Here is the latest video post explaining how I chose to construct the image for The Color
Purple by Alice Walker. Please also go check out my facebook page which has quotes and images
from other people’s fan art which I regularly upload during the week!
Reflections on how the project is going so far...
Okay, I have an hour commute between Manchester and Leeds
before I can get to the office. Sometimes this is longer or shorter if I’m
meeting other clients around the North. This gives me a lot of time for work,
catching up on emails, power naps, reading and sketch book. However the wifi is
awful on the train and the carriages swing from left to right making it an
undesirable space for pen and paper. Solution? I’m going to have a rant about
how I feel things are going. Here goes
I just have to reorganise myself, I need to optimise the time
I have on the train for the things I can do. I’m doing it right now, I’m
blogging on the train about to pass Dewsbury. This won’t be uploaded for a
while (sorry for the illusion this occurred in the past). But I am making the
most of this time I have in a constructive way and it will rotate between
picking up emails for ten minutes before I hit the black hole that is the
transpenines. I’ll then have the choice
between reading documents for work, blogging, reading or a power nap. Power
naps have also become important to me, especially when I get up at 06:30 and
usually don’t get home till after 18:00 sometimes 23:30. If I am to have any
creative juices left for the evening a 10-20 snooze can make all the
difference.
I’m beginning to feel a slight well of panic inside myself,
now that I’ve actually told the world about the project. I feel like I have to
make regular posts across the different platforms in order to drive up audience
members as suggested by every other social media buff and active participant with
solid audience numbers behind them.
So I’m aiming to produce two videos a week. The first one is
a book review of the novel which I’ve decided to respond to. Then at the end of
the week is another post which explains how I constructed the image itself and
what the themes are in the image. So I have to be ahead to create these actual
images and have read the book. This felt like something which was manageable in
principle four tasks, make two videos and two images. But then I began to
realise there is a lot more involved and additional tasks which take up lots of
time. For example the videos themselves, I’ve got a body of music and sound
effects collected now, so that part is ok.
Editing is a proper
job and feels like it is massively time consuming. There is something also
incredibly narcissistic and uncomfortable about watching yourself stutter and
stumble only to rearrange, prune and clip those words into a quicker pacier
content. On top of that it can take a while to transcribe the video you’ve made
once it’s been uploaded to Youtube. This totally feels worth it though and
YouTube has made it as easy as possible. You can watch the footage and loop it
back as many times at the speed and section you need so that you can transcribe
the whole of your video. It then auto-sync’s it for you and you can even
re-align where it shows up on screen as you speak. It means that more people
can what the content. My first comment came from someone in Italy, so you never
know who will watch the videos; so making the content as accessible as possible
just makes sense to me.
That’s fine though I anticipate those additions and I feel
like the more experience that I get the more comfortable I’ll become with the
whole process. It’s the other tasks on top up that which is making me feel like
I’ve set myself up to fail though. I’ve create a Facebook page which I will
upload one thing per day on. Sometimes it will just be a quote or an image,
other times it will be links to the video content or an image of the response
I’ve made, the actual work. Other times I’m hoping it will become more about
responding to other people’s uploaded content. That is going to take some time
and effort to nurture, but I see the long term goal of that becoming a
self-sustaining element once I’ve built up enough people and capacity and
interest. That feels like a long, long way away right now.
Then there is all the additional extras which I hadn’t
properly considered. Like thumb nails-they’re a little pain in the butt! I have
to find a suitable face shot which doesn’t make me look like I’ve overdosed or
hurled mid-sentence. Freeze framing video often results in closed eyes and
unusual postures. Then it’s layering up the title and fiddling with light
affects as these little buggers are individual calling cards. Each one needs to
excite and appeal to viewers in order to get people to click on my content. All
of these parts are actually fine, but what really irritates me is fiddling
around with pixel size to match the 1280 by 720 frame! I’ve got it sussed now,
but for a while I could understand why the thumbnails were being cropped and
there is nowhere to re-adjust the position of the frame.
Now on top of these tasks I’m trying to keep up with other
content creators that I’ve subscribed to and I’m now more invested to make
comments that are genuine and instead of just thinking I should say something
about it, I actually do it. As it’s another possible route to draw in people
longer term. Every comment potentially might resonate with someone in some way
causing them to look at my profile and possibly then clicking on the channel.
Here is hoping.
It’s also incredibly annoying that I broke my phone because
those lose minutes where I can watch content comment, or flick through twitter
to reach out to more people has been sabotaged by my own clumsy nature. It also
frustrates me that I’ve said I will be uploading pictures on Instagram but
can’t because you only do through your phone. Whereas at least with twitter I
can do it on a computer if I need too.
This post became really ranty, apologies! Maybe finishing
this reflection on the train home tired, was not the best idea either. The
learning continues…
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