Thursday, October 22, 2020

Part 7: The Virtual Storyteller - How Do You Market This???

 

You're on the virtual road!

1. You have decided how you want to interact with the virtual world.

a. pre-recorded

b. Live Virtual


2. You have acquired the appropriate gear for your choice.


3. You have found where you are going to do your recording or telling.


5. You've gotten used to the camera 


6. You're on the way to becoming an editing guru


7. Now comes the next important step. What is your marketing strategy? 

That depends entirely on what you have decided to do!

Here is the way The David and I decided to think about it.

As a business, we have two different kinds of things we do that generate income.

1. We contract out a service.

What I mean by "Service" - I show up, do a gig, and they pay me for it. That concludes our contract and contact unless or until they decide to hire me for another interaction. That includes any in-person or person to person contact that is hired for a fee.

2. We produce products.

What I mean by "Product" - I produce audio recordings that an organization or a person can purchase and own. They can download it onto their media accounts, and they can share it with friends. They can resell it even. 

-  Are our virtual programs going to be a product or a service?

- Will people be able to record the live shows?

- Will people be able to download them?

- Will people buy them as a service or a product?

- How will we package them?

- Where will we host them?

- How will we offer them to audiences?

- Who controls access to the virtual material?

- What will a venue get if they pay for pre-recorded v.s. Live Virtual?



This is how we answered these questions - 

- Our virtual programming is a service, not a product 

What that mean?

 - No, organizations do not get unlimited access to any of the virtual shows

- No, organizations cannot have unfettered access to record the live shows


Okay, so how do we limit access to virtual material?

- We need to find a platform that gives us control of the material

- We need to have control of our Live Virtual Shows whenever possible


What resources do we need in order to do that?

- We got a Premium Vimeo Account. 

- We got a Business Zoom Account.

The Vimeo account allows people to watch shows with a password, but it doesn't allow them to download the shows. As soon as the password is changed, you can no longer have access to the video.

The Zoom account allows us to share our link instead of using other people's links.

Now, how do we market this so people are willing to buy a one-off pre-recorded show that they cannot download or keep as a product?

Pre-recorded shows come with all sorts of perks.

You can keep the pre-recorded show for longer. You can't download it, but you can share it as many times as you like so that teachers, families, and all people affiliated with that group can watch the show at their convenience.

The pre-recorded shows are cheaper.

If they want any live components from a live Q&A to a discussion of any kind, all of that is extra.

You can have any date, time week you want with a pre-recorded show. Live shows are not as easy to schedule.

We can sell Pre-recorded shows all over the country and in various markets without me having to even be aware of it. The David just changes the passwords and makes them go live at different times.

So, that's the model we chose.

Live Virtual is just like all of the other virtual shows you might encounter right now.

We discourage those. If there is a technical glitch, some people can get kicked out of the show, cables can be cut, people can forget the time and hour. It is also more expensive.

We still have a few live shows, booked, but most of them have gone pre-recorded.

I got this message from one of the teachers at a school that is currently viewing a pre-recorded set:


Katelin Tough 
Red apple
@dlwstoryteller
Thank you for making my students excited for Social Studies today! They loved the Boo Hag story!

Your virtual marketing plan might not look like ours. You have lots of things to do and lots of plans to make!


Wishing you luck, hope you don't need it!

Happy Marketing!





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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, October 8, 2020

Part 5: The Virtual Storyteller - Performing For The Camera

 Live audiences are amazing!


Live audiences help you sculpt new material and keep old material fresh.


Live audiences give you energy and keep you going when the story is getting hard to tell.


Without an audience I am a hot mess...




I'm sure I can fix it in post!

No. No, I can't.

(I won't talk about editing until next week.)

When I first began this journey of recording myself, I had a number of pretty horrendous pieces, but they have all been recorded over because of storage needs in the early months. 

So, all of the cringey things you are about to see are recent. That's right, no matter how long I do this, cringey is the name of the game.

