Happy To Be Back – My Tale Of Transformation From Content Writing To Video Production
Nearly 2 years back when I opened my account in HubPages I haven’t had the premonition that soon I would be suspending my link with just about 9 hubs to my credit. After I wrote a couple of hubs I was fortunate to have received encouragement from the more established hubbers.
Their prompting was a good fillip for me to write more hubs, but as it happened, the best intentions did not always lead to the best actions. That in other words meant that my attention was sort of forced to shift elsewhere.
Around mid-2007 I was beginning to dabble in web video. This was more of a chance happening than doing by design since I had to figure out how to present a PowerPoint video on a webpage for my son’s homework.
I was writing web content then, sourcing work from all over the web to my little laptop in my residence in Kolkata, India. And during the time I could manage not thinking about bread and butter, I would do bits and pieces of web video to lend credence to my new creative urge.Rise of Web Video
Meanwhile, my small dilemmas notwithstanding, the web-world hurtled on. Those in the know soon found out that the word ‘web video’ has largely become synonymous with another frequently uttered word, YouTube. People agreed that this was due to the turn of events that occurred when Google acquired YouTube in October 2006.
According to TechCrunch, YouTube was lapped up by Google with unusual speed and eagerness. Soon YouTube started charting phenomenal growth in viewership – not profit, mind you! – in the US and later, elsewhere.
With YouTubes’s burgeoning popularity, more video sharing sites came up thick and fast, each trying to carve out its own niche, but ending up more like YouTube.
Change In My Work
It all started in Jan 2008. I was writing a series of articles on the coming of web video for a client. The work was okay, payment modest. My client was happy with my work, more so since there was hardly any happening in the field of web video that I won’t know, thanks to the daily Google Alerts coming my way.
Peace however is not something that stays long with me. In the course of this work I was once a trifle upbeat for I don’t remember why, and I let my guards down when I mentioned to my client that I could make web video as well. Imagine my nasty surprise when my client simply harped on it.
“Articles are okay, you get paid. But I want a similar series in web videos,” he emailed me with finality.
Wasn’t it too much too soon for me? You bet. But there was little choice. I had thumped my chest to pronounce my ‘ability’ and now there could be no coming back.
I tried to hold my own trying the time-tested clique telling my client that I had large pending works, but the man proved pushier than I imagined. In no time therefore did my large pending works vanish into thin air leaving me clutching at the odds should there be any.
Learning The Ropes
Pushed to wall, I decided to learn the ropes as fast as I can. My client, clever he was I must say, extended help in the form of 2 weeks to ‘fold up’ my pending works after I agreed to do the videos.
The 2 weeks were a lifeline for me. And off I went like a charged bull to take on my new responsibility.
After scouring all that I could get from the web and practicing some myself, I figured that I would need about 30+ web video software to create decent video production.
Not that all are absolutely necessary. You can do without a number of them. But it is perhaps better that you understand those tools and know how to use them.
What I found reassuring and indeed a pleasant surprise was that more than half of those 30+ software are available free of cost!
For example, if I were to create my own podcast free of noise and embed it in my website, I won’t need to buy any software. I could do it completely free!
The 2-week breathing time passed like a breeze, but when I looked back to observe what I learned, I was really surprised! I decided to make a quick web video in line with the requirement of my client, yet do it in a way that would appease him.
Boy, was he not happy! He was more than happy. He felt confident that the videos I was to make later would be the just the right ones he needed.Planning Ahead
The video project passed off without much problem, and though I was not happy with a few I made, my client liked them after some minor corrections he asked for.
Sometime in mid 2008 when finally I returned to my mooring I decided to think it over. Should I go to content writings again, or take an all-new plunge – increasingly appealing – and begin something on web video making.
Needless to say, the latter prevailed after a close tussle. And here I am – a professional web video maker – gradually transforming from staid writing to more exciting web video production.
The 2-week breather has been many times more than just a passing phase for me. It made me realize that there is a void to fill in with easy-to-follow info-training to teach how to make own audio and 5 types of video and combine them all into a single web video.
The online video making course I designed came out of that necessity to fill that void.
Parting Words
This hub article is turning out more as an advertisement of my works. I am not sure how the readers will take to it, but I’m hopeful I’ll come back with helpful articles sharing whatever knowledge I have gathered thus far working on the web.
Thank you all for your time (if you have come this far, that is!).
