John's Minecraft Anti-Bullying Video

John and I decided we should learn how to create and edit videos on the computer. It all started when my friend, Jenn, and I tried to make an audition video for The Amazing Race. Between John, me, Jenn, Jenn's sons and a few other 4th graders we asked, none of us knew anything about video editing so Jenn and I could only submit a video recorded in a single take. If Jenn and I aren't selected to be on the show it's because of our poor video editing skills.

Over the past couple of weeks John and I investigated our options. He wanted to make a Minecraft-related video but didn't have a specific topic in mind. During an unrelated conversation John told me his take on bullying. He used Minecraft as an analogy and the idea for his video quickly took shape.

John started by taking a few Minecraft screenshots for his video. The first problem was finding the screenshots on my laptop computer. I had to Google "Minecraft screenshots" and go to the Minecraft Wiki (http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Screenshots) to get instructions for finding them. For some reason they were hidden away in a secret folder called %appdata%\.minecraft\screenshots.

Once we located the screenshots we had to figure out how to make them into a video. I thought we could put them in a Power Point presentation and then make a video of the presentation. I discovered you could convert a Power Point into a Windows Media file (.wmv). The .wmv file could then be uploaded to YouTube.

The next problem we encountered is that my laptop doesn't have a built-in microphone. I went on Amazon to see how much it would cost to buy one and as I looked at the products I realized I already had a microphone. We purchased SmartMusic for John when he started playing the baritone and the program required the purchase of a microphone. 

John decided he didn't want to narrate his video. Instead he made a title slide, a credits slide, and captions for each screenshot slide in Power Point. He wanted Minecraft music to accompany the video. We suffered a set-back when he wasn't able to get Minecraft background music to play reliably while he recorded his video. He decided to use the music from the "Fallen Kingdom" Minecraft YouTube video as his background music. He started the "Fallen Kingdom" video at the same moment he began recording his Power Point presentation and recorded the music through the speakers on the microphone. He practiced a few times to get the timing right (please make note of the lyrics that start when the video changes to the 5th slide). 

Once the video and music were recorded we uploaded it to YouTube. That was the easiest part. Here's the link to our 28-second video;  http://youtu.be/oVsrNmvllxc

Our next step is to investigate more sophisticated video editing software such as Windows Movie Maker and Jing.