Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label editing. Show all posts

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Part 6: The Virtual Storyteller - I'm a Teller Not a Film Editor!

 I remember the first time I opened Imovie. Yes, it was six years ago. I was in Canada freezing my tuckus off and I made a video about the freezing weather.

It was the first video I'd ever shot on my computer. I downloaded Imovie because it was free, and I "produced" a little short that ended up on my Facebook page.

I was very proud of myself.

After that, I did a few videos that I uploaded to Youtube. Here is one of those old videos:



I can't tell you where I shot that or anything else about it, but I do know I did it in Imovie.

I was pretty impressed with my new skills but not so enamored of them that I continued to do movies much after that.

No, I didn't have much use for the whole video story connection.

Fast forward to 2020. 

I opened Imovie again for the first time in six years and had to start all over. Nothing about it was familiar.

I have no idea what other people have on hand if they are not mac folk.

I sent out an SOS to the internet. Someone suggested I use Adobe.

Adobe? Right. That's why I have children. If I need something in Adobe, I'll just ask them.

Brainstorm! I'll shoot videos and let my kids edit them. If they balk, I'll start talking about how I had hyperemesis with both of them and they owe me.

No, I would never do such a thing. I'm talking about the hyperemesis, not asking them to do things for me. 

After letting my son edit my first video series back in March, I decided I should learn the software and do it myself.

Back to Imovie and video tutorials like this one:



So, that's the end of this post...

No, just kidding.

Once I started using Imovie, I discovered it wasn't as flexible as I needed it to be, and besides that, the dang thing kept crashing. 

So, I upgraded to Final Cut Pro.

I love Final Cut Pro.

This post, however, is not about the software. Use what you like. This post is about what I've found effective in editing, and what I have found to be ineffective.


My experience with editing has led me to these conclusions:


1. You can edit out every pause, and smack, and slip of the tongue and produce perfect looking videos. Yes, you can, but it is not natural. The humanness of the story is in your humanity. Humanity is not perfect.

2. You can edit in the midst of a story, but be very wary of where you start from and where you end.
Matching your hand gestures, tone, and such is tricky.

3. If you must edit internally, it is more important to match your voice than your hands, gestures, and the tilt of your head. Try this - Close your eyes. Can you hear the edit? If you can "hear" the edit, then you should reconsider that section. (A tip from my son)

4. Listen to your edited footage...more than once. I had some bad edits when I first began and luckily they were caught by people who love me before they were widely distributed!

5. Whenever possible, I do the story in a single take. I perform as if there is an audience present, and I just get through the tale. I can always go back and edit out things if I hate them, but I much prefer the single take to multiple edits in the story.

6. If I get too flustered and can't get through a tale, I stop and move on to a different story, or I stop for an hour or the day.

7. I stop when I get tired. It comes across in the recording

8. I stop when I get frustrated. It comes across in the recording

9. I stop when I am feeling stressed. It comes across in the recording. 

10. It is perfectly okay to hate the sound of your own voice. Get another set of ears on it before you erase it in a fit of anger or disgust!

11. Recording yourself and editing the product is incredibly exhausting. Monitor yourself. Keep hydrated, and make sure you take enough breaks to keep the work fresh

A few hints -

1. Before I start speaking, I pause, give the camera a huge smile, and hold it for two seconds. I end the same way. That way, I will have a visual cue as to where the actual recording is starting and ending.

2. I use fades between stories as well as at the beginning and end of clips. I give the audience at least three seconds to reset before the next story. More if it is a particularly heavy one.

3. I offer custom introductions to venues for the videos

4. I offer live Q&A or discussion for an extra charge if you get a pre-recorded show....

Wait!

I've strayed into marketing with the last two statements. Oy. This business of editing and marketing and how you work this all bleeds into each other!

Okay.

Time to edit this post.

Next Week...How to market the Virtual Storyteller!

See you then!

Happy Recording!



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Thursday, September 24, 2020

Part 3 - The Virtual Storyteller - Getting Equipped

Okay! Now you have made some decisions about what you think you might want to do on this virtual performance ride! 

You think you know what you are going to try to produce
You think you know what you want to offer

I use the word "think" because you should not set anything in stone at this moment. 

Stone is bad
Stone breaks
Stone weathers and becomes illegible

Try something more flexible. Flexible is very good at this point.

I went into my first recording sessions on my laptop with gusto. I could do this! I am woman, hear me record!


Failure
Abject Failure
Horrible
Unacceptable



I went to The David and informed him I had failed to do a thing that I was pretty sure I should be able to do.

What was the problem?

Lighting
Video Quality
Background Too Busy
Not focusing well enough on the camera
Content Not Engaging
Structure not tight enough
Not connecting on a personal level

In other words, I did not have a handle on this at all. 

