Better backgrounds, nice shirt, and coherence.. lessons in making a home video

The first piece of the clip was perfect. The lighting was good. Audio was good.  Speech was flowing nicely Background was the nice blue wall in the room with natural light streaming in from all over.

However, I had forgotten to put on a shirt.

Since the video was going to be for a semi-formal presentation, I did not think my nipples and chest hair should distract from what I was going to say.

I could not attend the conference so I asked the organisers if I could do a video presentation. I had fantasies of using participatory video techniques with a couple of persons, but time ran out.

This video was a bit more complex, because I was not sure what I wanted to really say - Harmonizing Advocacy Strategies. But on the last day, I prepared a script.. yes I started with a script.


Camera
I have a nice Canon point and shoot camera, with internal mic. The mic is good, it picks up sound.. including ambient sound. So as the day progressed, I had to change the idea of the yard.. my pronouncements on LGBT human rights would have been punctuated with weeding machines, saws, traffic, etc.

I found a room  in the house , lots of light, the  back room we say in our house. There was a book shelf and I thought this would be a nice back ground
Except that I needed to pile the books on the ironing board to make the tripod.  I did not realise how tall I was , even when sitting down.

My 6 year old assistant helped with positioning the camera. I taught him the rule of thirds and he managed to find a position on top of the books. He drew a diagram to leave the camera since I was running back and forth to do the other clips for the video.

Our first try was great.. except my assistant did not press the record button. The second try was great.. but I did not have on a shirt. I grabbed the first shirt I could find.
 The third try, my assistant was getting bored and I started to forget what I was going to say.. and I did not have want to read from a script. After the fourth try, my assistant and I took a break.

My assistant thought I had finished and he decided to do his own tripod of books and do his own shoot. After he went home, I went back into the darkening room and realised that the whole thing was in disarray.

So I carefully took still shots, drew more diagrams and eventually found a place to record the remaining clips. Pressed record, did all the bits.. then realised that I had forgotten to put on a shirt. Again. Started over.. then realised that there were mistakes.

After the final cut.. I put on the computer, and realised that more lighting was needed. Thankfully, there were enough books.. to position on side of the camera, one of the battery lamps used in blackout. and on the other side, a wind up torch light.
I recorded again.. but did not realise that the torch light was dimming.. so in the end the video would have my left eye gradually going into shadow.

At this time, I was getting a bit tired of the repeats.. and it was getting late. I said , who cares if my left eye was going into shadow, it was more what I was saying that how my left eye was looking.

I had some slides to match with audio for the video.


Audio and Music

I used Audacity to edit the sound. I recorded some readings of the slides - but did not realise that what would sound loud to me through the headphones would be dimmed later. So I reduced the amplification and it created problem in the final video.


 I had some text to read, and I had been advised to find music for the background. Easy enough, except that I wanted to use appropriate music and I searched through many of the Creative Commons archives to find appropriate music for the  background.

I think it worked.

Editing

The editing was fairly straight forward. I had used a storyboard (piece of paper with some sticky notes posted with the different clips and shots) so the clips were in order. I used OpenShot to do the editing, but could not figure out the titles .. that is for the next project.

Someone said that I should have combed my hair.. true,, I thought I had but maybe it was rumpled up during the production process. Another persons said that I have to work on presentation and background.. use a sheet instead of the blue wall.. except that all the sheets in my house do look like bed sheets.. and I did not want to look like I was presenting to an audience of lawyers and activists while lying on a bed.

In review , scripting is needed, a way to read the text so that there is coherence even when repeating. The lighting arrangements have to be sorted out as well, and the composition issues.

It was a great learning experience.

This is the final result :_