Overseas Exile Video Blog?

I've been toying with the idea of also making a video blog to accompany this written blog. I think there are plenty of creative ideas I could better express, but there are significant technical challenges, not the least of which is that I don't know video editing. The closest I've ever come to this is the following. It's a promo I wrote for a Portuguese conference while I was living in London. There were a couple of different locations proposed for the conference and I was contacted and asked if I'd send a short video explaining why the conference needed to be in Lisbon, Portugal. It's rather geeky, so no worries if you don't "get" the humor (if you get the humor, no worries if you don't find it funny).




Not only did Portugal get to host the conference, my then girlfriend joined me in Portugal. The photo below is shortly after I proposed and she said yes. It was taken in the courtyard of the castle of São Jorge, with the lovely city of Lisbon, Portugal in the background.

Shortly after she said "yes".

So, back to the topic at hand. The video above is clearly not very professional, though my brother and I had quite a bit of fun (and alcohol) making it. I enjoyed writing the script, but because I didn't know how to edit video, we had to do it all in one take. Later, I learned a touch about video editing and at the request of the conference organizers, I put together the outtakes (warning, foul language ahead):




Now I'm using iMovie '09 (hey, it's free and came with my Mac!) and am learning more about transitions, timelines, cut-aways, title sequences, and finding it's a far more time-consuming task than I thought. I will have to:

• Come up with an idea
• Write a script
• Assemble the media
• Film it
• Put it all together

As it turns out, that's really, really time-consuming, particularly as I'm teaching myself how to do this and I still have to spend time with my wife and newborn daughter (they obviously have priority), write this blog, and other commitments. Plus, I have a couple of domain names I'll need to register first, just to have things a touch more professional.

I don't know when (or if) I'll have the first videos available, but they'll largely track the opening articles I've had on this blog simply because people need to know about Count von Europe, getting their papers in order, and, of course, the work permit series.

So if you have any comments or suggestions, I welcome them. Particularly if you can point me to any legal issues that video blogs should be aware of and sources of public domain material I can use (particularly video clips).