I don't think you need any 8xDs. Welcome to the TURR segment, a little jack of wheeler here. Now I want to show y'all something right here. Y'all complained about me having, you know, 10 rods and 12 tackle trays. Well, let me show you something right here. We got tackle. What in the world? What do you need all them lures for, man? We see when the bass ain't spawning out here and the dang, you got the cold fronts that come in, you don't get them bites, so you got to have multiple different selections of lures. We got poppin' frogs, poppin' corks. And look back here, man. Holy cow. That's for the crappie and the slide bass, the bluegill. We got the bluegill, too. We got it all, man. I'm not just a bass. I can't, I can't get it all. Look at these, they got rocket launchers, son. I got the biggest rocket launcher in the elite team. You look like they got Optimus Prime just rolled up to the boat ramp. Look at that. Look at that motor, man. I've never seen one of them things. We had Rob joke about the turd, but he's actually on the real turd. The actual turd where you actually need all that stuff. You never know what you're gonna get into. Look at this rig, man. That gum. I feel so incompetent now. I'm with my little truck with no lift. I got four rods, three tackle trays. You don't exactly need a lift. It looks like Kim Jong-un put his rockets on top of his truck. I know, right? Then we got my boat. Nothing, nothing wrapped. I like it. It's simple. There's no pro stuff on it. Dang it. You know what though? You know what we have a lot more of is camera gear. Just give us by the end of the day, the end of it will look bad. It always starts out like it's just bare clean. We act like we're like on some hot bite and we're just like, gotta take our clothes off, start throwing them back. We gotta keep going. I know, like we can't take five seconds to put it into a freaking compartment. All these beautiful compartments you have. Okay, going right over there with the shades that's on it. Yeah. Shall we be spawning on for the next hour or are they gonna be done? We want to see if they're biting them. I mean, if they're shatter spawning, which should be happening. They're spawning on humps. They're spawning on humps. We'll find out. Woo! Look at him grass. Look at him computers. Oh my gosh.  No, I love it, dude. These are unbelievable. Go-Pros and a big camera and another camera. We got more cameras in this boat than literally is. There's more lenses and more screens. We're going from this place, you can not even gas. LeBron James is escalating. I'll go down that right bank. You go down left bank. We'll get up there. We'll call them good. It's all good. You want me to show you how it's done?  It's on the 10. The fish can hear you coming. You got to understand. We're trying to dial it in. So you're going top. I'm going bottom. That's what you're saying. I don't know about the bottom. It's kind of in between. Look at that wobble, dude. I think it's got a really good wobble. How can you resist that? Oh, they're spawning. Shatter spawning. You did see them. Yep, they're spawning right there. You saw a follower? Oh, I just had them fall on my bait. Shatter spawning. 1,000%. Are you sure? I'm 1,000. Come on now. Look at this juicy thing. I haven't had anything fall. Oh, that's one of them high dollar jobs. I'll get two dozen motor dogs for the price of that mega bass. You didn't see them? Come on now. No way, bro. What in the world is going on here? I wasn't ready for that. That's like shade. Is that the deal? They don't have eyelashes, so they like to shield their eyes from the sun. I read that Bassmaster magazine. Yeah, that's Takamori, my hero, wrote it. Bassmaster magazine. Look at that. Let's see. That's like the average. They're nice quality fish. Great quality fish. Absolutely. Like two and a half. Oh, that's a good one. That's a decent one, man. I'll give you one of these. I do want one. I mean, I'm no, I'm no slouch.  Hey, that is true.  I got them on a day. So good. I love this thing. That's all good. That's how they like it on these days, I guess. I'm learning me something. You see that action? Dangling. Look at that, man. All right, nobody freaked out right now, but we're doing, we're doing something pretty wild. This is called Cheeto fishing right here. I just caught a fish. Can you see this back here? Look at this thing. I mean, I don't even have to get that close to you, but look at this thing right here. That has a full blown just Cheeto. We're skipping these things on spinning rods up under these trees right now. It's site fishing. It's not bed fishing, but it's site fishing.  They start swimming with it and you've got a fish on. It's pretty crazy. This thing's got tons of action and they can see it. You can see it.  It's almost like fishing top water, right? Got to like fishing top waters? Absolutely. You guys, I'm all about visual stuff, but I can say the Cheeto worm is pretty dang cool. Show these fishing freaks a dang cast. All right, let's see. Show them how this is done here. Unbelievable looking area right here. Definitely high percentage. I'm going to cast my Cheeto worm, eight inch Cheeto worm. Look at that. Up there. Oh, you see how I skipped that thing? Okay, now I'm set up right there and this thing really slow sinks. So I'm twitching him up high and keeping it up in the water column. There's a lot of times when the bass are spawning or just cruising, they're looking up. And then you'll watch it.  You can't really see the bass, but you watch this thing up in the Ohio water column and you'll see it just disappear. You'll see all the orange Cheeto worm disappear. Yeah. We have a couple of them. Sometimes it's also really cool to cast it around though. Like you'll find bass that you didn't know where there's a spawn. They'll just come up and look at it. And then you're like, dang, there's a bass. Oh, there's a bed. Yep. Justin likes it. I love it. I got to get my Cheeto out there and get another one. I'm here for you. So let's, uh, let's play ball. Oh, bad gum. Tell the story. Dude. I mean, it's four stumps with sandy spots in the middle. What do you think that was? That 100% bed fish. 100. Wow. I just saw the Cheeto disappear. Like I was looking at it the whole time while I was talking to you and just, it is gone. It was just gone. That's what's so cool. It is pretty good. Pretty easy to determine. Oh yeah. It was actually down there a little bit too. You know, it's probably down there like eight inches. It's fishing Cheetos, man. Oh my gosh. Don't break them off. Don't break them off. Don't break them off. Oh my God, I knew your lights were opening. You're going to get them around there. Get over here first. He had them wrapped around like two different trees. Hey boys. Seven pound test with a fairy wand. Well, I just lost a nice one. Something I called a Megatron, a Cheeto worm. That gum Cheeto worm, man. Seven pound test. You better play the game right. I haven't fished seven pound test since I was at on Eerie in 98. I was honestly watching my line more than the fish because I knew it was around something. I couldn't see the stump and I was like, man, how do I get it out of here? And like, it's like, it happened too fast. Thank you, Trevor. Have a good one, man. I mean, J.W. just got double strikes. We did a little double strikes. Like, I was like, I thought you were looking at my, I thought you seen the fish after my frog. No, I saw a boil and then I heard yours. I was like, what's going on? Got him? Yes. Yes. Run him out. Freaking fluke. Really? I hear you. He said, you know what? He's not even on it. It's a little one. You think that other, the frog boil is bigger? It's a lot bigger than that. I'm telling you, it's just the way it blew up on it. Come here, little dabbler.  