My first worship videos!

Okay, so it's been over a month since I last posted anything and I promised I would be more active.  Oh well, such is life.

I finally got some time to publish two videos on YouTube that I created for a candlelight worship service.  So for your viewing pleasure here they are along with links for easy downloading of the full HD video files (Quicktime).  These are the first videos like this I've created so I'm still just learning.  I don't have any professional equipment or software; just a nice point & shoot Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS6 camera (shoots 720p HD video) and iMovie on my MacBook Pro.  I have dreams of learning to use After Effects but this is a start.

So for this video I wanted to have an unlit candle on the screen that was lit at the same time the real candles were lit in the sanctuary.  At first I was just going to film myself lighting the candle but the thought of seeing giant fingers come down on screen made me start thinking more creatively.  What if I could make the candle light spontaneously...as if by God?  :-)  I then stumbled upon some YouTube videos showing a candle trick in which if you blow out a candle and then light the trail of smoke the candle will magically relight itself!  How cool!  So I immediately gave it a try and walla!  It took me a bit to get the exposure settings dialed in but I was pretty impressed by how well that little camera did!

Here is the full 720p version to download: LightCandle.mov

My next goal was to create a realistic motion video loop of the same candle.  This was my first attempt at creating a motion loop for a background video.  It's not perfect but I think it turned out pretty good.   It's over 2min long I think so the viewer likely won't notice the loop.  We used this for the duration of the service with song lyrics, scripture, etc.  It was nice.  

Here is the full 720p version to download: MyCandleLoop.mov

My only regret after creating these was that I should have went out and gotten a red candle since this was for a Christmas Eve service.  Oh well.  Wow, did I really just write a whole blog post on a couple candle videos?  I need to get a life.