I thought vlogging (video blogging) would be easy. I thought I’d whip out my digital camera, turn it on video mode, and start talking. I thought I’d have a beautiful video to share with everyone, with virtually no work.
Oh my. I learned a few lessons. Here are the challenges I faced and how I overcame them, to create yesterday’s well-received video blog post (there is one curse word about 5 minutes into the video, so you may not want to watch with kids around):
1. Deciding WHERE to film.
Which room in my house has the best lighting? All of our windows face east, so we get great sunshine in the morning. I wanted to film in the living room — but it’s kinda messy. Bedroom is out of the question, it’s too dark in there. The only other room with a window is the nursery. So, that’s where I settled.
2. Framing the video.
Another problem with the living room: I didn’t really have a good place to set the camera at the right height and then seat myself comfortably in front of it. In the nursery, I put the camera on the corner of the crib, then sat on the bed. In this spot, if Maia wanted to roll around, she could do so right next to me. Since the crib is a sturdy surface, the camera wasn’t going anywhere.
3. Re-arranging myself and the camera.
So I know where I’m recording. I sit down, test-record about 15 seconds of video, then reach out and grab the camera to watch the video. Whoops. If the camera was in a good spot, I’ve now moved it from there. If it was in a bad spot, I don’t know where it was so I can avoid putting it there again. So I watched the video, thought the framing looked right, and tried to replace the camera. THEN, I realized I no longer knew exactly where my bum had been. So I recorded another short vid with a onesie under my butt, watched it without moving the camera, and voila! I was almost ready to go.
4. Ambient lighting and noise.
As it turns out, while the framing looked great, there were other problems. One: the blinds on the window to my right were pulled wide open, so the right side of my face glowed freakishly while the left rested in mysterious shadow. Noises from the construction outside rumbled behind my tiny voice. I closed the window, then (after a lot of cursing and tugging because they were stuck), pulled the blinds shut. However, they’re vertical blinds and two on the end are missing, which is why in the final video, there’s still a bit more light on the right side of my face than the left. C’est la vie. At least you can’t hear the construction.
5. Make sure your camera is able to record all that you have to say!
Finally, I’m ready to go. My camera’s in place. I’m in place. The lighting and sound are as good as they’re gonna get. I press Record and start chatting up a storm. A few minutes later, mid-sentence… my camera turns off. WTF?
Turns out my camera is recording at the largest size and highest frame rate, which we have discovered will only record for 62 seconds for some reason. And my camera automatically shuts off after a bit of time being unused. I ended up dropping down to a lower frame rate (15 fps) but the same resolution (640×480), and then set my camera in record mode in a corner until the memory card ran out of space, just to be sure there were no funky restrictions on video length in that mode. There aren’t.
And then I replaced the batteries, because it’d be my luck that on my next attempt, they’d run out.
6. Speaking in front of a camera is different than speaking face-to-face.
As it turns out, having that one screwy attempt taught me more than anything else. I noticed that I talked too fast. I noticed that I looked up and to my left a lot, or down in front of me where I had my notes (and I definitely suggest writing notes to direct yourself!) I paused hesitantly A LOT. I spent too much time thinking, then spewing out sentences with indistinguishable words.
On my second attempt, I made a pointed effort to look at the camera. I slowed down my speech, made certain to enunciate my words, and in doing so, gave myself more time to think ahead so there were fewer pauses. I won’t say my video was perfect, but I am very happy with it. It shows my personality, and still gets my points across. I felt really comfortable in front of the camera, and I think that comes out in the end.
Of course, I was super nervous about actually putting it online and in front of people, but hey… what’s the use of recording all that if I don’t actually show it off?
Oh, and a final tip: Don’t forget the day. At the end of the video, I say “I hope you enjoyed this installment of Girl Talk….” and look down at Maia, “…. Thursday.” Because in my mind, I thought “Tuesday”. Fortunately, I realized that wasn’t right and corrected myself before I got it wrong on camera.
Thank you all for your support, and I hope these little lessons help encourage you to record your own video posts!
