In Sam’s kick-off post about video, he mentions that “there are a lot of tools out there to help make videos with photos, powerpoints, screencasts, etc.” Animoto is one of those tools.  Upload some photos from your computer, Flickr or other photo-sharing site.  Or choose from stock photos.  Choose some music.  Finalize your video. In only moments you can upload your Animoto creation to YouTube, Facebook, blogs, websites, and even i-Phone.   Animoto has a slick 60 second video showing how to do it. You can make as many 30-second videos you want with a free account. Longer videos are $3 for a single video, or $30 per month for an account. If you are a teacher or school librarian, you may be able to sign up for Animoto in Education and have your students use their own accounts to make full-length videos while in-class or at home.

Just because it’s easy and quick to make Animoto videos doesn’t mean the results are automatically good.  Case in point.  Here’s a little video I put together with some photos I had on my computer.   It was quick, it was easy, but it’s not at all compelling or coherent. It just doesn’t hang together. And it’s only 30 seconds. Imagine how awful it would be at 1 - 3 minutes.

It turns out that even very short videos need to be carefully crafted to tell a story, and it really helps to know what story you want to tell as you are collecting photos. In the Tips and Tricks section for adding images, Animoto gives me some insight into what went wrong with my first attempt:

“Animoto users often tell us they think differently about how they take images when they want to make an Animoto video. Instead of capturing individual moments, they try to capture a whole experience though a series of images. Instead of thinking like a photographer, they’re thinking like a director. They think about the story they want to share, and they use images to tell that story.”

That sounds a bit like the “long photos” Kate mentioned in her recent post.  My video combining rhododendrons, the library spaces (no people) and Maple Leaf Rag makes a disjointed thing that’s somewhat surreal, but not at all in a good way. Now that I look at it that way… no wonder! Well, it was the first try.

So, for my second attempt, I tried to take Animoto’s advice and snap photos while skiing that would tell a brief story about heading to the mountain, gearing up, getting tickets and taking some runs. The tempo of the music I chose influenced how many photos were required for a 30 second video, so a few of my photos were not used. It’s better than my library tour, but when I compare it to a sample snowboarding video on the Animoto site, mine pales a bit. Action shots of snowboarders in the air trump close-ups of somewhat sedate skiiers any day. We’ve gotta work on our jumps!

Animoto has been making a big splash lately. I hope you’ll play with Animoto, and share some of your creations with us at infodoodads.