Hey, when you get one this big, it's just bound to happen. They're putting out a lot of water, you know what I mean? Hey, I'll give it a sniff. Another Cheeto fish. I'll show you guys how this, this thing is rigged here. How long is this thing? Eight inches. Oh, get him. Heck yeah. Oh, we ate it. Sorry for the interruption. Look at the, look at the, oh my goodness. Oh my gosh. He is a squirter. Wow. Calm down, bro. Spawn 100% spawning. That's juice coming out. That's spawn juice. I was not going to point it in your direction. Thank you. I mean, I think I never remember. I think you might have got a little bit of it. That's all right. That's all right. That was cool. You know, you were pausing it. Yeah, I was always looking back and watching you and then you never miss those. They just swallow it. Swallow it. Wacky rig hook. The main thing is, you see this meaty beefy part right here? That's where you're going. The wacky style. It's got a lot of beef on this end, little beef on this end. So it kind of balances out in the water and then it's just doing its deal and it's got a little dabbler on the end that gives it extra, extra action. A little dabbler on there and it's actually like a five inch babe.  It's, it's heck, heck of an action. I had to switch to a frog. Oh, no. There it is. That's a, that's a good one. Got a little grass on it. Oh, man. Can you help me out here, bud? There's a little grass in the face. Yes. You got her. Dude, got the dabbler. Dang. Look at that cheeto down the throat. That is an awesome. That's crazy. That is crazy. That is pretty. Hey, hey, the node takes the bass. A lot of cheetos this month. Dude, that was like right under the tree. I see your rod load up and I was like, oh God. I thought it was on a stick. I couldn't see my cheeto. I just went ahead and sent it. God dang dude. That thing ate it good too. One's been beat up a little bit. Like it's been up there spawning.  She's definitely a post spawner. Yeah, post spawner. Late post spawn, post spawn. Got to love it. Thanks for the awesome cheeto bite. Finally got one landed. Give it a little tickle. One more jump maybe. One more jump. Are you going to ease out of here? Just going to ease. Okay. It's all right. Oh, that's a charger. Heck yeah, man. Flipping. Yes. Yes, sir. This is a fun bite. Huh? This is a fun bite. Frogs and then the visuals. Yeah, frogs and cheetos, man. Frogs and cheetos. Got to love it, baby. I mean rushed it and then just paused. I think it might be on a bed right there. Come on, baby. Come up there and grab that cheeto. He's on it. Oh my God. He's on it. You saw that? Straight up rushed it. Uh-oh. Still a sucker in there. Change the game here. There it is again. Got her. Oh, there you go. That's awesome. I don't know if that was the same one, but that was, that's the male. That other fish was like five. Oh, there I go. Well, all the way back. Dude, that frog has to be sent in there. Exactly why you go to East Texas. Frog down the throat. Gosh, dang. Oh my gosh. That's so awesome. I get to see how you do. I get so excited when I catch them like that. Oh, man. Thank you, baby. Love that stuff. Dude, that's a solid toad. Dang biggin. We've just been dabbling the cheeto and the frog up there in the shallows. Look at that fat healthy fish, man. You're right on the money. Seven and a half pounder. When you catch them like that, look at that. Look at that mouth. That's a big old mouth right there. Look at that. Do she almost like rip my arm off right there? Oh, yeah. Swimming right after my worm thought it was about to stop. All right. It's time for the cricket. Got two bass here. That responded to the cheeto. I'm going to throw this cricket in there very gently. Oh, yeah. She's already turning on it. She's already rolling on it. It's about to happen. It literally is. Got to give it an angle. Okay. Pro tip. Pause. Slide this weight up so that way it's in there. It's like it's real shallow. Yeah. So it'll fly up and then this one will be in that grass. Nice. All right. It's going down now. She's on the right. Oh, the male's going after it.  Oh, he's got it. He's got it. Not a bad fish. I just couldn't tell they're both nose down. Okay. The whole technique might get both here. Got her. Yes. Got her. Oh, come here. Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh. Oh, come here. Dude, you got to be kidding me. Holding both fish right now. What? Dude, that's awesome. Oh, dude. Female. Female. God, it is crazy. That's awesome. Look at that, man. That is textbook, man. Textbook. That's awesome. That's awesome. I give you a fish bump. It's like, that's crazy. They're fresh, dude. Look at that. I mean, that was probably out of water recently. Absolutely. Water just came up. Hold the male there. Too awesome. Got to love it. All right, guys.  Do your thing. There they go. Like that. You can't get any better than that. Just saw them right there in the shade. Literally. Their tails going up and then. Wow. I think these fish are like locking down because it's afternoon. I think it's just sort of one of those things that just started coming up. Get the full man. Look at that. Bluegill chaser, man. That's a big one, dude. Big old swirl out there. And we just literally got in the back of this pocket and they're everywhere. I see one up there. I see one right here. A little while later from that awesome moment in time. Frogfish, double bed fish. But here's what's going on. It's full moon today. Is it 31st? Please so. I think it is 31st. That is the full moon. This is what I've been talking about for weeks, y'all. And we're watching it happening this afternoon. Literally. They are coming up as we speak right now. It's dumb. Good ones. Big ones. The big ones are coming. And we're watching five swimming around. This is new water. The lake's been, it's up. And these fish are in the mood. And they're coming to that new water right now. And they're settling in. You might stop on a seven. Oh, if it's a seven. If it's like, it's not like a five and a half. What the heck? That's another, that's a different fish because the other one's up there right now. That's a four. These are like big males. Like, yeah. We're going to, oh baby. We're going to see Mando. Yuronde side bass. Is that not a big one? That's a five, dude.  Oh my gosh, bro. That thing needs a Cheeto. There's two. They're paired. They're paired. They came off. Oh my gosh. It's going down. It is going down. He's literally happy, dude. Oh my gosh. This is the time I just, oh my gosh. I've only, you only get this chance like a few times a year, quite honestly. Literally. It only happened for a few days during the whole year. That's all. I mean, it's like the most epic 24 hour period. Oh, what? Dude, what? That's like a mile. We gotta catch him. Okay. All right. We only have so much daylight. So do we, do we keep going until we find a giant one? We've caught a lot of big ones. Do we keep going until we find the giant ones? Or do we go and catch the three to five pounders or swimming around everywhere? That's the move. My mic just came off. You see that? Literally. See that? That's what you call flustered by big bass. Yeah, that is the move. It's like, do we stop on these? Because these are, these are good ones. These are good ones, but like, worst day to have technical difficulties. But my GoPro batteries, I'm on my last one and I'm full. My card's full. Tomorrow could be one of the best days. Actually, by the time this video goes up, the best fishing day, the best potential day to catch a giant has come and gone. The full moon on the 31st of March. The fish are also going to be locked on a few days after that. So while you're watching this, it's probably going down. Get out there, give it a cast, make it count, and stick them on. This has been LFG on another episode of the LFG Network series, five star rated on the internet. I love you, and I will see you on the next video. All right. J.W.? Yes, sir. Thank you. It was good stuff, buddy. Go give old J.Dub a follow on the grams and all that fun stuff on the internet. He's out here doing it. Absolutely. Just giving it a dangle. Dangling my dang cricket round. Got to love it.


