The Practical Disciple

Some people are curious what I use for creating videos. So, here is a quick breakdown of software, hardware, and a few general tips.
 
Hardware

–I film using the built-in camera on my MacBook Pro.
–I use an external USB Microphone for the audio. Specifically, I have a Samson CO1U. A USB condenser microphone is best because it won’t pick-up noise from the computer, such as the whirring of the hard-drive.

 
Software
In that past I have used a combination of any of the below softwares.

–Powerpoint
–Keynote–macs super version of powerpoint)
–Screenflow–Screenflow is a software that allows me to simultaneously tape my desktop and me. It’s how I combine slides and live footage. It also gives me a host of other capabilities, like overlaying music, animating transitions, adding in titles, etc. It is specifically for mac users, the rough equivalent for PC people would be the software Camtasia. Screenflow costs $99).
–Imovie
–Quicktime

 
My most recent videos were entirely done with just Powerpoint and Screenflow. I think this will be my norm now or Keynote and Screenflow.
 
General Tips

–Being Seen–Lighting is key. There are lots of websites on how to do lighting well. When I have my way I film in our nursery at
church which has lots of windows. Nothing beats natural lighting but it is hard to control. Otherwise I use clip lights and halogen shop lights to brighten things up.
–Being Heard–I use a boom mic stand to get my microphone as close as possible without invading the shot. I am hoping to move
to cordless in the near future. Even with a good microphone and positioning, I often increase the volume of the video using the my movie editing software.
–Storage–When I did my VBS videos I uploaded the videos to our service provider’s server and then email out a link to the file. Youtube is a great option. You can also select for a video to be private if you want to host in on Youtube but only want people with the link to be able to access it.

–Getting People to Watch–Keep your videos from 3-5 minutes, unless you have some really compelling content. People’s attention spans are down to minutes.

 
I am going to keep this short because I could probably create a whole website just on this topic, but hopefully this answers at least some basic questions for those of you out there wanting to create you own videos for evangelism. If you have more questions just contact me.
 

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