Cut THIS!

It all started because I wanted to put a cutaway shot into my video.  For those who don’t know, a cutaway shot is when a talking head in a video starts talking about a given topic and while we hear them talking, we see the fabulous thing they are talking about while the sound runs uninterrupted.  Very nightly news-like.

Now that we’re getting social media savvy, our chapter realized we needed to produce more video content of a compelling nature.  Compelling to me means producing something that people would actually watch; hence the need for a decent cutaway shot.

So I tried to download Windows Movie Maker onto my work computer.  Failed.  Called computer IT guy.  He failed.  I didn’t feel so bad.  It seems you simply must have Windows 7 to get the only version of Movie Maker available in the free world.  As we only have one computer in the office running on Windows 7, I now go over there to edit when my affable co-worker Brooke is on a day off.  Not terribly convenient.

So, I try again at home on my Mac with iMovie 08.  After numerous attempts, I decide that to make a cutaway shot in iMovie 08 is only slightly less difficult to achieve than world peace.  No worries, I say, I’ll upgrade to iMovie 11.  After having my sales rep at Future Shop unlock the program from the vault, (yes literally), I install the program, or rather I TRY to install the program on my Mac.  Failed.  Apparently, I needed to upgrade my entire operating system.  Not wanting to wait for the next Messiah of operating systems, I purchase Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Voila!  Ease and simplicity that only took two months to achieve and about $130.  So many cutaways now effortlessly plopped into my works of art; I can hardly stand it…not to mention slo-mo and instant replay at the mere touch of a button. And therein lies my problem.  For every one thing you can achieve on your computer quickly and easily, there are 10 more steps (and upgrades) that they don’t tell you about.

Oye.