I had to back up and try to acquire a set of skills I had neither wanted nor needed at any other point in my life. Honestly, I didn't even know what those skills were.

I did a few "shots across the bow" stories and uploaded them to youtube just to see if they worked.






Well, this looks...homemade. 

Clearly, I needed to up my game, but how could I do that?

That's when I realized that despite all the time I'd spent in front of the camera producing subpar work those first few weeks, I was only at the tip of a very big, very intimidating iceberg.

I researched video editing
I researched lighting
I reached out to professional lighting designers
I researched video recording speeds
I researched how to deal with echo
I spoke with my friend,  the talented and sexy Simon Brooks who helped me immensely - with recording
My son - Degrees in digital music and 3-D art and animation was a key player in the research!

All of this research resulted in several different outcomes:

1. I went from room to room and space to space in my home and listened for echoes and ambient sound. 

The first best place was in my living room in a corner between the fireplace and a bookshelf that faced the downstairs hall. No wall to bounce the sound back, and lots of ambient light as long as I shot footage during the day at it wasn't raining.

2. I decided to get an external camera. I have an old Iphone and an even older laptop.

Webcams were out...not because I didn't try to source one, but because every single human being on the earth was smarter than I was and bought one the second the pandemic hit. There were none available.

After buying and returning a camcorder, I finally settled on this one.







3. I listened to what was coming out of the camera and decided I needed an external mic.

Insignia Universal External Mic




After acquiring my purchases, I discovered I needed a tripod. These were also in short supply, so I bought a selfie stick that doubles as a small tripod and I repurposed - wait for it - my ironing board.

I borrowed a really bright light from my daughter and bought two track lights at Lowes.



My totally professional and not jury-rigged setup looked like this.






I got a horrid glare off of the picture behind me, so I took out the glass. It is a very nice, contained, non-echoey space with a simple background and nothing distracting.


All sorted, right?

No.
Not even close.
I had not yet begun to purchase!

My Macbook Pro, which had been a wonderful word processing machine and portable movie theatre for the last nine years discovered that I suddenly needed it to process video, upload, and download a ton of content, and talk to a video camera.

I can almost hear the thought process.

The Mac - "What the hell is wrong with you? You knew my memory and processing speed when you bought me! At no time in our relationship did I ever give you the idea that I was up to this sort of abuse. You better back up, woman!"

So, I bought a new Mac.




Wait! Wait! Wait!

I am not suggesting you go on a shopping spree! You don't need to do what I did at all!!!!!

1. I am explaining what happened to me.
2. I am explaining why I made the choices I did
3. I am not saying that if you don't drop 4 grand your quest is hopeless or anything of the kind
4. Lots of people are using their Iphones - I just have one that doesn't have a stellar camera
5. Lots of people have great lighting situations already - mine sucked
6. Lots of people have computers that could handle the processes - mine didn't

I am not a technophile, and mostly what I used my laptop for was writing. I have an amazingly huge amount of writing on my laptop and little else.

I was completely unprepared to be a virtual anything.

Now, if you do need some new equipment do not despair.

If you are having a cash crunch, there are tons of sources for cash out there right now for artists who need to upgrade their gear for this new age of virtual work. My buddy, Tim Lowry, (Head to his website and support his brilliant work) just went Mac crazy at his house with a PPP loan. (This program is closed, but keep a lookout for future programs of this kind)  

 The resources are there.

Start searching for artist grants here!

Okay, back to the saga of transforming my reality to a virtual experience.

Now, after purchasing a new Mac, transferring over relevant files, and commencing to store my videos on the drive, I discovered that if you try to put ten one-hour-long videos on a computer that is already storing lots of other things, it gets mad.

(I promise I will do a post about editing software and what little I know about how to work it.)

So, I bought a Seagate External Back-up Drive. I'm currently on my second one.

Then, there was the backdrop saga. (Blog post where I decide to upgrade the feel and look of my videos)

Now, all of this buying and rethinking happened in the first month of the lockdown as I realized I didn't have the capacity to go virtual in any way that looked professional.

The amount of failure that I experienced over the course of this summer was epic. Each and every single fail taught me something valuable that I was able to take into my next attempt. 

As the Mythbusters were always fond of saying - Failure Is Always An Option.

 


So, wherever you are in this process...here is my advice for dealing with the absolutely annoying, frustrating, exciting, draining, nonsense up to and including listening to hours of your own voice and performing for a camera of some kind:



Some New Rules for Old Dogs

1. Be gentle
2. Be patient
3. You can always start over
4. Not everything works
5. Play - Play like there is no tomorrow
6. Victories whether large or small should be celebrated like the world is ending.
7. Breathe
8. Relax
9. Lather, rinse, repeat



Happy Recording -

In the next installment - I will talk about lighting



Par 3 - The Virtual Storyteller - Getting Equipped


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