I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions but I thought I’d write a little about what video work I want to do in the near future. I’m not resolving to do any of it but writing things down helps me figure things out. Nothing focuses my mind on a topic like having to write about it. I’m pretty good figuring things out as I go along but sometimes writing is the best way of figuring for me.
I originally started my YouTube channel a couple of Mays ago. I wanted to start working in video a little. Nothing fancy. It’s mostly comic book haul videos where I just point the camera and show comics. That’s easy to do. From there I made a couple music videos last year. I stitched together a bunch of my street scene videos and added music to it. Once again nothing spectacular but it helped me to learn some stuff. I’ve continued with the comic book haul videos since they’re simple but not with the music videos because they take a remarkably long time.
This Fall I even started a second YouTube channel called Art By Osborn to do some how-to videos and post a little bit about my art in general. I even got a special piece of equipment for this. I blew a hundred bucks on a horizontal extension bar for my tripod. That let me extend the camera out one my desk so I could more easily video myself while drawing. It still wasn’t quite as easy as I thought it would be. The problem is that I usually move a drawing as I’m working and I have to keep the drawing in frame as I go. So I have to watch both the drawing and the camera’s viewfinder. It’s distracting.
I think I’ve got an idea to make things easier for me but I haven’t tried it yet. I have an app for my iPad that turns my iPad into my camera’s viewfinder. I figure that I can set up my iPad on my drawing table and look at that as I draw instead of my camera. I tried out the app earlier in the year but haven’t messed with it in a while. Oddly, Canon (my camera brand) made a new version of the app back in the summer and I have yet to get that one to work. Luckily for me it wasn’t an update to the existing app but a whole different app. That way I still have the old, working one, on my iPad. The whole set up might be even more cumbersome than the old one but I’ll have to try it to see.
The next thing I have to figure out with my art channel is what I want to film. I started out with a bang. I think I made half a dozen videos in the first two weeks. I had all sorts of ideas fling around my head. Then it all stopped. I have no idea why. I may have lost interest or lost energy but I’m still not sure. It’s been at least a month since posted anything there. That’s why I’m writing this. To try and get the ideas flowing again.
One problem I have with ideas about making videos about art is that art takes a long time to make. Most people just use time lapse photography but I was never a big fan of that. Plus I’m not sure exactly how to do it for a long project. I figured out how to make a speeded up version on one on my fifteen minute ASMR drawing videos but filming myself drawing all day is a horse of a different color. It usually takes me a couple of hours to make a drawing and if I’m going to make a painting we’re talking sixteen to twenty four hours worth of work. Surely I can’t point my camera at my easel and video for three straight days. That would be a lot of gigabytes worth of information. I can’t imagine that would be the right way to go. Data overload.
I might have to use my iPad to film. At least I know its video camera has a time lapse mode. I can set it to take a single photo every so often. But I’m not sure how often. Every minute? Ten minutes? What if I’m not standing in the correct position at the time it takes a photo? That’ll mess with the final video. I’m not even sure if the iPad’s camera shoots time lapse video or stills. I’ll have to check my Canon camera too. There might be a time lapse mode buried in there somewhere. It all comes down to I’ve never shot time lapse before and will have to figure out the best way to do it. Hence I’m thinking in writing.
I also have some ideas to make some video from my existing artwork. Once again a problem with art on video is that art is static and silent. I’ll have to think up something to do to liven it up. If I write some sort of accompanying piece I can narrate something as I do something visual with the art but I’m not sure what.
One final thing I want to do with video is read my comic strips. Way back in the late 1970s or early 1980s I remember a local cable channel running some weird shows that were people reading comic books. It was DC Comic’s Sugar and Spike and Mystery in Space Comics. It was especially weird because those comics were from the 1960s. They would just point a camera at a comic and someone would read the captions and word balloons. As they would finish reading one panel they’d them move on to the next one. I figure I could do the same thing with my “Four Talking Boxes” strip. I’d use iMovie to go from panel to panel and then record me reading the word balloons. It’s a dumb idea but I still want to try it. I have a lot of trying and figuring things out when it comes to video.
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