At 10.57 pm just a week ago, I received an important message on Whatsapp- my bestfriend who is in Dubai had rushed to the hospital…
His wife’s water broke.
Flashback to the very same Monday morning- I created a secret group on Facebook targeted at all of our mutual friends to record a short video congratulating him- the baby was due to be delivered today,but unfortunately his eagerness to be in this world fast tracked his delivery.
I was so afraid that our friends who had originally agreed on participating would cancel out- the idea was afterall to congratulate him beforehand so that we can channel our excitement and to help ‘psychologically’ ease his wife’s labour pain.
I have had friends who had delivered their child- but I had never been so involved throughout the process as this. I met Amil when I sat next to him about 6 years ago during HRM lecture then we ended up in almost all group projects- HRM, Strategy, MNE, Operations Management & IB. We even had the same supervisor for our final thesis! Out of all the guy friends that I have, my mum was especially keen on Amil – Amil is different. He was the guy who became the shoulder for me to cry on- during all of my ups and downs, the one I am so comfortable to tell him anything because I know he wouldn’t judge me, the one who would ensure that I eat and sleep when I was so busy studying, the one who would cook for me- even if it was only instant noodles and also the one who would sacrifice sleep just so that he would accompany me while I completed my PhD proposal.
We were extremely close…..we were inseparable….in short Double Trouble.
Anyone reading this, would misinterpret our friendship and most would question the platonic ‘friendly’ love that we share for each other. BUT trust me, in the world where everyone have if not huge, slight bad intention on others- or even a world full of expectations- when one give, something is expected in return- the good old ‘genuine, true friendship’ still exists and that is what we have.
When Amil got engaged 4 years ago- I compiled a similar video- but to me it felt as if it was just a moving powerpoint slides- it was OK and I don’t even remember what programme/ software that I used to compile everything. 4 years later, I became eager to show improvement on my compilation even if it is just a hobby. After I sent out the message- I kept on thinking about ideas on how to start the video or even how it would flow- what best to tell a story within this video (also something that was lacking from the engagement video- Yes I am a huge critic on everything that I do!).
In the beginning, I was lost.
Somehow in between applying for jobs and studying for my Viva and quite honestly probably thinking about my Viva which will be held 2 days before Xmas that I came up with the idea to include some sort of animation– a simple present and bow untied- but I don’t have any background in animation. So I messaged Daz. Daz had been my knight and shining armour when it comes to anything technical. This is also probably the result of being such a bad friend who generalise Daz into the ‘anything technical/ technological’ category. But it was worth it! When Daz has no clue on animation, he knows a friend who knows the ins and out on animation/ graphic design. The friend however responded: ‘She won’t be able to learn animation in just a day’. Regardless, what a blessing when they suggested for me to use ‘PowToon‘. It wasn’t hard to use it and I signed up for the free account.
The next day, I received two videos. A video affirm my idea on how to embark with this project. It was sent by a friend whom I specifically instructed to play a ‘nursery rhyme’. When I first asked him to participate in this project- he thought it was rather peculiar since he didn’t know the parents but felt that it is a nice idea so he didn’t mind. I felt overjoyed as I know how busy he has been, so for him to actually be able to sit down and record something- was more than appreciated. It was his comment and effort that made me realise; in comparison with the engagement video which comprise of friends who only knows Amil, I would add a section on friends whom I know but are strangers to Amil.
For the next few days, I became extremely involved with the project- I had to ‘cold-call’ more like ‘cold-message’ our mutual friends and asked them if they would send a video, if yes- when etc. Surprisingly, the participation rate among our mutual friends were low. Everyone was either too busy or would eventually make empty promises which then led to no video submitted. Lets just be clear Amil wasn’t only nice to me but he was also nice to everyone. Also to my surprise my friends who don’t know Amil were more than willing to participate- it didn’t even take long for them to agree. This is especially the case with Kasia who is currently travelling around South East Asia with limited internet connection. Kasia had a lot of ideas on how to shoot hers but her camera failed her- in the end she had to resort to a vid of her doing a shot as per polish tradition using her friends phone- but it was still beautiful.
In the end, I learnt a lot about friendship when executing this project. There are simply friends who wouldn’t question your actions because they trust you, genuine friends whom you would want to keep throughout your whole life, friends who would be there for you, friends who would support you and whatever crazy ideas that you may have because they know off your intention. At the same time to becareful with friends who can be two faced- they were never willing to be part of anything, they are just downright pretentious.
Because of this lesson that I learnt throughout the way- I immediately changed the strategy for my project. At some point I wanted to start with a ‘how I met your father’ theme for our mutual friends and then add a section on ‘everyone around the world is eager to congratulate and welcome you’. Given the low participation rate among friends and quite honestly I simply felt lucky to even get hold of the videos also considering how busy they are plus the lessons learnt- I changed it to ‘baby’s first outlook on different cultures around the world’ and contacted more of my own friends around the world to participate. I couldn’t include the USA and Australia but the idea then focuses on an important lesson to be shared for a newborn child, which is to know that wherever he will be at, there will always be someone somewhere around the world who will be there for him.
As an international student- this pretty much summarises my life at this very moment. Given that most of my friends had graduated and moved back to their home country, they are still present in my life- Facebook, Whatsapp and imessage helps tremendously- in fact all three platforms had been crucial in contacting and receiving videos for this project. It is also a nod to my friendship with Amil. Amil had been updating me on a weekly basis his wife’s pregnancy progress and also how he felt during and after the labour. How he has developed a new found respect for his wife and mother- how he cried hugging his mum just after the baby was born. I felt included.
