YouTube Annotations!

Our final mini brief was to create a short YouTube Annotation video. These are videos in which the audience can decide what way the story goes, by choosing out of a range of options. These can be used for storytelling, or to spread awareness of important issues. I enjoy these type of videos because it makes the viewing experience more interactive and I find it much more engaging and exciting as I have an impact on how the story will end. I was very excited to make my own because of this.

One of my favourite existing YouTube Annotation videos is 'Take The Knife'. I like how there is a fully thought out storyline, and how the characters in it interact with the viewer, making them feel like they really are the character. I also like the danger element within all the decisions you have to make as it adds more pressure to what choice you can make, making it feel more real. This made me like idea that it can be used to spread an important message as people can make virtual mistakes and see the errors of that so they don’t make same bad decisions in life.

We came up with the idea of a party. We would shoot it all POV so that the viewer would feel like it was actually them in the situation. They would be offered drugs, offered the chance to steal a random drink and offered the chance to go home alone, with their decisions maybe having a catostrophic effect on their lives. We felt this was an important topic as it is very relevant to students today. Due to time constraints we weren't able to film the final part about going home alone and this is something we would definitely fit in if we were do develop it more.

Our video:

I got to do a lot of the filming which I found beneficial as it allowed me to develop filming skills and gave me the confidence in that I can do it in the future on my own - a skill which is vital in the media industry.

Due to me having a 2 day placement at Lime Pictures I was unfortunately absent when our group put together the Youtube annotation video but I made sure I researched how to do it for future reference.

To improve I would format the annotations so that, instead of jumping to separate videos, it would just move to different points on that video’s timeline as I feel that this is smoother and the viewer wouldn’t have to wait for the new video to load. However we weren’t able to do it because of the way our video was formatted.