised a challenge as many programs out on the web are expensive or an absolute scam as they get me to pay at the very end of the editing process. Luckily I found this program but it was very complex. I had to spend some time to get this done. Overall, this project touched upon a subject that I did not really think of before, what do I appreciate about Canada? It was also a lot of problem solving on the fly but I think the video turned out great.

Here is the video, please take time to give a vote for me on the My Canada website if you want to so I can a prize if my video gets voted the most!