Shake, Rattle, and Roll

I'm still underestimating how long it takes to make a video.

On Monday evening, I started editing and compiling 13-year-old video clips that I stumbled upon while looking for a random photo to share on my social-media sites. I figured that it would take me a couple of days to complete—a couple of hours each night until it was done.

When I finished work, on Monday, I thought I would start by creating an intro and an outro to this video and placing all of the clips into a new project. That was my plan for day one.

But I made the intro and outro in one take, and it only took me about a half hour, including the setup (lights and video camera) and moving this video into the project folder that contained the older clips. It took about 15 to 20 minutes to search through royalty-free songs and find a suitable soundtrack, and by the end of the first hour, I had my project files uploaded to a library in my video-editing software, Final Cut Pro X.

So, I kept going.

When Kid 1 returned home from work, I was more than halfway through the video. Everything was going smoothly. I did have to search through the software to figure out one special effect: there was a panned shot that I liked but wished it ran backwards. Once I figured that out, I had to further crop it so that people, cars, and bicycles would not be seen moving in the wrong direction.

Kid 1 had a particular craving for dinner, and asked if she could make it for us. I was happy to let her prepare our supper while I continued work on my video.

I took a break when dinner was ready (it was a delicious meal of teriaki salmon filets, brown rice with vegetables, and a mango salad that she had made for a pot luck on the weekend, but had enough leftovers for two people) and also cleaned the kitchen when we were finished.

It was another great daddy-daughter moment (we spent some time together, on Sunday, watching The Monkees on YouTube).

With the kitchen cleaned, I sat down at another computer to write yesterday's blog post. I knew exactly what I wanted to say so I knew it wouldn't take more than a half hour to write it up and schedule it. I then returned upstairs, to the study (where I shot the intro and outro), and continued work on the video.

When I realized that the video was going to be more than 20 minutes in length, I started cutting. I also sped up a few clips.

I told myself that few people would want to watch this video to the end and that I was making it more for myself than for my viewers. As I stated in yesterday's blog post (an in the video), the shaking of the camera that was attached to my handle bars make The Blair Witch Project look as though it was shot with a camera on a gimble.

When my smartphone signalled to me that it was bedtime, I was almost finished. I had just a few more clips to edit and then add the outro clip and final title screen. I played the finished video, trimmed it down some more, and then exported the project to an MP4 file.

Even for me, watching it was tough. But it was done, and all I had left to do was upload it to my YouTube channel. While the video was uploading, I quickly made a thumbnail photo for the video tile and added it to the YouTube project.

With the video being rendered on YouTube, I got ready for bed and took my lung meds. Yeah, I got to bed an hour later than usual but the video was done.

If you've got a little more than 16 minutes of free time, give it a view. But I warn you, there's a lot of shake, rattle and roll.

If you like my (other) videos, please subscribe to my channel. I have a very small community but I'd like to see 250 subscribers by the end of the year.

I've already started work on my next video, and with the speed at which I can now put them together, I'm hoping to have it done either at the end of this month or the beginning of September.

Stay tuned.