So, let's get into this business of performing for a camera.

Live audiences can be tricky if you pull an odd one, but at least you can try to play them as you perform.

Virtual audiences are difficult because you aren't getting cumulative reactions or any reactions at all despite the fact there could be several hundred people watching you.

Then, there is the truly difficult audience...the imaginary one.

Every single time you sit down in front of a camera to record, you are performing for an imaginary audience.




You have zero idea how many of them there will be or what they will want or whether or not they will look at you or just put you on mute and laugh.

You don't know how old they'll be, how enthusiastic or annoyed, or anything.

You can't pinpoint that moment when the story drags just a touch and you need to get the audience back involved. You can't do anything that will help them re-engage if their attention wanders. 

Not to mention all the time you spend doing crap like this.




Yes, I know, I'm making it look and sound so glamorous!

There are a number of challenges to overcome when there is no audience to address. Here are some that have come up from time to time.

1. I look unfocused even though I'm not

2. Losing track of what I'm saying because I am actually unfocused

3. Nobody is participating with me in a participatory story

4. I have no idea if I've landed a funny line in a funny way

5. I don't know if I've impacted an audience because I have no way to gauge how my ending landed.

6. I worry that people aren't going to like it.

7. I see all the things I think of as flaws and I am certain the audience will as well

8. I want it to be perfect. It's recorded, so it should be perfect! 


9 - 100. I only see the flaws


Doubtless, there are other concerns but these are the ones I wrestled with as I worked my way through this process.





After a while, I started looking at my imaginary audience differently. 

Rearranging my thinking about who was watching me and why helped me find my groove in the pre-recorded game.


First of all, one of the things I harp on all of the time is crafting. Crafting your material helps you figure out not only who a story suits but how you want the material to land.

So, I fell back on all of the foundational work of the storyteller. I know who the story is meant for, so I conjure up my perfect audience.

I imagine that they gasp at the right moments, participate with gusto, laugh at the things I think are funny, and have stunned or shocked moments when I choose.

I imagine my perfect audience full of perfect story listeners, and then I tell to them. I can see them sitting there. 

As I tell, I conjure up actual faces from audiences in the past. I conjure up parents, teachers, kids, grandparents, adults of all kinds, teenagers, and that baby giraffe who came over to the fence in the Africa exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo and watched me tell Why Mosquitoes Buzz In People's Ears.

They are arrayed in front of me as I give them an encore private performance.

This has proved to be a very useful strategy for me.

I pause at places an audience has made me pause. I've connected with a face in the "dark" that I recall from some show who knows how many years ago. I go through the participation practice as if everyone out there is doing it with me. I don't rush it or anything.

I go full tilt performance as if I am dealing with five hundred people instead of a camera.

Here I am apologizing to my imaginary audience because I didn't realize they were looking at me.




This new way of performing has made for a more enjoyable recording experience, and the stories are flowing better.

I've also changed my attitude about my potential imaginary audience.

1. They are watching because they want to. They came to find me particularly.

2. They came with a desire to watch me tell stories. They are not captive, they are willing

3. They are looking forward to whatever I am about to do

4. They are going to gasp, and play, and do all of the things they want to do. They can also participate at the top of their lungs.

5. This imaginary audience is the perfect audience, and they deserve the best I have. So, I'm going to look them straight in the eye and rev it up!

6. Just like the kids who tell me they watch one of my youtube videos multiple times a day, someone is going to watch one of these videos and fall in love with storytelling!

7. Someone is going to watch these videos and exclaim, "I didn't even know this was a job! I want to learn more!"

8. People who could never hope to see me in person can watch me tell at festivals and events no matter where they are!

9. People who've lost track of me can find my work!

10. In fact, this imaginary audience that my pre-recorded work has reached goes deeper and farther than my live work ever could!


Bring on the imaginary audience!

Bring on the next generation of storytellers who are encountering us through a medium they understand!

