13 Quick Edit Video
A “quick edit video” is an edited digital video including full-motion video footage, audio, still images, and/or text captions, edited AND published online using only a wireless, digital device like a smartphone or touch tablet computer. Like narrated slideshow videos highlighted in the previous chapter, quick edit videos can be created to shared powerful stories about God’s work in our lives. They also can provide snapshots or windows into our lives as followers of Christ which can offer inspiration and hope to others.
Over the past decade, I’ve shared videos about Christian topics and themes on a variety of websites, including YouTube and Vimeo. When deciding where to share your quick edit videos about God, your relationship to Jesus, or other Christian topics, there are several important things to consider.
First of all, you want to share videos on a website that will remain online and not “go dark” if the sponsoring company is sold or goes out of business. YouTube is a good choice for several reasons. Google, the owner of YouTube, is a multi-billion dollar company and is unlikely to go bankrupt, be sold, or take YouTube offline anytime soon. Secondly, millions of people around the world watch YouTube videos every day. By posting your Christian video content on YouTube, you can add messages about God and his love into this popular and highly trafficked web environment. YouTube continues to be the second most popular search engine in the world. The following infographic (I think from 2013) highlights the popularity and reach of YouTube. These statistics have only increased in the intervening years since this infographic was created.
Created by Mushroom Networks
Testimony Examples
One of the best ways to capture and share our testimonies about our relationship with God and Jesus is to use quick edit videos. Back in 2011, I started a project called “3 Minutes About Jesus,” which encouraged people to share short stories about how Jesus has played an important role in their lives. I recorded a five minute video in our backyard which I titled, “God Answered My Prayer in Pilot Training.” This is not a polished or fancy video, but it did enable me to share part of my testimony about God in a more personal way then I did in 2006 when I wrote a blog post about these same events.
Tim Peterson is a member of our church in Edmond and when he retired from the US Air Force, he recorded a two minute video to share how God had answered his prayers for a new job.
That video example and more like it are available on a Posthaven website I created as an archive of the original Posterous.com site for the 3minutesaboutJesus.org website. Posterous is no longer online (it’s gone “dark” like some other web platforms mentioned in this project, like Cinch.us) and I let the website domain registration for 3minutesaboutJesus.org lapse.
Sunday School Examples
Students I have taught in Sunday School classes in the past decade have been excited to create quick edit videos which we shared online afterwards with parents and others. Back in 2010, I helped students create their own music video to the song, “Bible Book Bop” by the group GoFish. We shared this on the BLASTcast website on WordPress.com. I was able to ask them if this reuse of their music was OK when I met members of their group at a Children’s Ministries Conference in California, but that is not likely to happen most times when Sunday School teachers want to use copyrighted music in a student video. YouTube now has a public database of ad-supported songs so videographers can find out if the copyright owners of specific songs will allow these kinds of music videos to be shared on YouTube like this one.
Quick edit videos which just use “homegrown” footage, and don’t include any copyrighted music, shouldn’t run into any copyright-related takedown issues. In September 2013, I helped elementary Sunday School class students record a short video describing the Bible stories or references they had written on small rocks during a class activity. I shared this on the BLASTcast website on WordPress.com. This video did not include any student names or faces, just video of students’ hands holding their rocks and talking about them.
Christmas Examples
Back in 2007, my wife was working and serving as the nursery coordinator at our church in Edmond, Oklahoma. These were the days before smartphones and tablets, and I wasn’t yet using YouTube! I recorded scenes for a preschool Christmas program using our “old school” tape-based digital camcorder, and edited together the clips using iMovie on a laptop. She added audio narration, along with a little music. The resulting 7 minute video was shown during our Christmas Eve church service that year, and as of today (in August 2015) it’s been viewed on YouTube over 22,000 times. Quick edit videos can have a large reach!
Sometimes videos can be captured in church services to record and later share special events. Back in 2011, our youngest daughter (then 7 years old) sang the song, “Happy Birthday Jesus” in our church’s Christmas Eve service. I recorded her rehearsal before the service and shared the recording as a quick edit video on YouTube. For her parents at least, this is priceless.
Another Christmas quick edit video example, from December 2012, was this recording of “Jesus Joy Of The Highest Heaven” performed by our middle daughter and a youth choir.
(This is just a start to this chapter, more will be added soon!)
