Awesome Promo Video: Interview with Kary Boan-Dunham

If a company is only using text and images, and not using video, very few people are connecting with their message. That’s the core idea behind the video below created by one of our current Screencast Video Coaching members, Kary Boan-Durham. Kary has been with our group since the beginning of the year and has just created a very clever and imaginative promotional video for her site TechieMuse.com I was intrigued and wanted to get to know a little more about Kary’s background, skills and what tools she used to create her video.

Interview with Kary Boan-Durham

MS: Tell me a little about yourself and your experience with video prior to becoming a Learn Camtasia member

I was an educator for 20+ years (classroom teacher, master technology teacher, campus technology specialist, instructional designer) and then moved out of the public school system and to become an elearning multimedia developer. I worked for the NYC Department of Education and JP Morgan for a few years before leaving to start my own business. My specialties while there was in Adobe Flash. During all that time I’ve also self-studied and worked freelance as a graphic designer and web designer. I have used Adobe Photoshop since probably 1993 (version 2.5 before layers) so that is the software program I have the most experience with.

MS: How long have you been with us and have you taken any courses or have you mainly been a member of the monthly coaching?

I have been a member of the Learn Camtasia group since the beginning of the year and have been in two courses: “A Career in Screencasting” and the “30-Day Screencasting Challenge”.

MS: What software and resources did you use to create your video?

For this video I used Keynote, Screenflow, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Audition.

I purchased the images from Big Stock Photo. I made certain I purchased vector images so I could take them into Illustrator and manipulate the character to put her in the different positions I needed her to be in and change the colors of things.

I wrote the script, but hired someone from Fiverr to do the voice over.

The background music I used for the video was also a Fiverr gig. I got something like 17 songs for $5. I purchased the signed/certified usage rights for an extra $10 so if YouTube ever screamed “copyright infringement”, I’d have proof that I owned the rights to use those songs.

I had to take the music into Audition and edit it to fit my content.

MS: What do you like best about your video?

I like the character. Working at previous jobs was mostly about creating online training using screenshots. I was good at it…but it became boring and tedious. Working on this piece I was able to do things much more quickly and do something fun.

I should point out something here. You might be asking why I used Flash instead of Camtasia, Captivate or Screenflow At both jobs, I was dealing with very sensitive information. Blurring out the screens wasn’t an option as the entire screen would have been blurred. So I had to take the screenshots and bring them into Photoshop to edit the information. At JP Morgan, I was literally creating training for an application that wasn’t functional or built yet. So I had to visually build the application interface in Photoshop. With both, I then used Flash to create the animation and “screencast.” It would have been a lot easier to use something other than Flash. But for legal reasons, it wasn’t possible.

MS: Did anything go wrong and how would you do it differently next time?

The main thing that went wrong was that my number dyslexia kicked in, and when I was gathering some of the data and statistics for the video’s script, I wrote something down wrong. Luckily I caught it but I had to go in and change the narration. Luckily, I was able to rearrange the actor’s voice over to say what I needed her to say without having to re-record.

MS: How will you go about getting traffic to your video and will you be sharing it anywhere else besides YouTube?

Unfortunately I had to edit and re-publish the video so the comments and little bit of social reach I had garnered was lost. But starting over, the first thing I did was make certain I paid attention to the SEO keywords I was trying to rank for. I also created a press release and published a blog article with similar content. Both of these also took into consideration for those keywords. I am ranking very high in Google for the keywords so the SEO is working. But obviously I am a new company and it takes time to get traffic and clients.

The main thing I plan to do is to keep plugging away and producing more. I have also become very active on Google+ so hopefully that will start paying off very soon. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears. 🙂

Some days I feel great and tell myself to just be patient. It’ll all work out and soon I’ll get some clients and be “on my way.” Other days I start paying closer attention to all the headhunters sending me job notifications for jobs I don’t want to take. It certainly is a ride.

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That was fun. I enjoyed hearing about the tools that Kary used and how she got that adorable narration (Just $5-$20 on Fiverr!) I think this video will really showcase Kary’s talent and, hopefully, get her lots of paying clients.  If you want to get in touch with Kary- just check out her site at TechieMuse.com

I’m sure Kary would love to hear your feedback in the comments below.