So welcome again. This is Tools for Digital Storytelling. My name is Camie Griffiths, and we are really excited to bring this presentation to you today. Before I get started, I want to tell you a little bit about TechSoup. We are working towards a time when every nonprofit and social benefit organization on the planet has the technology resources and knowledge they need to operate at their full potential. Here is a screen grab of our home page. There's a lot of great things going on here once my screen shows up. Excellent. For those of you who might not spend much time on our website, I want to point out a couple of great things. You should check out our Learning Center. It has articles and our archive of webinars. We've got a blog with interesting posts that go up on a daily basis. If you're looking for products, you get donations from companies like Microsoft, Adobe, and Symantec, and we redistribute them to nonprofits and libraries for a very low cost. This is a donation program. We have a couple of newsletters that if you haven't already signed up for, I would encourage you to do that. So without any further ado, this is the kickoff for our Digital Storytelling event. We did have one webinar last week, and this is the follow-up talking specifically about tools. But we are hoping that you will take time to submit a story to our Digital Storytelling Challenge. We've got Megan from TechSoup who will tell you more about that at the end of the call. And this was our webinar from last week. It was a really great webinar specifically on how to tell your Digital Story. You would have received a link to this in some of the messaging, but you'll also receive a link to this recording in the follow-up message that I'll send to you later today. Now to introduce our wonderful speakers, we've got Melissa Raleigh and Erica B. Morales. And they've put together a wonderful presentation for you today. So I'd like to take a minute to do some quick introductions. Melissa, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. Thanks, Kami. Hi everyone. Welcome to the webinar. For the most part, I've been a journalist focused on social enterprise. I mainly concentrate on the intersection between brands, entertainment, and nonprofits. But I'm also very vested in social enterprise for-profit and nonprofit as well as corporate social responsibility, which we've seen for a number of years doing business news and entertainment. And I'm very happy to be moved over to the digital side because it's just more individualistic. And I think it's a great way to harness the power and the compassion that's out there for you to tell your story. Great. Thanks, Melissa. And Erica B. Morales, can you please introduce yourself? Yeah, good morning everyone. My name is Erica Tavia Morales, and I'm a youth worker in the Bay Area. So I've been working with social benefit organizations since 2000 and was introduced to digital storytelling in 2005 as a volunteer. It's been an amazing way for people to share their stories. The tools are simple, so I'm really excited to be sharing, to be co-presenting with Melissa and sharing with you guys the fun that we have in doing this work. Excellent. Thank you. And before we begin, I'd like to do a quick poll. This is the same poll that we launched last week. Take a second to click on as many that apply to you. What motivates you to take on a digital storytelling challenge? Are you doing it to raise money? To grow your membership? Are you trying to shift public perception? Create staff or internal alignment? Engage your tribe of followers or other, which of course other could be lots of different things. So I'm going to skip to results. I'm not sure if you guys can see those results on your end. I can see them on my end. But I'm going to give folks a few seconds to plug in their information. So far, most everyone is engaging their tribe of supporters. And the second rounder up is shifting public perception. I'm glad you all can see the results. So I'm going to close the poll if anyone has any last things to submit. I am closing it. There you go. So clearly everyone is, or most everyone here is trying to engage their supporters. And I know we're going to spend some time talking about that. So let's move right into where do we start? Erica, Melissa? Excellent. So we know that digital storytelling can be a little intimidating for the beginner. And if you see in the slide, it's a jumble of different information. But basically we're going to run through the pre-production, what you should do to be prepared to create your digital story, production, all the tools that you need to put your pieces together, and then what to do once your story is created. So let's jump right into the first slide, pre-production. So if we look at pre-production, it takes up four steps. You want to have your story idea. You want to have a share production plan. You want to make sure you have a solid story and script, and then you want a storyboard. Melissa, what should we do once our script is written? Once your script is written, you really want to have an idea of the end product. So that is why it's very important that we work backwards. Since your script is already going to be nicely organized, and you're going to have your visual elements as well as your sound elements, graphics, anything, any of the pieces that go to this puzzle, you just want to be able to work backwards. So you want to go into a shoot. You want to go into interviewing somebody, already knowing the questions that you want to ask the subject, already knowing the kind of responses you're hoping to get, already knowing the kind of footage that you're hoping to put into your digital story. This is going to save you a lot of time and struggle, and it's really going to help you just be more efficient in your overall digital storytelling. Yeah, and once you have the story plan ready to go, we want to make sure that your story is less than two minutes. You can put a lot in that two minute time period. And if you're editing a piece for the first time, you can plan about an hour to edit each minute. Your story should have a beginning, middle, and end depending on what your format is. And also have a storyboard. And a storyboard is basically the plan for the images and video that's going to illustrate your story. You can use a piece of paper and divide it into two columns. So if you look at the simple storyboard, breaking it down to Mary had a little lamb. So we have the text or the script on the left-hand side, whatever sound you want in the background or music. And then on the right-hand side is what image or video you're going to use to illustrate that part of the story. This next example is basically a handwritten version of the storyboard. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it should have a decent idea of what you want to illustrate. So on the left-hand side again, the script and the images on the right-hand, or the script and the sound. And then on the right-hand side, an idea of what you're going to use for your digital story for that part of the script. And then just a simple sketch. You'll have time to create, illustrate, or curate your images later. But this is the basic plan, have that solid plan. Anything you wanted to add Melissa? No, just that, as long as you have the general story idea there, and as long as you have the script messed up with the visuals, once you get into the editing part, which we will be going over in a couple of minutes, it's going to make much more sense. When you see it on paper, it might not come together for you visually, but once you're sitting in the editing system and looking at all of your video and listening to the audio in the book, you'll be okay. So you have all of that gathered, then you're ready to jump into production mode.   Sometimes people will look at their script and then they'll read it like a robot, like they've never seen those words before. So make sure that you first the script and get the emotion behind it. You also want to be sure that you have no other ambient sound, so this way the voice remains the important part of what you're recording. So if your ear hears any air conditioning, any machines in the background, any ambulances, any other people distracting noise, you want to wait until there's enough quiet so this way you can record the talent that is doing the voiceover. And two suggestions that we have for recording audio, you can use a digital voice recorder which you can get between $25 and $300. You can use your mobile phone recorder. A lot of our phones record really good audio quality. And then you can edit or clean up that audio in a tool like Audacity. So here's an example. One more thing to remember to make sure your cell phones and any gadgets that you bring on your suits are turned off other than the ones that you're using. Not only will the cell phones vibrate and cause some ambient noise, but also they might interfere with the technology that you're using. So just turn everything off that you're not using. Yes, yes. And here's an example of a digital voice recorder. Again you can connect it just like you can a digital camera to a computer and a USB voice digital voice recorder. And it just does really good sound and allows you to be mobile with your digital recording. And here's an example of free software. It's Cross Platform Audacity. So once you have that voice over recorded, you can upload it to your computer and you can clip out any bits that you don't need and just make it a clean voice over to have for your digital project. So once you have the sound, you're going to switch over to your images and video. The next thing is you're going to take that storyboard and you're going to create, capture, and collect any of the images that you need to tell your story. When I work with my students and with my educators, we work with still quality images. So they create two-dimensional images. They scan them. Or to speed up the process we actually take photographs of those images using either a Kodak EasyShare or just a simple digital camera. For my students who tend to be procrastinators, we actually use the PhotoBoost camera