I don’t know if I will ever get married neither do I know when will I ever be having a child, so this moment was exceptionally special- it is the closest to understanding the feeling of having or bringing a child into this world. Although clearly just the beauty of it- not being able to truly understand the pain endured.
So last night, I finally managed to compile all the videos- all 36 audio/video files. It was 7pm when I could say that I am finally satisfied with the result. It was with difficulties- technically- throughout the process. First off- registering with a free account on PowToon doesn’t allow me to download my movie and also there is a limitation for the movie- only 5 minutes- in fact I had to upgrade to a ‘student’ account which cost me $12 for a year- which I thought was a reasonable price so I did. Then it turns out that because it is only a student account and not a pro account, I couldn’t add videos on to my animated frames- I would have to save it via slideshow. There I was sitting and thinking ‘DAMN IT, if engagement video was more or less a moving PowerPoint slide this will literally be an animated slideshow’.
It was all too confusing for me to find a video editing app online and not to forget that I might download a virus instead for free apps- so I ‘shy’d’ away from that. I looked at all my video edit- iphone apps- Magisto,imovie, Cute Cut and ProCutX but it was CuteCut that provided me with what I am searching for. So I prepared all my animation frames on PowToon- saved it as a movie, downloaded it on to my Iphone5 (Note: I used ‘TV static’ as the transition for most of my animation frames which helped me in my video editing process, Clipboard is Ok but very tricky- other types of transition makes it all even more complicated). I did my first trial and uploaded it on to youtube, showed a couple of friends including Amil’s sister and asked her what she thought- I wasn’t extremely satisfied with it- seems like some part of the video was ‘unstable’ and some of the words were almost cut off. So I edited my PowToon slides again.
At the same time, I didn’t know what songs to add on to the video. Gary suggested something old school- and he pointed out a few songs that had been used in babies advertisements but I don’t necessarily felt the connection with any of the songs. Daz suggested ‘little wonder’ which I thought was good but not great. Akhila suggested satisfaction but after reading through the lyrics- I noticed that it is simply inappropriate. I don’t exactly know how I came up with choosing ‘Love by Nat King Cole’ but it is definitely more than perfect for the video. Fly me to the moon was chosen because of Reshmi’s speech.
First Trial Vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zk9W5lY3eE&feature=youtu.be
In the end, I must have made 5-6 copies of PowToon Movies, I then divided my final edition into 9 parts- which helped me to add videos as I receive them from my friends. Even with the 5-6 Powtoon movies published- I still had to amend and add additional animated frames as I continued to receive videos from friends. For instance- Emre went on a roadtrip and he wasn’t in London- I didn’t want to ‘lie’ especially when this is a story to be told to a child- so I had to edit the first part of my video. Then I misjudged the length of Michael’s speech- Michael only sent me a voice recording, so I had to adjust his animated frames part. Oh and then I thought Kasia was still in Hong Kong- but she was in Boracay- so I had to re- arrange all my animated frames. By the time I had to make all these adjustments- I already included the songs- and I was extremely careful with the songs- I wanted to cut it while someone is congratulating but at the same time I wanted it to be a good flow- so I counted the seconds used for each frame- which obviously made it such a tedious process when I had to edit the frames. It didn’t make sense for me if the last words from the song was not followed when the song started again.
After I was satisfied with everything and began compiling all the 9 parts- I made a rookie mistake. I didn’t know that CuteCut is connected to my Iphone files, I would have imagine that the app stored its own version of the videos etc- so when I deleted the single videos to make space on my iphone, my compilation was unsuccessful- but thankfully it didn’t take long to generate new copies of each parts.
When compiling risk averted- for some reason it took forever for me to upload the video on Dropbox- well i know the reason- the movie is 16 minutes long and it is 531mb. I used a lot of tactic to keep Amil awake- it was almost 8pm in the UK so 12 am in Dubai. By 12.30 I succumb to pressure and informed Amil that I had been stalling him because I have something for him. It wasn’t until 10.00pm in the UK/ 2am in Dubai that the file was eventually uploaded- but it was funny. It didn’t take long for him to download it but he couldn’t view it. The file was saved on ‘.mov’. He couldn’t wait until this morning, so he grabbed his laptop and tried to download it, this time his internet connection failed him. So he only managed to watch the 4 minutes preview- in the end we decided to just wait until today. Before I passed out, I uploaded the video on facebook- for some reason, it was stalled. I also tried to upload it on YouTube- not realising that I have to verify my account if I am to upload a video that is more than 15 minutes long. So basically, all the effort for last night turned out to be a waste. In the morning, I tried again with Facebook- it was briefly uploaded but was immediately removed because of Copyright Infringement- Ah well. I almost gave up but then I realised I could just verify my YouTube account- which I did- I think it took me about an hour or so to upload it on YouTube.
By the time I posted my YouTube link on FB, Amil had just finished watching the full video- he asked the help of his friend to convert the video to ‘.mp4’ format.
Honestly, it has been such a journey- 36 of us were involved in this project, 24 cities, 14 countries and 15 languages all within 4days. I am extremely thankful to all of my friends who entertained my crazy idea and helped me to execute my project. It is not perfect, but it is more than worth it. Oh and I would highly recommend Powtoon as well as CuteCut- not even once that either crashed! Special Thanks to everyone 😀
Final Video