My 2016 South Africa Adventure (Trailer and Full Length Video)

Well, it's finally finished!!!
I've been putting this on hold for several months but I finally bucked up and got to work on this little beauty of wonder and nostalgia. I think I made this not only to show you all what me and my friends / family experienced but it was also the start of something in both awakening the "spirit of adventure" within me but also to reawaken the IT skill that I'd buried since leaving College.
I hope you all enjoy my work and I've encouraged you all to visit this magnificent land for yourselves, if I can do it... then so can you!

I've already explained everything in my South Africa post from when I returned in September, but now I'm going to show you all a video that I created to show the world and give copies to my friends.
I made this using iMovie - I was going to purchase Final Cut Pro (but it's a whopping £230) and I'm not qualified, skilled or have enough money to go into that level of film development but it's an idea on hold for when I do feel ready someday.

I'd only just remember whilst writing this up and during mid-development of my video to go back onto my Africa post and to "watermark" my animal photographs... I'm sure people have copies of them already but I guess a little silver lining is that I did technically upload them first so my record will be on Google forever. But I'd best watermark them NOW and then re-upload them right away!

I used my Canon 70D and Gorilapod for the log recordings where I had great difficulty like this Amazing World Of Gumball hilarious "The Tape" episode's beginning, where I kept pausing or going off topic or even failing to speak enthusiastically since my voice to me sounds awful on playback lol.
And it took several days to record and re-record speeches which is why my clothes kept changing ha.

But I remembered my layout and work I did back in the first year of College where I made a video using Window Movie Maker, only this time I was using Mac's version of making movies.
I remembered how to make videos into audio tapes and to put images and videos over them and alter the volume so that they overlap each other perfectly.

I also remembered to add in the Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 where I admit that this was all made for entertainment and educational purposes only and I own no rights to the music that I've used for my work. Don't want to get sued.

But unfortunately, YouTube has made 3 copyright claims on the Jurassic Park, Africa song and The Lion King pieces despite my honesty in the Info about how I own no rights to the songs and I only used them in this video for non profit gain and for entertainment purposes only... So the videos can't be seen on mobile devices so I need to work out how to fix this if possible :(

So here's the trailer that I made on the 13th December and then I began right away on the full length video.


I was so happy and amazed with the positive response that I got on Facebook from friends and my family who I went with. They all loved it and were blown away by it all and the nostalgia. And they couldn't wait till it was finished to see the whole thing!
My inspiration for making this trailer was from Brett Horley's video that he made of our time using his videos (and some of my pictures and vids too that I sent him) but was actually from seeing the Disney Supercut from back in August - I loved the song choice too!

I think this advert is a great example of how precious endangered wildlife is to us all and how many of us want to help protect and care for them (even though this advert is beautiful, it could have turned out a lot more disturbing realistically...) But I prefer this version!


And 11 days later, here's my final film that I've made and just in time for Christmas Eve!
I've learnt two things from this:
1) I don't like the sound of my voice on playback haha.
2) I mustn't postpone work like this, instead I must work on it right away after coming home instead of procrastinating till the holidays.

I used my Canon 70D to record all my video logs and wrote them all down in my iPhone 5S since I hadn't really planned this out too well. But a lot of the video recordings from my time their, you can tell were planned or recorded for a reason as I did have this whole idea in my head back then... I just ended up getting distracted by the time I came back home.

I hope you all enjoy my are work that I've been up to throughout December! I wonder where my next adventure will be? I'm surprised that I came back with a newfound interest in Photography but I also awakened a newfound urge to explore the world!
I don't know if I'm brave enough to ever go backpacking (I ain't really keen to ever go Australia due to the Spiders over there) but I would love to go to New Zealand "Middle Earth" and go to several spots in America. I'd love to go to Florida for the theme parks, Warped Tour for the rock and metal shows and New York because it's New York!

I'm quite proud of myself for having achieved this project that I made all singlehandedly (I've mentioned my friends pictures in the video too) since it's not all my work. And the Tarantula Hawk pictures and ending picture was from Google Images. If I can do this, then so can you!

It's taken all of Christmas Eve to try and keep on uploading the 4.5GB "30min3secs" video to YouTube and onto Google Drive (to send to the others) as I've had to either refresh the page or the upload time keeps dragging out past 1hr 30mins.
But I FINALLY got it uploaded on both places at 1:30am on Christmas Day after coming in from going out into town with friends!
Thank you all so much for taking the time to watch my work! Please click on the names of the videos so that my YouTube channel will get another view.
I wish you all a wonderful Merry Christmas!