on the MacBooks that they use. But you want to get a high quality image. If you're using your cell phone, again you want to make sure that you have high quality images. If it looks grainy on your little screen, when you stretch it across the computer it will also look grainy. So just make sure that you're using high quality images when you use those digital devices to take that image quality. So what about our video quality? Yeah, so shooting techniques, if you're using a flip cam or any other kind of camcorder, if you currently have one, if you're about to buy one, definitely experiment and play. Definitely play with the different shooting styles. If you're opening your piece with a location, you want to establish the location with a wide shot. And then zoom in. Movement is very crucial in the video because nobody likes looking at stagnant still shots non-stop. Now when you're editing and using transitions which you'll get into in a minute you'll be able to make the overall piece much prettier. And as I like to say, turn water into wine. But the overall shooting, there are different things you can do, zooming in, zooming out, panning left to right. Panning means moving from one side to the other. And then you can also tilt up and down. And definitely experiment. You can get creative. Not everything needs to look like a local news broadcast as long as the vision is really clear and that you can get a strong understanding that's going to evoke some emotion from what you're doing. And just a final piece. A lot of people like to play with the different visual effects either with stills or video. You want to make sure that whatever images that you're capturing actually illustrates your point. So it's fun to experiment. But if you've taken the picture of the cat and made it look into a squirrel that might not convey to the audience. So just be careful when you're playing around with all the different visual effects. And we have some tool suggestions for you. So you can use any digital camera you can spend anywhere from $15 to about $200 and that will give you decent quality. And we highly recommend you having a tripod because your hand makes micro movements and you may not get the clearest image that you can as well as with your video cameras. And there are two really simple video cameras that we recommend. Melissa, will you talk about the Kodak Z18, please? Sure. The Kodak Z18 is very similar to the Flip. It's a little bit larger and heavier in size. You can do more with zooming. And what I do like about the Z18 is that you can plug in an external microphone. With a flip camera you do not have that option. But both flip camera and Z18 are great because they're portable. They're easy to use and they're very easy to download into the video. Z18 though, if you really want an external mic system, that's the best way to go. And then of course the flip video camera. It's really easy to use. USB uploads directly to your computer.  And these cameras usually run about $150. So that's a pretty amazing deal. Some of the online tools that I can suggest if you want to illustrate and you're like, no, I don't want to use a pencil on a paper or a marker on a paper. SumoPaint is an online free image editor. So you can create your own illustrations on SumoPaint or you can upload any photographs or images that you have and modify it in there. Which is pretty amazing. It's very similar to like a Photoshop only. And then if you want to look for images that you can use that are copyright free you can go to the Creative Commons search engine. And in that you can look for images, you can look for music, and you can look for video. All that you can use in your own projects that are copyright free you just need to give credit to those original artists. That's a resource for you to resource different images. Let's move on to that second part of production. So we have all of our assets, Melissa. What are we going to do next once we have all of our pieces? Okay, so I mentioned earlier the fun part is turning all of the water into wine. So you have your footage. You've captured your interviews. You have an idea of the overall piece because you're working backwards. So now what you're going to do is upload the video from your camera into your computer so that you can begin editing. You can use Flip Video Software. You can use Final Cut Pro. You can use iMovie. I use iMovie because it is free and it came with my MacBook. Thank you. So this is somewhat technical and I know you don't have all the devices in front of you, but one thing to really keep in mind so if you've got a Z18 or a Flip Cam and as Erica mentioned, you can plug it directly from the USB into your computer. When you go into iMovie, you're going to go to File up in the left-hand corner. Thank you. And it's going to say Import, Import Audio. This is something that I did not know and I played around with iMovie for about 5 hours until I realized it was there. Now iMovie has instructions and we're going to be sending you different tutorials that you can use so that you don't have to be lost like I was. But definitely go to Import right there and then all of your footage from your camera will be imported into the deck in iMovie. And once it's there, you can start playing around with it, manipulating, and getting into the actual editing part, the fun part. And I just want to reiterate, if you're working with spills, you can drag and drop your spills into the interface. So if you are working with other than video footage and you have your JPEGs or GIFs, PNGs, or any of those still formats, you can drag those files directly into your interface and then start editing from there. Now let's turn that water into wine, Melissa. Okay, so everything, all of your footage is in iMovie. And since you already have your script written, you can start playing with the Bevel and the interviews. Now there are different formats, there are different story formats that you can do. You can do narrative, meaning that you're having a voiceover and you're having someone tell the story. You're telling the story with your script, including sound, bites, and music and footage. But you can also have a different story format where you're just having the people that you're interviewing tell the story. We're going to show you a couple of examples of a video where it's just sound bite after sound bite. It's really compelling because it's people talking about what activism means to them. We'll get to that in a minute. But once the video is in iMovie, Final Cut, or Flip, you're going to be able to see options to start dragging the video from basically the pool of video that you have into a timeline. Your timeline is where you start to lay down the order of the footage and sound bites. And all the footage is called your B-roll, basically. Your still image is also called B-roll. It means broadcast. On the separate line, you're going to have the A-roll, which is anything audio. So that's where you're going to be keeping track and organizing the music, the sound effects, and the sound bites. And one basic format that you can consider for your digital story, when you first put that story together, you want to put your clips in order of the storyboard. And you'll find that you might have to match your images to your audio track. So you might have to make a clip longer. You might have to make a clip shorter. Different software, and we neglected to mention Movie Maker. Sorry for the Windows users. That's another free software that you can use to edit video on a Windows machine. You want to put those clips in order. You want to match those images to your audio track. And honestly, that can take the longest bit of editing, just making sure that you're matching your images to your voiceover. And a basic story format, you want to have opening credits. You want to introduce the piece to your audience. Then you'll put your clips in footage. So if the opening credits are like one side of the sandwich, the top part of the bread, clips in the footage, or all of the condiments, all of the meat, tofu, whatever, just the flavor of the sandwich. And then you want to include the closing credits. You want to acknowledge the rules and the resources. So if you had a director, if you had a writer, or if you use certain video clips, audio clips, or images from another resource, you can include that. And then close with your copyright because you should be proud of your work. In between you can sprinkle transitions because transitions allow you to move from one part of your story to another.  And depending on your editing style, that might be appropriate. Right. And one thing I'd like to add when it comes to implementing the transitions into your piece is this is your time to be really creative with this, in addition to integrating music into it. If you want a very smooth mellow tone to a certain part of your story, then you might use a dissolved transition. If you are starting to really want to evoke excitement in the piece, then you might use something a little bit more, I guess, staccato is the term. You don't want it jumpy, and you don't want it jarbled. You want everything to be smooth. But there are different transitions that will enhance the tone of your piece and really start to evoke the kind of emotion that you want to have in your viewers. And really play with those transitions and really play with music as well. You'll find that if you have a story, you can change the way it feels by putting different sound effects or different music with your story. Play around with maybe starting your piece with one piece of music to evoke an emotion. And then at the end of the piece you may have a resolution. You may have a different feeling. You may want to engage your audience and say, now I want to do something. Inspire them with a different piece of music. All of those non-verbal cues really add effect and emotion to your piece. Just to review some free resources where you can get sound effects and music, the free Sound Project is a website where you can download and get free music for your projects as well as sound effects. I really like the Flash Kit website for really cool