Making Movies!

We're stars...

So after watching the guys from Loading Ready Run drive the Desert Bus, I thought that it would be a good idea to start some kind of show. So doing something creative is cool, but content is king, I needed something to actually video.

I thought of Dad's mini-talks that he gives occasionally and recognized here was good stuff that should be recorded anyway! So I called him last week and set about video'ing one. So our first video is up at Bluefishvideo.blip.tv.

I used an iSight camera attached (via firewire) to my macbookpro and a Cannon Powershot IS3 for the close-up view. Both cameras recorded everything (in 1 take). I then edited the videos, splicing them together, in iMovieHD on the Mac.

Changes for next time...
* I kept each audio track with its respective video track, next time i should just use one of the audio tracks consistently through the video.
* More editing pauses, with Dad talking consistently I was forced to make some hard cuts/uneven cuts between views, so that made things more difficult when editing the tracks together.
* Multiple takes, reading the above line makes me think we should do multiple takes, but we're running without a script anyway so every take would be different... I don't know about that one.
* Some shots worked better with one camera, and some better with the other one, I need to probably replace the iSight with another Cannon. I was really impressed with the Cannon, it worked great for this.
* Make the text into separate images, the iMovie software disappointed me here. It had no function to just drop a block of text on top of currently running video. I could make it on the lower corners, or scroll it up starwars like, or have it scroll over the video segment but no just plain overlay of the text itself. I think I may have to switch to final cut pro for that (i think we have that but it's on the iMac).

We now, as many great producers, I have to go buy a new overflow valve for the toilet since ours has slowly stopped working... I can feel the fame now. :-)