How to How-to: My Journey to Internet Fame #1

I mentioned in a previous post that people have repeatedly asked me to start a YouTube channel devoted to the fancy braids I do in my daughter's hair, but that I always resist because I don't know how and feel like it would take too much time and effort to figure it out. Given our option in this instructional technology course to document learning something new as our major assignment, however, I've decided to go ahead and attempt to figure it out.

In that spirit, I went out last week and purchased my first selfie stick, rearranged the furniture in my dining room to create a semi-well-lit "studio," and rigged up that selfie stick to film my first braid.

If you're wondering, yes, that is my son's highchair standing in as camera crew. I expected filming to be challenging, and it definitely lived up to that expectation. In fact, I was originally planning to record a more complicated braid, but ended up settling for a headband braid for the sake of the continued sanity of all parties involved.

See how pretty! I was going to recreate this one, but then the forces of the universe conspired against me...

So what made it challenging?
1. The presence of my other two children, particularly the 10-month-old. One of the important features I worked with in Splice was how to mute the original video so no one could hear her alternating between singing and crying in the background. Where she was confined to her highchair after crawling in and out of the shot repeatedly in the first take.
2. Trying to get the selfie stick rigged up at the correct angle to capture what I was doing without resorting to duct tape or dark magic.
3. Realizing just before finishing the first take that I didn't have enough storage on my phone to finish filming, so I had to stop, delete 350 photos, take out the braid, and start all over again.

Despite my frustration, however, I'm pretty pleased with my first ever how-to video, and I'm looking forward to seeing how much better my videos will get over the next few weeks.