funky sound loops that are short and sweet. So if you don't need a 5-minute song maybe you find a 30-second piece here. And again, just to remind you of the Creative Commons search engine because that also has audio sound effects that you can find. So Melissa, now that we've done your best friend. Exactly. So we've put all of our pieces together. We've watched it several times. What should we troubleshoot for Melissa just in case? What should we watch for to make sure that our piece is actually what we want to produce? Okay, very great question. You really want to make sure everything is spelled correctly. When you title your interview subject, when you title the name of a foundation, when you give people credit, and the opening credits as well as the closing credits, make sure everything is spelled correctly. I know it sounds like common sense but there are so many errors that occur in national news, local news, and in videos that you see on YouTube just really make sure that it's paused and the professional is looking. On kind of a technical note, you want to make sure that you don't have any jump cuts in the video. Erica touched on jump cut really briefly. A jump cut is something that you see maybe when you're watching a local news broadcast and you're watching somebody talk and then all of a sudden instead of a nice smooth transition into a different shot, it jumps and there's kind of a break in the screen. If that's there, you want to re-edit it. Definitely re-edit it because it just looks unprofessional and you're using this to draw on potential funders. So you want to be as college and professional as possible. Once you're done with your piece, then you're going to export it. And again, we're using iMovie as an example of the screenshots but any of your editing software with Flip Video Cam, with Movie Maker, Vimeo, or any of your editing software will have an opportunity. It will give you an option to export your piece. You want to make sure that you name your project in a way that makes sense. I highly suggest including the date of the project in case you're doing a series over time and give it a meaningful name. You want to select a location to save it that you'll remember so you may have an archive for your digital media maybe that exists on a server. But you definitely don't want to name something like Project 1, Project 2 that gets lost. And choose a format and size. A lot of our interfaces already include different formats and sizes so you don't have to know pixel size. You can be like, oh, well I'm doing this for a DVD for my funders, or oh, I'm doing this for YouTube. So you should be able to choose from the interface. And then you'll export and save. Once you export it will take a couple of minutes. You should pat yourself on the back on a job well done. And then I highly recommend that you save a duplicate copy of that file onto another computer, onto another server, onto a flash drive. Computers always know when a deadline is coming and tech happens. Make sure that you have a backup. Different formats that you can export to include Windows media, video files, AVI's, .mov's, .m4v's, .mp4's, and .mp4's.  Another one might be .dv. And if you're looking for other resources to help polish your piece and once you've got over your digital storytelling 101, Vimeo offers a really great video school online and it's free. Current TV also has a production knowledge base. So they take you through all of the steps between pre-production, post-production, production, and marketing. Melissa, we've already created our beautiful piece and we want to show it to the world. What's the next thing that we should do? So now that your piece is done, now that you've shown it to a few other steps of eyes to look over, you definitely want to promote it as much as possible. Social media is your best friend. I live on social media. That is the way that I've been able to build my brand as a cause correspondent. So what you want to do first is distribute. You can use YouTube or Vimeo. I like to use both. I think it's good to have your content and as many platforms as possible. If you're uploading to YouTube or Vimeo, both platforms accept the MP4 file and MOV. And once you've uploaded the video, you'll see a button there that says Uploads. It's going to take a few minutes. And especially if you're choosing to upload the video in HD quality, which I recommend it might take up to an hour, but just be patient and it will upload. After it's there, definitely make sure that your title is there with the keywords and you'll write a short summary underneath about what your project is about. From there, this is when it's important to optimize your search engine. Now what I mean by that is use keywords and tags. So what you're going to do is you're going to see an option that says Tags underneath the title. You'll list any pronouns. I'm sorry, any proper nouns. Your name, the name of the nonprofit or organization that you're representing in the piece. Names of people that you're interviewing, names of foundations, it's good to name drop. I highly recommend it. So any important name that you think would be popular when somebody's doing a Google search, optimize that, put it in your keywords or tags, and that will help spread the word. Once your video is there, you've optimized your search engine, start promoting it all over Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, MySpace if you still use it. You can send out, I still believe in sending out emails to your friends and family to help spread the word. And from there, use catchy headlines to promote it. Anything that short and sweet, concise, something that's really going to catch somebody's eyes. I want to offer, if you have a more analog institution, a lot of the public schools that I work with don't have internet access or spotty. So I always have a showing and a celebration at the end of the work.  You should get a response to your work. You should see how the audience connects with it, and really, really celebrate it. So if you've got a projector, speakers, get some snacks, it's really an amazing thing to be working on this video project or this digital story for hours by yourself in front of a computer editing it. But it's a whole other experience to experience it in a room with people and to see how they respond to your piece. Because once they start talking about it, then other people will talk about it, and that will go viral that way. Let's recapture the process, Melissa.  You'll get your voiceover from your script. You edit, you turn the water into wine, sound effects, background music. This is really, in addition to, in addition to content given to you by your interview subjects, this to me is one of the most important parts of the process because this is what's going to drive the emotion. And for nonprofit to social benefit organizations, the most important thing is to move people, touch them in some way, to get them to support your cause and to get them to fund it, and to get them to rally and volunteer for you. So music, universal language of love, you know, air cobbling stress music, music, sound effect, that's really what's going to drive the emotion. Post-production video from your device into your computer, editing, uploading, then you export to an MP4 file or MOV. Those are the two files that Eric and I like to use the most for Vimeo and for YouTube. But there are other files formats that you can use as well. And from there showcase, celebrate, definitely showcase to applaud yourself and also to get some critiques. Once you see it on a larger screen and once you see the reaction to an audience, you might want to go back and change some things or make some additions, maybe even go out and get another interview to add to it and create an entire series based on your one video that you just made. And from there distributing, promoting, make this fun. Make this fun, make it a content. See how many people you can get to retweet your amazing video that you just made. See how many people just clicked on your video. You can track how many people have gone to your site by looking at the analytics in your site if you are doing it from WordPress. You can also do that with Tumblr. So have fun with this bar. Some people tend to stay because it's time consuming, but it really is, and we just have a powerful impact. Melissa, if you'll go ahead and forward the next slide for me because I'm getting the digital wheels back. But we wanted to show you some examples of what you can do. Thank you. So there are two examples. At the top is, would you explain the piece at the top, Melissa? So the top piece I mentioned earlier, this is a piece that is all about the meaning of activism. Fierce Light Films produce this. And what they did is just edited a series of sound bites back to back with different activists talking about what activism means to them. There's no voice over. It's just people talking for a few seconds about the definition of activism today. And sometimes that's all you need. Sometimes you just need people saying something, a series of powerful messages. And then the piece on the bottom was actually created by 7th graders that I worked with a few years ago. And they did a stop motion animation. So they used just simple images. And it's basically the story of a Good Samaritan. And there's no voice over at all. They just used a piece of music and they illustrated their story.  