My creative process for this project was a rollercoaster, to say the least. One of the first things I did early on was decide to choose a “booktuber” who reads young adult fiction because in my role as a high school librarian, I am always eager to learn about new titles. I found BooksandQuills by Sanne Vliegenthart because she's been creating content since 2008 and I thought that would give me plenty of material to explore.
I started by watching about a dozen videos. In order to give myself some structure, I set up a tracking document for myself to record the name of the video and some of the common themes and techniques that she employs. After watching and taking notes for several days, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on her identity as a digital author. I also looked at her other social media platforms such as Instagram, her blog, her website, her podcast and her other projects to get a sense of her areas of focus and the social implications.
As I looked at her work, one of the first connections I made in my head was to the TV program “Friends” which was a cultural touchstone when I was in my twenties and figuring out how to be an adult. This seemed to be a frame for understanding somebody who was providing a model of young adulthood so I decided to base my video in the thesis that this was somebody who was helping people learn how to be an adult. I decided to focus on her video titled My goals for 2020 + last year’s personal highlights because it incorporated most of the themes that I had observed across all of her videos and was a rich example.
The next step was writing out my script. This was a real struggle because I was working off an earlier assignment (I don't know where I found it) of the Leap project that listed it as a maximum of TWO minutes! (So if my video seems rushed, that's why!) In the end, I decided to leave it at two minutes as a kind of a personal challenge and an exercise in economy…..but it was tough!
I started to build the Google Slide deck and quickly realized that I wanted to show a little more creativity, which of course was the point of this project! This was also tricky because I think my old habits of putting together a presentation cause me to just fall into old grooves. To juice it up, I decided to incorporate some animation and in particular, some stop motion animation which made the video a bit more interesting and was also a fun new skill to learn.
When I reached the screencasting step, there were definitely more obstacles. Like Julee Boland, I used Screencastify and Google slides and there were problems with trying to embed video. I ended up not actually using video, which felt odd to talk about a YouTube video person and not to use any video! However this forced me to use still shots, which is kind of a discipline in and of itself.
This project definitely gives me a keener sense of the challenges and creativity involved in making video content. I cannot imagine trying to continuously create videos for a YouTube channel and I certainly have a new respect for those that do. The power of video is considerable, but I agree that “to make effective use of these forms of creative expression, a good understanding of the power of performance is needed.” (Hobbs, 2017, p. 169).
Hobbs, R. (2017). Create to learn: Introduction to digital literacy. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley/Blackwell.
Petter, O. (2018, January 17). How to be a successful vlogger: The eight golden rules. Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/youtube-how-to-be-a-vlogger-rules-success-a8097491.html
Rembrandts, The. (1994). I'll Be There For You (Friends Theme Song) **[Video File]. Uploaded by Antonio LoForte. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/l-9pLZQ4vu0
Vliegenthart, S. (23 Feb. 2020) Book to Film Adaptations You Can't Miss This Year | 2020." [Video File]. YouTube, uploaded to BooksandQuills. Retreived from https://youtu.be/AJ-rEJpgtx0
Vliegenthart, S. (31 Jan 2020). My goals for 2020 + last year's personal highlights [Video File]. YouTube, uploaded to BooksandQuills. Retreived from https://youtu.be/AJ-rEJpgtx0
Vliegenthart, S. (5 Oct. 2019) 10 Things I've Learned from Freelancing. [Video File]. YouTube, uploaded to BooksandQuills. Retreived from https://youtu.be/xd5DQ0YZpmE