I've Finally Finished!
This is a big day for me - I finally managed to take the time and finish editing my first ever video. Now, I'm going to caveat this right away by saying that it's not very good. It was more of an exploration of different techniques than anything else - it doesn't have too much of a story. However, content-wise, I dressed it up with like 2 solid minutes of my dog playing in the snow with some smooth jazz playing in the background, so if you're looking for a relaxing, cute dog video... this might just fit the bill! Anyways, here are some things I've learned (or you can just scroll to the bottom of the post to watch the video...)
The Social Media Revolution
First and foremost, film making is a bit silly if you're not going to show it to anyone. Enter social media. Now, social media is great in that it gives you a very easy, accessible platform on which to put your content, and makes it incredibly simple to share it to an inconceivable amount of people. There is a con to this, however, and it is twofold:
1) Social Media is kind of complicated
That's right, the unified social media ecosystem is friggen ridiculous. There was a point at which social media was relatively simple - right around when FaceBook was first becoming a thing, and youtube and vimeo were the only real video sharing sites. Back then, meta tagging was as simple as embedding keywords into a website, and any ridiculous video featuring a portly man dancing to O-Zone was an instant viral sensation. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying things were easier back in those simpler, pioneering days... but I am saying the barrier to entry was much lower. Nowadays, if you don't structure your website and it's content just so (including hundreds of lines of social media meta tagging, website organization, the words you actually write, etc...) your humble offerings to the world get lost beneath all the other hundreds of millions of humble offerings to the world. See, as social media has progressed and evolved, it's become almost a science unto itself - no longer is it enough to dance to music and stick a video about it on youtube. Now you have to actively promote yourself, and individuals who want to share their content practically have to be their own marketing/PR agency. Which brings up my next point...
2) Everyone is on Social Media!
Seriously. 31% of the planet (78% of the US) is on social... damn. That's a lot of people. (~1.6 billion to be exact). With that much social media penetration, how can one little ol blog post or video ever get seen? The answer is, it probably won't. See, the way social media works is it rewards quality, but that has to be paired with volume. It's tough to have a one-hit wonder anymore - you really need to put out content constantly, and make sure that each piece of content you put out there draws lessons from the previous piece of content (read: you must constantly improve your content based on feedback, or lack thereof) Overwhelming? Slightly. Rewarding? Occasionally. Fun? Mostly!
Rants notwithstanding...
I did learn a decent amount about composition from this experience. Specifically, I learned that it's better to have too much than too little footage. I was more concerned with capturing motion than telling a story, and so I had captured very little footage of myself talking... I think that takes away from the story I'm trying to tell (that of a snow day in Virginia). In future videos, I'm going to be sure to try to narrate a bit more, to ensure continuity (and, let's face it, to hear myself talk).
I also learned that when you talk into a camera, you get all kinds of strange looks from bewildered, nosy people... also, if someone sees you setting up a tripod, they immediately assume you're a professional photographer and ask you to take dozens of glamour photos of their family. Maybe that's just a Virginia thing...
Well then, here it is - my humble video offering. May it not be lost in the giant social media shuffle!
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