So you can play around with the format that makes sense to create your story. And if you want to know more, there's a couple of other resources that we can share with you. So there's the Abarth Digital Storytelling blog which basically is like a global archive of different digital story techniques that you can use. Really enjoy them. And then of course last week, if you still need to get started, you can go to the Get Storyed website and you can also go to the Center for Digital Storytelling website. I guess this is a good point for me to jump right back in again if that's okay. Okay, thank you both. That's really great information and there's been many, many great questions that have come through. I wanted to let everyone know that this is a short URL that will bring you to the archive page of the webinar that we did last week that will be sent via the chat and it will also be sent in the follow-up message that you'll get from me this afternoon. But this is an hour-long webinar that we did to kick off the Digital Storytelling event. And we had a couple of presenters, one from Get Storyed, Michael Margolis and Rob Kershaw from Center for Digital Storytelling. Definitely worth the watch. I'd encourage you to take time to watch that. And then move on to the slide with contact information for Erica and Melissa. Obviously both very seasoned videographers have done a lot of work and really know their stuff. So I've learned a lot myself in doing this preparation. So I hope you enjoy this information. So now we've got about 20 minutes, last four questions and answers. We've had quite a few questions submitted via the chat already. So I'm going to start asking some questions. We do have some resources that we'd like to share which I'll get to before we end the call. And remember you'll get a copy of this PowerPoint in the follow-up message that I send out later today. And all of the resources that we have listed in here are hyperlinked and take you directly to those websites. Since it's more interesting to look at their faces than this boring question slide, I'm going to move to that slide while I ask some questions. So one question that came through earlier that Alicia asked, how careful do you have to be about advertising unintentional people, etc. in the background of your digital media in your final project as far as copyright and permission? Well, when I worked in television we got release forms. Basically, just forms stating that if you're shooting somebody in the background that they're okay with it, or even for your interview subjects. I would think for your interview subjects because they've already verbally agreed to be a part of your piece. You don't necessarily need release agreements from them. But it's nice to have those. If you are going to go to a location where there are going to be people milling around in the background, it's good to have release forms on location with you. In terms of advertising, I've never run into that as an issue. Erica, have you ever had to kind of blur out somebody's logo on a t-shirt or anything like that? No, I haven't come across that just because the purposes of the pieces that are types of organizations are creating are for educational use. We're not creating digital stories to make money usually. To fundraise, yes. But we're not having theater releases and having red carpet. But it is a good idea to have those release forms. And I encourage people to create their own art as much as possible to just avoid those copyright issues in case you have a Coca-Cola t-shirt, in case you have Mickey Mouse in the background, just to be safe. But it's stuff that you're wearing. I haven't come across that as being an issue in digital story project. Great, thank you. A couple of questions relating to voice-overs. They just want to talk a little bit more about how to create good voice-overs. One question that Beth had specifically, with ambient sound, large areas, high ceilings, what kind of suggestions would you have for counteracting that situation? I have a really great and simple solution to that. I call it the blanket method of recording. And it may sound ridiculous, but if you put a sheet or a blanket over the recording source, the microphone, and the recording artist, that dampens out the noise. And I usually work in schools where it's hard to find a quiet place, and that actually dampens out the sound. If nothing else, if you have dividers, you can put that around where you're recording. And again, anything that blocks outer sound will help you in your recording process. Great, thank you. I remember you talking about that when we were setting up for this. I'm going to get her to talk about the blanket. A question having to do with the two-minute time limit, or what kinds of, I mean, is that a set thing? What's the guidance that you have about long videos, short videos? I recommend the shorter the better. If it's a more in-depth piece, you can go maybe two and a half minutes. I actually prefer a minute 30, but I really would recommend not going beyond two minutes unless it's a long format documentary or something of that nature. Erica, what do you think? Well, I encourage people who are doing this for the first time to choose a shorter piece just because you'll have greater success. You want to make those two minutes really deep and really wonderful and really rich. If you go on for five minutes, but it's like five pictures for five minutes, that won't be compelling for your audience. Remember, we're drawn to buy things with 10 and 15-second advertisements. So a minute and a half is actually a really long time for you to tell your story and to encourage your constituents to an action. And I know we mentioned B-Roll earlier, but could you talk a little bit more about it and how it can be used? Sure. B-Roll is your broadcast rule. That means that's your footage. So that typically is what you're going to lay down as the visuals in your piece while a voiceover is in place. You can also use part of a sound bite from an interview subject to be the audio over a picture, a moving image, which is your B-Roll. So the B-Roll is anything that you shoot in the field with your camera that includes locations. We talked a little bit about panning left and right from locations or on a person. The B-Roll is basically just the footage. So that's going to be the pretty pictures that everyone is looking at while you're talking or while your interview subject is talking. Thank you. And some questions about the video format. I know we had a whole slide with the different video formats listed, but is there one that you would recommend that's the most universal or user-friendly? I think we go back to the slide. Go ahead. I think at P4 and MOV. Yeah. MPEG is about as universal as JPEG. So if you're used to getting a picture, an MPEG is basically the moving picture format of a JPEG. So I would agree. And this one has to do with grant opportunities. We're all so excited about making a digital story, but what if we don't have that hardware software? I know there's some free software online, but some money is going to need to be invested. So what do you have? What kind of recommendations on trying to get grant funding to purchase this equipment? If you're an educator, I highly recommend DonorsChoose.org where you can have a wish list essentially and DonorsChoose to give you that equipment. I have a librarian friend that I worked with at Monarch Academy and she has created her own media arts lab from her DonorsChoose supporters. She's gotten cameras. She's gotten scanners. So don't ever underestimate the power of the web to give you these things. And also just speak to your friends and family. A lot of us are upgrading our equipment. So a lot of people might be like, oh, I don't use that digital camera anymore. Oh yeah, I haven't used that video camera in years. Feel free to talk to your constituency and use your wish list for your organization because you will find that you'll get a lot of equipment that way. Another thing just to throw out there that could be helpful in raising money to buy your own equipment would be Kickstarter. If any of you are familiar with Kickstarter, somebody just was able to finance a film using the Kickstarter platform and now they're going to Sundance with that film. So it's definitely a powerful platform. I'm going to move on to the next question so we can get through more questions. Lots of people are asking about music and I pulled up this slide that we had earlier, The Free Sound Project. What free music sites would we suggest? And what specific music? What is the best way to get permission to use music from a performer CD? Well, to get permission, as long as you're willing to talk to lawyers or have a personal connection with the artist, that's more difficult and more of a challenge. And I work with a lot of young people who want to use their favorite songs. So I often encourage them to find music that has the style that they want to use but not necessarily that specific song. But there are lots of resources that actually sent you Kami in that follow-up email just because I didn't want to have 20 slides of music resources. But there are plenty of free music resources out there so that will come in the follow-up. Which I'll pull up that slide right now. I separated the resources slides into a couple. So we've got the digital media outlets. I'm not going to keep this up very long. You'll all get a copy of this PowerPoint. We have another slide with training and lessons. And these of course link directly to those websites. And then we have this slide for ideas. So in there we have another one more slide of resources that's specific to the digital storytelling challenge which we'll hear about in just a few minutes from Megan. But I'm going to move on to another question. So many good questions. Suggestions? Can I take a second to talk about those projects that are using just still images? I just wanted to recommend. So if you're using just still images, I recommend about 8 images a minute. It gives variety to the audience. Those still images can be stills that you can take still from your video. You can also use titles as well, so like words on the screen. But 8 images a minute is a good variety for the audience. So I just wanted to make sure that I put that up. Very good. Chad had a question. Suggestions for backdrop or background? Plain looks institutional but others can look too busy. What are your thoughts? For video or for film? He didn't specify, so I guess it would be, I imagine the background for either, what should you take into consideration when setting up the shot? If someone's got plaid and then they're standing in front of a graffiti site, there could be a lot of visual stuff going on. So what should be taken into consideration when doing your shots? Melissa, what's your suggestion for video? For video, well one thing