A Personal Experience With Technology - Module One Reflection

   
     I would like to reflect on my first experience with YouTube. About seven years ago, I discovered various users who created some of the coolest videos I had ever seen at the time--Stop motion pictures and lip syncing clips decorated with the corny effects and transitions of Windows Movie Maker, all going to the beat of a popular song during the frame of time. It seems pretty lame now, but my eleven-year-old self was all over the idea. These music videos were plain fun and on top of it, the video editing was actually quite good. I wanted to get in on the production process and thus, I grabbed my horrible Toshiba laptop, recorded myself lip syncing to one of Katy Perry's first singles, and took a bunch of photos that matched the lyrics in the song, without moving the camera to create the stop motion effect. I stayed up all night one evening piecing the video together, and after about six and half hours of my To-shi*-ba (get it) crapping out on me (see what I did there) approximately four times, VOILA! My first music video was created. I made an account on YouTube called "bananapancaakes" (in reference to Jack Johnson's song, which was my favorite of the time.) I uploaded my video to YouTube as well as Facebook. The feedback I received from these particularly lame videos--which I am extremely embarrassed of now--was incredible. People loved these music videos because they were technical, fun, and simply cool to watch. I continued making videos for quite some time. Eventually, I put down the mic and stored away Windows Movie Maker along with all of its corny effects to make room for a professional video editing software. To this day, I stillcreate and edit videos, just not as lame. And to this day, I still use YouTube (under a different username) to upload my creations and share them with the world.

     Since I was a very young girl, YouTube has been such an immense part of my life. Not only did it introduce me to the art of video editing that I previously would not have been exposed to, but YouTube allowed me to understand the process of networking, sharing videos, and being a part of a community on line, through videos.

     I am glad that I am writing this reflection past the date it was due, solely because of last night. I had a three customers come into my work whom I did not know. They asked me if I was bananapancaakes from YouTube. It was a shock to me mainly because they informed me they lived in a different town than the one I had lived in at the time and that they were three years younger than me. They said they used to love my videos and apologized for being creepy. I could not believe that my corny creations reached out not only to another town, but to a different age group. Despite how great this was, it's kind of embarrassing to think that I probably still look like an eleven year old. But whatever, it's fine.