Another Vlog. This took longer than I had planned, mostly because I planned to do some crazy stupid graphics animation, which I decided was nowhere near necessary for a vlog. The first version I did I tried to do some motion tracking, but the software I was using wasn’t liking the long video. So after a few days of frustration, I was at work and decided to go into an empty room and film. the above is the result. Now I still tried to make the one shot above too complicated too, but I think for a long, talky video it’s about as complicated as it should be.
I’ve been shooting all my recent videos, except the Low Light test shot on the Kiss X4, on my old point-and-shoot, a Canon PowerShot SD960 IS. It’s a tiny camera, but I think it does better 720p video than almost all the vlogging cameras on the market. It was a gift, though. I wouldn’t buy one just for video. But it also takes some amazing pictures as well. I’d be hard pressed to get rid of it either way. My next vlogging camera will be the new HD Sanyo waterproof Xacti. I still love my SD Xacti, but I haven’t used it since I went full HD. I haven’t shot with my iSight either, which is what I did most of my old vlogs on. Hey Apple, when IS the 720p or 1080p iSight coming out? This should be a priority…. I want to get a new computer soon and I’d love to have a new iSight on it. I will be getting an iPhone 4 when they’re back in stock here in Japan (I think), but I’m not too sure if I’ll be using it for vlogging yet. I’ll have to do a side by side test with my little Canon.
Anyway, this is the first shoutout video. I will be making more. I don’t leave people out in these videos, I promote who is on my mind and who I have time to talk about. If I had my way I’d do hour long videos talking about how great my friends, subscribers, and the people I watch are. Anyway, here’s the list of links for the people in this video…
Lastly, I’m having a lot of fun working on music lately. I’m going to try and have original music on every video. Though I will contact some artists for permission to use their stuff for future projects, I like making quick stuff that sounds decent. If you have access to Garageband, you have no excuse not to have copyright-free, original music on your videos. I’m mostly using the banks of loops that come with Garageband and a few 3rd party plugins and expansion packs, but I eventually want to get back into creating 100% original stuff again. This is great practice, if anything.
Not sure what I’m going to do next. I filmed all my stuff for the “Life in a Day” movie project on Youtube yesterday. I have a lot of editing to do, as I recorded a lot of my sound in surround on my Zoom H2. One of the best recorders for the money, I highly recommend it.
Lazy Day Vlogs are exactly what they say they are: Vlogs when I have nothing better to do. The one thing I have in Japan that I never really had in America is tons and tons of free time. Even though I do have projects that I get commissioned or hired to do, as said above, I don’t have anything that’s be a long commitment. When I have a big project, I utilize this free time well… but when I don’t I feel a bit guilty and lazy. I’m use to having a 10-14 hour a day full time job with freelance on top of that. That was the reason I had a hard time making videos before I moved to Japan. When I came here it was a night and day difference and being burnt out and having time to recover was a deadly combination for laziness. It’s not as bad as I peg it to be, I just love throwing the guilt on myself. Helps keep me from staying in bad places.
Anyway, I’ve been working on a lot of personal things too. My speaking is one of them. I want to be a better speaker and work on my thought process when telling a story or idea. My goal is to have as little unnecessary edits in videos like these as possible. I almost want to start an “Edit Jar” that I have to throw a 100¥ coin in every time I have to do it. I don’t like having to re-do a video because of one mistake just so I don’t have to have an edit, so It’s best to try and do without them in the first place! Maybe I buy acting or speaking classes with the money…
That said, I’m having fun with the 8-bit theme. I have about five or six music tracks already done and some random graphics, so it won’t be going away for awhile.
I still like this blogging thing. I should do it more.
So it’s been awhile. But it’s not like I haven’t been working on videos. I’ve made a few, mostly for other people. But there was one that kinda had me stop and rethink my whole plan for new videos.
The problem is me. But I’m also going to blame this chocolate.
Real Food Porn?
Yes it's upside down. Yes this is an outtake.
That’s the Pleasure & Pain dark chocolate bar infused with naga jolokia chili. I ordered it from Handy Candy in the UK. When I first saw this bar on the website about a year ago, I was dying to try it. I love crazy spicy things. I checked around, and there were really no videos of people trying this. I was excited to make a tasting and reaction video.
Hoping that the chocolate itself would incite an interesting reaction I didn’t really make a plan. I’ve had plenty of spicy food before but I don’t think I’ve ever had anything with naga jolokia in it. I was hoping for something extreme. I even bought some milk for the occasion. The actual chocolate bar itself had a warning on it. I had seen videos of people trying naga jolokia stuff and even just habanero peppers and freaking out. Well I’ve had raw habaneros before and they made me sweat and I felt a bit of pain, but nothing I couldn’t keep a straight face for. I guess I should haven’t expected too much because of this.. but it’s the naga jolokia… the hottest pepper in existence.
Little did I know just how unexciting my adventure would be...
So I gave a bit of an introduction and tried some. I then sat there for 2 minutes waiting for something to happen. I’ve had the Lindt red chili pepper dark chocolate before (which I highly recommend) and it was a bit similar, it just felt like much thicker chocolate when melted. The spiciness was completely different, though. It’s kinda hard to explain. Like… super spicy melted mexican cheese. I didn’t even really sweat. I had two pieces and didn’t even have to go for the milk.
