Preparations and Trepidations

So here I sit in front of my computer again... but this time I'm preparing to film a contest entry video. I'm a little nervous about it, as I'm concerned it may not live up to the contest-makers' expectations (their channel is pretty epic if you have a wry sense of humor like I sometimes do). I need curly hair for this one, and am too short on funds to just go buy a wig... so I'm going to have to come up with curly locks on my own. My hair is still wet, as I've just finished my shower, and I'm weighing the options I have. I can either put it up in rollers and wait several hours for it to dry (possibly waiting until tomorrow) or I can section it off into a million sections after it's dry and burn the crap out of every strand with a curling iron. **sigh** I'm just not sure whether speed here is worth the tradeoff of damage to my hair. The ends are already fried, and I am in dire need of a haircut. Bah!

Next week, beginning Monday, I will be reorganizing my hard drive (again) and setting up a schedule for production for my channels. My secondary channel is easy... it's for vlogs and video responses. I plan to start posting daily vlogs on January 1st... so I really do need to set aside some time for that each day. Those will most likely be direct uploads, as when I sit down to edit I can't just put in a title and some music... I have to fully produce a work once I get started on it. This is what causes the clock and I to fight so often. I'm just so bent on making every video as good as I can possibly make it that I spend what some would say is too much time on the editing process.

Let me break it down like this... for every one minute of footage you see on my channel, an hour of editing went into it. Nevermind render and upload times (which have been ridiculous lately)... I'm just talking editing. For example... the last morning review I posted was a little over three minutes long. I included chroma keying effects, a motion background, mixed music for it, included graphics, and inserted two video examples at the end to turn into clickable links. I had to track and record all the music samples, download links, license links, permission to commercialize via webcast links... RARR!! When I was ready to render it I had 3 audio layers, 4 video layers, and 2 graphics layers for a total of 9 layers in the project file. It took my computer 42 minutes to render that, and then took me just under an hour to upload it. Altogether, I spent 4 hours editing and 2 hours processing and posting it.

All that for a three minute video!?! I've thought about just going back to the shower curtain background to save myself some time, but I recieved the recommendation from another YouTuber that reviewed my channel to stick with one style of video-making... so chroma it is I suppose. I want to put my best foot forward for my viewers with each and every video, so I do my best hope it's good enough.

Now I know that I don't have explosions or fireballs or any of that cool what-not in my videos. I'm missing a key software package... Adobe AfterEffects cs5. Unfortunately, I haven't the $1000 it takes to purchase it, so it limits my post-production effects to what I can muster out of Sony Vegas. In turn, this limits the types of content coming out of my channel. I have 6 pages in my idea book filled with skits that i need that program for. However, I don't make the kind of money everyone assumes that I make, so it's quite out of my reach at the moment.

I'm not mad though. I make due with what I have, I make it fun even though it's a LOT of work to put in what I expect to get out, and the comment section tells me who likes the product and who even watched it for real. As long as I'm getting feedback from my friends and other viewers, I've gotten what I needed from the endeavor, and it was all completely worth-while.

Until next time. Feel free to comment and follow my blog. I'm scheduling in a bit of blogging time every day, too, so there will usually be something new here that's not in my videos. Love you guys!

--Starbuck