Friday, April 27, 2007

Sometimes songs say all you need to say

If you want people to start thinking about something, songs sometimes say all you want to say.

QuickTime Pro example

Apple's QuickTime Pro (for Mac and Windows -- $30) can be a good tool for simple digital storytelling. The graphics in this QuickTime was created using the Appleworks Draw program, which used to ship for free with iMacs and iBooks. These days I would use OpenOffice Draw program, which is free.

I could have created this using Powerbullet an excellent free program for Windows that creates Flash slideshows. Audio can be recorded in Audacity and compressed into MP3 format using iTunes.

Some instructions I wrote a few years ago about QuickTime Pro can be found in this pdf file. Note - I no longer have a dotmac account.

Double Gift/Shades of Gray

You can sometimes make your point by imaginatively using low-cost video production production tools, such as Apple's QuickTime, which costs $30. The video from the link above is large --35 megabytes in file size, and requires a relatively recent computer with QuickTime 7 on it.

If you have an older computer, the YouTube version will work better for you.

Text is sometimes the most appropriate tool

Text is sometimes the the most appropriate tool for getting your idea across.

Banneker's FIRST Robotics Team - 2005

Banneker Academic High School's robotics team
multimedia slideshow
-- 2005. Created using a free Windows program, Powerbullet, that works well even on Windows 98 computers.

Jaguar Car Review - New York Times

The New York Times is doing a great job of meeting the public's need for reviews of $70,000 cars.

Whiskey in Your Jar

You can now talk back to newspapers -- and newspaper reporters -- using multimedia on the web. This presentation, hosted for free on the Internet Archive, was created using Camtasia Studio, a $300 program for Windows.