March 2015 – Wallace Darwin

Third shoot is a charm

2015-03-23

After a couple of weeks of messing up in various ways, I finally got some footage that I am happy with. It was a cold, clear, sunny day and although it took me a couple of hours of sitting on a bench to get what I wanted, I think I have what I need for my first episode.

The focus of this blog has become pretty clear: I am going to talk about living things and where they come from. It is a big topic, but I think I have a lot to say on the topic.

I also got some more B-roll. I have been focusing on things around my neighborhood, random stuff that I figure I will find a use for.

Images below…

Second day shooting

2015-03-17

I got out again to shoot today, and this time I had a bit of script worked out. All the technical stuff is fine, but I am still struggling to get my words together. I made some progress, but I don’t think that anything is worth using from today. Nice day though, clouds rolling in and out with a bit of sunshine poking through, so I cannot complain about wasting some time outside.

Theo’s been teaching us the importance of what he calls “B-roll”, which is basically the images you see when you do not want to show the person speaking on the blog. I got some good B-roll, which is good because the less of me, the better.

Images below…

First day shooting

OceanParkway 2015-03-09

Today I got out to do my first day of shooting. It was cold, but that is fine by me.

I decided to shoot around the block from my house on Ocean Parkway. Not sure why this spot seemed right, but this was what I was feeling. I have spent a lot of time out on those park benches over the years, so I guess they feel comfortable.

I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out what I want to say. I realized that just showing up and talking to the camera without a lot to say leads to a whole lot of nothing…

Finally getting serious…

Okay, I am finally getting serious about making this video blog.

I started taking this adult education course down at the Ryder Library branch in January. It was the dead of winter and I was feeling pretty sick of being inside all the time, mostly doing nothing. So I was down at the library and I saw these posters for a class in “Web Logging and Biographical Media”. I always see these posters for free how-to classes and most of them seem pretty stupid, but for whatever reason this course seemed pretty interesting.

The guy who’s teaching the class, Theo Carroll, he is this old guy who basically seems to have a passion for getting everyone to tell their story. He has his own blog (actually a couple I think) and he knows all about how to set up your blog and put stuff up on it. His thing is video blogging, and I think I am going to follow him on that one. I bought a cheap video camera a few years back — I can’t even remember why — so I have that. And for some reason video seems like the way for me to make something.

We have been learning the nuts-and-bolts of how to shoot and edit videos, how to render them for the web, and how to embed them in a blog. Theo really knows his stuff and has us up and running using our own computers and equipment.

So you can see that I have taken the plunge: I have my own URL (didn’t really know what that meant, either, until Theo explained it). Theo says that WordPress is a great platform for this kind of blog, and he has been going over how to set up a WordPress site in his course. This exists so you know Theo knows his stuff.

Now all I need to do is put something up here…