Monday, March 11, 2019

Making Movies

In every attempt I've made at creating a watchable video, I've failed.

I can't walk and film at the same time without my footage looking like something out of the Blair Witch Project. The camera shakes and I move with such a jerked haste that my videos are not for those with weak stomachs.

I've always been unscripted in my videos, so I sometimes have trouble finding the right words or my monologue sounds unnatural.

In recent years, there's only one video that I made, where the camera is solidly on a tripod and I stay still. Though my video wasn't scripted, I didn't sound like a complete idiot. That was my 19-minute beer review that I did a couple of years ago. It's here, if you're interested.

But back in the early days of camcorders—okay, not too early but way back in 1997—I was purely hopeless. Nevertheless, that didn't stop me from trying.

In the days of mini-VHS recorders, I used a camcorder to capture a typical day of teaching in Chŏnju, South Korea. A then-friend, who came to visit DW and me, helped capture the images.

About 15 years ago, I transferred the VHS video to DVD; this weekend, I uploaded that day to YouTube. My day in Chŏnju is broken into several videos but for this blog post, I'm sharing only Part 1. You're welcome to visit my YouTube channel and view them (and any of my videos) at your leisure.

Here's the video (and yes, my hair had been cut at Kim's Hair). My apologies for the fuzzy intro. The camera lost its focus (as I do many times through the half-hour video). This is a straight transfer, from DVD to YouTube, so I apologize for the lack of editing.



My idea is to eventually create a Brown Knowser vlog, which I will occasionally share on The Brown Knowser.

I hope to improve my skills as a videographer (they can't get worse). My next travel video will be in April, after I return from Mexico, with the following one in May, after my South Korean trip.


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