that I didn't talk about during the actual shooting part is when you're interviewing, when you're talking to an interview subject, you can, since the flip cam, the lens is very tiny, the iris of the lens is very tiny, the flip cam or Z18, you'll get used to it though. It's pretty intuitive. But if you can try to shoot so that there is some space between your subject and you in terms of, so if you're looking at the subject, you kind of want to have him on the right side, he or she on the right side, and then have some space to the left. If you're shooting him and he's in the left angle then you want to have some space on the right side just so that it's not a head-on, straight, focused shot. In terms of graffiti, things in the background, I mean whatever background really is pleasing to the eye and that adds to your story. If you're interviewing somebody at a playground, have some kids playing in the background, if they've signed release forms, have the jungle gym back there, have the slide, have the swings. People like watching people but you don't want it to be so distracting that it takes away from what the interview subject is saying. If you are shooting a source, and you just said if there's graffiti in the background, if the graffiti helps tell the story, have a graffiti in the background. If it's vulgar or if it's distracting then don't shoot it, go to a different location. But really anything that's pretty, I mean it's really just using your best judgment and determining what is visually simulating to you. I wish I could give something more technical and specific in terms of how you should shoot that. But if you think about pieces that you see broadcast on CNN or ABC or even commercials, the shots are set up to look pretty. I mean we're not all these great cinematographers but it really comes with practice. You'll start to see yourself develop and have a better eye over time I think. And this has also, I'm going to talk about lighting because I think then Erica if you could go into, lighting can go for both, kind of backlighting indoors and general fluorescent lighting and how that can colorize people in a funny way. So any recommendations? Fluorescent lights make people look green. Turn them off if you can. Natural light is great because it makes people look like people. But you may want to use like a darker light to set the tone, right? You could do a lot if a person looks shadowed versus if they're in a sunny environment. But if you can avoid fluorescent lights, turn them off. And Melissa, I don't know if you have suggestions for if you're not using ambient light if you have any quick tools for just enhancing lighting. Oh, and how to light from the front as opposed to the back and back kind of thing. Not really. I don't use any lighting kits but there are lighting kits available that aren't expensive. We can probably go online and look for some of those resources and have those made available for you guys. But I mean if you're lighting, I would try to avoid white lit backgrounds. They're just not that attractive. And definitely avoid fluorescent light. No shadows. You want to avoid shadows at all cost. So if you are talking to somebody and the sun is in the background, you're probably not going to see their face that well. So you're going to want to change the angle of the shot so that the sun is not shining on their back like that. Does that answer your question, Erica? And I know some other folks have just gotten their inexpensive lights from a hardware store that clamp on to things. And those can work in a pinch. So I would use incandescent, not fluorescent. Incandescent just has the spectrum of natural light that our eye catches and that helps the camera catch that color too. And what she was talking about for video also works for still. You want to light any photographic subjects in a similar way. I guess the benefit of still is you could go into Photoshop, lighten it up if you needed to. I know you can do some of the similar things with augmenting the video images. I'm not sure how much room you have to do those kinds of edits, but we are out of time. So we don't have any time for more questions. Oh no, it went by so fast. But I wanted to invite Megan Keen to tell us a little bit about the Digital Story Telling Challenge. So Megan, hello everybody. Great, thanks. Hi everyone. This is Megan Keen here. I'm here with TechSoup and I'm part of our Digital Story Telling Team. I just wanted to tell you a little bit more about our challenge which is on. We are really excited about it and we are hoping to see some of the submissions that come in this year. So to be a little clear about the challenges, the challenges you can either submit a 60-second or less video that you upload to YouTube or you can upload a 5-panel image story on Flickr. So what we ask you to do in your story is to just tell us a little bit more about what is the story of your organization? Why are you passionate about the cause? Last year was really fantastic because I got to see a lot of the submissions coming in and it was really inspiring just to kind of see all of the organizations that we have out there in the community and some of the work we are doing. One of the great things this year is we have so many prizes. We have really expanded the number of prizes that are available to the winners and we have some great stuff including a flip video camera and a projector and some other prizes from Adobe and Citrix. So you can go ahead and check out the prizes link that will be in the presentation that goes around so you can check those out. So you've got a couple more weeks. The deadline to submit your story is January 31st. You can also see more details on the challenge page. And on the challenge page there are step-by-step directions on how you actually go about submitting and the really important one which is the submission form that also has the directions but also just has a little place where you can enter your information and the URL of your story. So we make sure that we have it and we have you counted in the challenge. And that is actually about it for me on the challenge. If you have any questions, please do feel free to ask them in the TechSoup forums. We actually have a whole bunch that are going on right now and that link will also be in the presentation for you. Great. Thanks Megan. And here is an outline of some of the deadlines. Again, the deadline for submissions is January 31st. So that is all the time that we have. I'd like to thank you all for participating today. It was a really great presentation. So much information in 60 minutes. I'm quite amazed at all the information that we got to hear from Erica and Melissa. So thank you both to our wonderful presenters and for the team of TechSoupers on the back end doing all the chatting and the organizing of questions and answering questions on the chat. So I'm really happy to be presenting this information to you guys. Have a great day. Good luck. Please submit your stories. And have a great day. Thanks everyone. Call your story. Thank you. Bye-bye.


What is good welcome to the rest of your life? Why are you not living your dream? Why are you not doing it right now? What's going on? What's wrong with you? I'm just kidding. What's good? Welcome to Monday 1 1 1 happy January 11th 21. Let's get started three reasons You should be living your dream and three things you can do today right now to start living your dream because there's just too Much life to be lived and I want to help the world enjoy more So if you're used to me dunking used to my dunk tip Tuesdays, you're new to my channel This is what I love to do. All my videos are about that dunking is my dream I still have dream levels to go, but I really want to help you guys whatever that way is to live your dream So let's just get right into it not waste any moments. This is also podcast form. Check it out Let's go number one how to dream so many people I talked to so many people I work with don't even know how to Dream I call it dream building so a few tips the reason why it's so important is because if I ask you right now What is your dream? You might say a million dollars. You might say to dunk you might say this But what if you achieve those right and now what is the ultimate dream? What's your dream life? What does that look like on a Saturday on a Monday actually? I love Monday So let's start with Monday because on a dream life on Monday is your favorite day like it is mine Monday morning you wake up. You're financially stable. You achieved your athletic goals.  What are you gonna do with your time? What does that feel like right and then so many questions are gonna come up? I don't know if I could afford this I don't know who if I can be with this person I don't know point is Questions come up and the number one thing I start with is clarity What would you do with that free time because that will illuminate your passions? It'll illuminate what you want to do and you'll it'll bring questions up that show you you're not being true to yourself What would you do if everybody supported you? What would you be doing if nobody supported you if you wanted to do what you wanted to do when you broke away from people? These are the type of questions that come up when you try to build that clarity around your dream life So it's a whole skill to build it. It's not a one-day thing It takes time because those questions arise from your subconscious that you haven't thought about before And that is such a huge key because I don't see people even attempting to build the dream life that they want Or even understand it in their mind and if you don't understand it in your mind, you can't visualize it You can't feel it. You don't know where you're headed. How are you ever gonna get there? And that leads me to number two habits habits a.k.a the subconscious I just think there's such a huge key and let's go Habits are the keys to your routine that allow you to produce results at an efficient productive rate But they also teach you about your subconscious because when you start a new habit It's like watering a seed. It takes a lot of care and maintenance at first But