A Day in the Life

Instead of writing a script for a video I was thinking about, we ended up filming “a day in the life” kind of video. We have not done a day in the life on our channel yet. It is tough to film a video like this with two little kiddos. Trevor gets under Heidi’s skin many times a day. This makes her cry which makes for pathetic audio. This means that we will need to do a voice over for some of those parts or add some music.

This afternoon, I was feeling disenfranchised with how the filming day was going. I was feeling like we could do better, tell a better story, get better angles, get better audio, etc. If we’d film a video in a studio or at night when the kiddos are sleeping, we could get way better results.

Also, while Lydia was reviewing a scene on camera that she had just shot, the audio would not play. Turns out, the mic was plugged into the headphone port instead of the audio port. This means, we got poor audio for more than half the video.

A couple of positives about today:

• I filmed myself getting out of bed for the first time. Some of these clips are not very impressive, but can now be improved upon in the future. I find myself critiquing every scene. Usually, there is something that can be improved upon.

• It’ll be fun to watch the “day in the life” video in the future, say, 5, 10, 15 years down the road.

YouTube Studio is telling me that I’ve found my groove. This is based on more that 2,000 hours of watch time. I feel like I am still constantly looking for that groove where the next 5 or 10 videos flow in succession, versus me always trying to decide what to create next.

It’s 11:03 p.m., and I must needs be off to bed. Good night!

Video. Schedule. Pressure.

It’s Thursday. Two days from now it’ll be two weeks since we published our last YouTube video. That means we should be publishing another video on Saturday to keep up with the 2 week rhythm we’ve set for ourselves. I am not sure what kind of video to produce. I have a bunch of ideas, but these ideas are new territory for me, and I worry how those videos would turn out. Also, it feels like there is a lot of friction for filming B-roll for these videos. Perhaps I am just procrastinating. I feel like I do not have long periods of time in which to shoot this footage, and I tell myself that I need a day of dedicated time, or at least half a day, to film the different scenes. I don’t feel like setting up the lighting or the the camera just to film one section just to tear it all down, only to resume again another day.

I feel like I have all sorts of video ideas but these ideas do not fit into a tight niche. I worry that the channel will not perform as well as it could if I follow my varied ideas and concoct a channel that has “a little bit of this, and a little bit of that”. Part of me says that I shouldn’t worry about it. I am simply practicing, and do not need to take myself so seriously. That is probably true. But I do know that stellar creations are enjoyed by a much larger audience. It feels good to create something that is enjoyed by lots of people, not just 7 or 8 people, or whatever.

I may just start writing a script and then film myself and start filming B roll. I think that is the right thing to do. Then the video will be what it will be. At the very least, I will get some practice. Even if I only get this video done by Saturday night instead of Saturday morning, I would feel like I haven’t let myself down.