Bring on the tellers who have always wanted to find a place in our storytelling world but who have not found an audience yet.

Let me end with a few tips and tools.

1. - I know it is counterintuitive and weird and you don't want to do it, but stare at the camera. Stare at it as you tell or it will look like you are not looking at anyone. We've all been on enough Zoom meetings to know what it looks like when someone is talking and not looking at the camera.

2. Don't make lots of quick or jerky movements. You'll blur the image

3. Be aware of ambient sounds. Your neighbor running the mower might not be all that loud to you, but it is going to star in your video

4.  Check and make sure there are no electronic noises like buzzing or mechanical like a loudly ticking clock that you can hear while you are recording.

5. Make sure you are telling something that you have some idea how an audience receives when you first start. This will help you get used to thinking about your telling rhythms.

6. Share the video with someone else before you post it. It is good to get another set of eyes on it.


Okay, Good Luck, and next week I will talk about video editing. 
What? You can't wait? I know, right?

Happy Telling!



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Thursday, October 1, 2020

Part 4: Lighting the Virtual Storyteller

 

Billy Porter's Oscar Hat - He looks like a lampshade to me!


There is this amazing thing called a lighting designer.

"A theatre lighting designer works with the director, choreographer, set designer, costume designer, and sound designer to create the lighting, atmosphere, and time of day for the production in response to the text, while keeping in mind issues of visibility, safety, and cost."


So, basically, there is a person who designs lighting situations to account for shadows, outfits, angles, time of day, the contours of the space, the skin tones of the subject, and every other thing in a performance space to give the audience the right mood, feel, impression, and experience that the director wants.

You can even get a degree in this field!

You know what I really could have used when I started this whole process? 

A degree in lighting design, or potentially a lighting designer. Neither thing was at hand.

I turned to the cheat section of lighting design. That's right, I started looking up articles and videos on the interwebs. 

I watched hours of footage, read tons of articles, and tried loads of things. 

The following videos are the ones that I found most useful.

This one is great as a jumping-off place.


A great, simple tutorial to get you going with a complete set-up.




 I read about  3 point lighting. 

I called a young man who is a lighting designer and asked him about some of my lighting challenges.

There was a huge glare on my glasses. I attempted to sort this problem, but I could not do it to my satisfaction, so I just tell without my glasses. I do have some videos with my glasses, but those tend to happen when my natural light in the area is bright enough to allow me to forgo one of my ring lights.

Here is the tutorial I watched about glasses glare. I suppose if I decide to re-design my lighting set-up, I could buy the type of lights he's using, and that might solve the problem. If you wear glasses, this might be helpful to you.




Armed with my research, I went about setting up lights and shooting videos. 

Sometimes I was successful and sometimes I was not. Some videos came out too dark and had to be reshot, and some videos were lovely, and I could use them. 

I moved from my living room to one of the bedrooms upstairs. That space is now exclusively my "studio". I store everything up there, and my lights are set. It also has two big windows, so I get great natural light...providing it isn't night time or raining.

I bought some ring lights, and I have two standing lamps. I also have spotlights.

With all of this light, I have managed to light my videos to my satisfaction, but it was a long slog of trying to figure out how to do it.

backdrops on my daughter's old bed!
My performance outfits and a little changing area!





My "work table" lights and a backdrop.



Here are my recommendations:

1.  Find a space you want to record and stick with it

2.  Use the lights you have. Supplement if you must

3.  Try different things until you get the quality you want

4.  Ask for help if you need it

5.  If you can, buy your lights from an outfit that works with videographers, and can offer advice when you purchase. B&H comes to mind, but there are lots of them, so go out and find what works best for you.

6.  There is no right answer here. Do what works.

7. Be bold, be bold!

Good Luck. Have fun. 

Happy Lighting!

If you missed the other posts in this series:





Part 4: Lighting the Virtual Storyteller



Next Week I Will Talk About Performing For the Camera.



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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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