over time it grows into a tree that you barely have to maintain You just let it sunlight hit it. You get a little bit of water The weather takes care of it and the same is true with these patterns that you've already carved So if you have some bad patterns, you have a job that you don't like you have these things that you don't do Obligations food whatever whatever routine you've built for yourself right now Say it's taken 10 years 20 years to build now you have to unlearn that in the athletic field If you've carved the wrong patterns with your mechanics like I have I've caused imbalances in my legs I have to unlearn that so if it took five to 10 years to carve those it's going to take a long time to Uproot them but you can and that's why we start with the dream life clarity because if you do that You're going to be motivated the whole time because you're like okay every step of the way I'm headed to that dream life and when you connect to that dream life that motivation is so deep within You that motivation is endlessly running through you so habits unlock you and they start tiny So one of the biggest habits I'm not going to get into it in this video But let me know what you want to see by the way more into the dream life clarity more into the habits I think I'm just going to do whatever I want but I want to know your questions I want to know where you guys need help In habits one of the biggest ones is journaling because journaling writing on hand on hand paper With your hand on paper is very connected to your subconscious by doing so you understand What your brain's thinking for example you write out everything for your day quick quick example of Journaling write out all your tasks write out everything you have to do for the week Now have fun journal of fantasy journal that dream life journal achieving that dunk achieving that Goal achieving that job achieving a financial goal whatever the goal is as it's happened I today I made this happen and like it feels like this and write out the emotions and when You do that you start to uncover patterns in your subconscious and by doing that your brain Doesn't know the difference of an experience that's happening now or in the future in the Past which is another reason why you want to unlock this subconscious When you think of the dream life you're going to think of the past I failed in the past I don't want to feel that again we have to get over that fear Journaling is very connected to the subconscious great tool to uncover questions in your head And to get them out get the fears out I fear that I'm going to do this Journal the dream life good and bad if it goes well what does it feel like if it Goes bad what does it feel like because a huge thing I learned from Tim Ferriss is the fear Journaling fear task list fear problems right you write down all the fears that can happen And most of the time they're not even that bad so not only are they not that bad You can mitigate them so the IRS audits you while you're traveling something like that He brought up in his book you can mitigate that you can check your mail whatever it's Got to be but you got to remember you're going to die so at the end of the day It doesn't matter and I'm going to move on to number three so we have the subconscious Build these habits so that way they become part of your subconscious because when you Build the habits small habits like just brushing your teeth twice a day You don't have to think about that if you do it every day eating healthy you start with One day a week it builds up to two days a week then a week then you're eating every meal You look back a year or a year goes by you look back now you're eating healthy every Single meal and a year ago you didn't even have one healthy meal so think long term Build these tiny habits into your life slowly and they become routine they become Subconscious they they don't well they don't take any energy anymore because they're part Of your subconscious subconscious is a huge factor in this whole dream life journey and The last one is the mindset is understanding where you're headed and that understanding That the mindset the positive mindset the work ethic mindset there all the mindsets Are a practice so at this moment you're developing that mindset you need for That dream life because it's not going to be easy there's going to be decisions You're going to have to make you're going to have to cut people out you're going to Have to switch and uproot things leave your job scary moments whatever it is But you can develop that mindset now and you could work on it it's not Something you just get instantly so if you can work on that mindset so That's what the habits are good for get in the habit of having tough conversations Get in the habit of stepping outside your comfort zone get in the habit of being Yourself and then you'll start to get better at all of these things you'll get Better at the dream life clarity you'll get better at forming habits that help You succeed building that awareness and there's so many things that will lead From that practice but the mindset is huge every action starts with a thought And if you can remember that you can start to practice that and now for Number four the bonus which I kind of hinted on in the middle of the video Is you're gonna die so you lose you lose your job you quit your job you you're Homeless all these different things could happen you're dead anyway mine as well Go for it Jim Carrey said you can fail at what you hate so you might as well Do what you love and I'm not saying just do it because you love it but There's so much potential out there I was just watching a video with Saad Guru who's a great guy that I just learned about past couple weeks He has great talks and speeches and one thing he said is everybody Can earn a living this little brain is is capable of so much more than just Earning a living ants bugs worms they all earn their living they're all Surviving so what can we do with this brain it seems like such a small Thing it's almost this is my intake my take on it it's almost Disrespectful to use all our efforts to just do the basic thing to just Be somebody else not be ourselves the world needs you and if this Doesn't fuel you up watch it again and if you didn't get started in your Dream life and you feel badly you didn't get started yet you started now You clicked on this video whatever happened it worked it's meant to be And I want you to say go get started right now happy freaking Monday Happy 111 for my spiritual sisters and brothers out there And hope you have a freaking good day and I'll see you Every day because that's how we live we don't I don't go anywhere I'm just not on your screen I guess but I have so many videos You can probably go check them out have a good one to the little I love you


The first item of business is Time for Reflection and our time for reflection leader today is Tetyanna Balanova, community coordinator, association of Ukrainians in Great Britain in Edinburgh. Presiding officer, members of the Scottish Parliament, thank you for the opportunity to address you today. Today, I want to tell you about a country, a country which is fighting for its right to exist. The Ukrainians are being killed, tortured, raped, our citizen homes are being destroyed. Russia is trying to erase the assassination. It has been trying to assimilate our language and culture for decades. When Ukrainian territories came under the control of Russian Empire, printing of books in Ukrainian was forbidden, and old state documents were ordered to be written in Russian. The process of the so-called Russification of Ukraine began. Over 400 years, Ukrainian language has been banned 134 times. The Stalinist terror of the late 1920s, 1930s, when prominent linguists and scientists were sent to labour camps were shot, went down in history under the name Executed Renaissance. No language has ever experienced such terrible destruction and persecution as Ukrainian. For all nations, language is a means of communication, but for us, because of the Russian state propaganda, it's a sign of nationalism, separatism, the cause of conflict and moral trauma. In the 21st century, the struggle for the chance to speak Ukrainian remains. Russian military strikes missiles at our schools and theatres. They believe that if somebody can speak Russian, they are their property. Russian language in Ukraine is a reason for Russia to constantly encroach on our territory. That is why we abandon everything related to Russia, especially its language. With the beginning of the war, some words changed their meaning. Hearing a clear sky, you probably think about the clear sky and the good weather, but for us, a clear sky is the all clear signal. When you hear the word Arrival, you think about a plane being landed. For Ukrainians, Arrival means Russian missiles, who's targets are civilians. The casual, how are you, in Ukrainian means Yagte became a new way of saying, I love you and I care about you. For all of us, Russian language in Ukraine ended with the attacks on Bucha, Mariupol, Harkiv and hundreds of other cities, similarly attacked. After hundreds of years of repression to speak Ukrainian today is a conscious act of decolonisation.  Speak it. And teach your children. Because language disappears, not because it's not taught by others, but because it's not spoken by those who know it. Ukraine was, Ukrainies and Ukraine will be. Slava Ukraini.


Income tax 2023-2024, excise taxes, get ready and some coffee so we can recognize the code cracks when doing income tax preparation 2023-2024. Most of this information can be found in Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business for Individuals who Use Schedule C Tax Year 2023 which you can find on the IRS website irs.gov, irs.gov, looking at the income tax formula remember in the first half of the income tax formulas basically a funny income statement most income statements having income minus expenses resulting in net income here having income minus various deductions resulting in taxable income the Schedule C for the sole proprietor ultimately rolls into line one income of the formula which is strong