How boring.
I guess my tolerance for spicy stuff is a lot higher than I thought. I have yet to have anything here in Japan that’s really been too much for me. I’ve had the spiciest reimen (a type of cold ramen that is famous around here) and those crazy habanero chips that I saw on the net years ago. I know it’s me and not the chocolate, as when I brought the rest to share with my coworkers they reacted hilariously. There is nothing like this in Japan and they all tried it out of curiosity. Some of them can’t handle any spiciness whatsoever. Maybe I should have had the camera on them…
As for the video I did… It’s terrible. It’s just me rambling and then talking about how it wasn’t that spicy at all. I tried to edit it down and salvage it, but it just isn’t possible. So this video will never see the light of day.
BORING MAKES ME ANGRY
It made me rethink about my videos and all the videos I had planned. I think the biggest problem is, well, me. Even though I have been working on it, I’m terrible in front of the camera. I’m much better behind the camera. I think it’s because I’m a perfectionist, and yet I know I’m in no way perfect myself. I’m a good judge of my own talent. In fact, I see myself as a good judge of talent in general. I have a hard time making videos because I feel I don’t have the talent, my self or others, to reach the quality I want and need. The worst part is, when I just DO something, something that isn’t totally great or didn’t take that much skill… people love it. For example, the above is how to make a bad video. Well, here is how you make a GOOD video:
And not only that, it teaches you how to put a Nintendo into a toaster. I did the music, or shall I say… I pressed a few keys in Garageband and music happened somehow. I’ve known Richard for over 10 years now. Even his first videos had something in them that was good… he had a talent for this kind of stuff. I could see it. I still can. He has no training in video whatsoever. In fact, 10 years ago he inspired me to go to film school myself with something he made in high school.
And yes, I know that you can make videos without people. That’s hard too, but I’m working on some ideas using such. I could do more environment shots with my camera, those seem to do well. But that’s not all I want to do. I guess my real problem is that I do too much.
I’m going to try again. I’m going to see what I can do with myself. I’m going to collab with a few of my friends and then try to get a few ideas I’ve had written down actually done. That’s another thing, I have to find a way to get all of my long standing ideas done before somebody like MysteryGuitarMan does them, like he has many times already. Oh well, it’s my fault. It’s what happens when you wait.
I’ll try and write here more. I’m just worried that I’ll end up writing long winded posts like this all the time because I don’t know when to shut the hell up.
These were all shot on the Canon 50 mm f/1.8 II except the next to last shot, which was shot on the kit 18-55 mm. The sun had just set and I decided to see what the camera and lens combo could do in low light. All of these were shot in ISO 100 except the last shot of the spider which was ISO 400, I think. I don’t know about you, but I think the results are amazing. Absolutely no grain with very little light source. The spider shot has a tiny bit of grain in the render, but the raw has none. Also, that white circle is the crescent moon out of focus. There was no color correction or filters used in this video.
All the sound was recorded on my Zoom H2 in surround sound mode. Yes, the rice fields are PACKED with frogs and they are THAT loud, sometimes more. Usually the Shinkansen is the loudest thing in the area, but they almost drown it out. The song playing in the background plays every day at noon, 5 PM, and 9 PM throughout the entire city. It’s called “Nocturne for Kitakami”.
My original goal that night was to attempt to film or photograph the bats that were flying like crazy around my apartment the night before, but that night they weren’t flying in too much of a group. My goal is to somehow get a good picture of a bat before I move from this place.
I swear I didn’t mean to neglect this thing. It took me forever to decide on and find a blog layout that I was happy with. The previous one was WAY too busy and sometimes even hard to read. What’s the use of having content of it’s difficult to deal with? I’m absolutely in love with this layout and it’s going to be really easy to edit and expand upon. The banner at the top with all the links is going to change a lot, but my goal is to make it interactive. I’m still learning more CSS and such, so the overall blog design isn’t going to change.
As for videos, I have SO MANY VIDEOS coming it’s not even funny. The one above is my first youtube video in awhile. After I finished that I was busy working on Current TV VCAMs. (There will be another post about that made today) I’m still trying to decide if I want to make another channel for vlogs, keep them on my main channel, or just cut them out completely. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Some people who have come to this site found me via Youtube when I was a guest editor in July 2007. Some articles on other sites still link to here so I figure I should address a few things.
1. To my knowledge Youtube no longer does the Guest Editor program.
2. I can not get your videos featured. I don’t have any crazy connections to Youtube.
3. I took my video down because it hasn’t got any hits in over a year. It was the least viewed video in Guest Editor history, so it wasn’t really worth watching anyway.
4. I got absolutely nothing for being a guest editor. I didn’t even get any recognition, subscribers, hits, or views. The people I featured did, though. I thought I would at least get a shirt, but I didn’t. I even got rejected from the partner program.
It’s so weird, because for awhile I still got a lot of questions about all of this. Though they have died down since youtube changed it’s format, I want to make this post so it can be found on google and so I can refer to it later.
