American Made

Even though I have never made an actual edited video before, today I managed to put this neat video together in about 4 hours, using some tips from my computer-savvy husband and the internet.  And hooray for free downloadable software (Microsoft Movie Maker)!

The story:

Martha Stewart is hosting a competition called "American Made."  I learned about it about a week ago and determined that I had mostly a complete application, thanks to the work I did in February for the Creative Capital application.  The deadline was today at midnight.  Due to demands of my day job at the beginning of the school year, I had no brain space during the week to consider it at all.  Thanks to supportive friends, though, I had confidence that I would be able to give it a shot this weekend, and so today I made this video, fine tuned some photographs, and uploaded a 1500 characters-or-less essay.

Words cannot tell you how proud I am of myself about this video.  I saw in the rules of the contest that it had to be a certain type of file (.mp4--check!) and less than 500MB (check!).  And so around 1:00pm this afternoon, I clicked 'submit' on my application, excited that I had a video to present, which most other applicants did not.  I thought it might set me apart.  

I got a pop-up message from the Martha website saying it would take awhile for my application to submit, with all the photos and stuff. For hours, I watched the little circle-cursor twirling round and round.  Finally, when I got home from grocery shopping at 8pm, Paul said it probably didn't work and I should try to submit it again.  So we did.  I uploaded all the stuff again and clicked submit.  This time, it did something different, indicating that it was working, but at the last minute, it said that my video had to be under one minute.  My video is 1:26.

Under a minute? I hadn't seen that requirement in the guidelines. Well, I had plans this evening with friends and was already running late, and I was so happy with the outcome of my earlier efforts that I couldn't imagine shortening it in the time I had.  So I had to submit my application without the video.  As we clicked 'submit' this time, Paul noticed the tiny grey font next to the "Upload Video" button that said, "less than a minute, this kind of file, and under 500MB."  Boy, was I ever disappointed.

After time spent with some lovely people this evening and a couple glasses of wine, I am less frustrated.  I am proud of my application and I figured I'd put my video out there anyway on my blog, website, and Facebook.  This way, in case someone clicks on the links on my application page, maybe they'll get to see the video after all.

You'll be the first to know if I make it to the top 100 that the MS staff will select.  :)  Here is my official entry: Parsley Art Studio for American Made.