A recent post on Fuzzygalore.com about the voices of bloggers caught my attention, in part because I wonder who’s behind the blogs and what they sound like, but more importantly it reminded me of thoughts and ideas about video and how I might incorporate that media here. When I was in graduate school I made a lot of video with little miniDV and point and shoot cameras. I tried to upload one that gave a bit of insight into what makes me tick but YouTube had pulled it because I was bad and used some music by Brian Eno.
The scooter video above is old, poor quality, and was made not long after I got my Vespa LX 150 in 2006 when I had big ideas about video. But that medium is a lot more work that shooting still pictures and I wasn’t sure I had anything to say.
I tried the GoPro camera and while the capability was astounding I didn’t see anyone having much interest in watching the road ahead, at least not if I wasn’t running into something or some similar misfortune.
Perhaps the winter doldrums are pushing my thoughts towards other things. If I could draw I might be considering a comic strip. Video seems to be on my mind now and maybe there’s a role for video and blogging on Scooter in the Sticks.
Maybe something different might surface.
Video is a LOT of work. It takes planning and lots of editing to make a short compelling video. And please don’t end up becoming a dork with one of these GoPro’s on top of your helmet….
I like what you did in this video its a nice opening for a documentary but then what?
My dream is to do extended road trips on a Vespa and combine photography with a audio documentary. One can listen to the story and go online to see the images or vise versa…
There is a certain attraction to the methodical nature of producing videos — for me at least.
This particular video was an early experiment when I was thinking it would be cool to post video stories. I actually have a lot of footage for others that I had planned in my head but never got around to editing.
The “so what” question is an important one. What am I actually trying to say or accomplish? For the one posted here it was merely to make a video and nothing more. Like you though, I would like to do something more documentary and reflective. That’s risky though — who cares what I do or think….
I’m still turning it all over in my head.
I slap non-descript videos on my blog just to liven them up. I’m not ambitious enough to add music and sub titles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxzYyiVpTvU
I add videos to my blog just to liven them up. Nothing as ambitious as yours Steve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxzYyiVpTvU
Jim,
Video certainly can change the mood and feeling of a blog post but content is the challenge!
as the others said, videos take a lot of editing time…..and some planning as well as you’re shooting.
my gopro is the initial base model and not as sharp as it used to be…..but I hesitate to buy another as I’ve “made do” without a lot of videos in the last couple of years of blogging.
as you allude, we shall see here as well…
Planning does take time but the shooting and construction of videos not solely based on GoPro footage are EXTREMELY time consuming to produce. It means setting up the camera on a tripod, then riding through the scene to get what you need. Do this a dozen or more times and you see more video production than riding. So unless the message or story is good it’s hardly worth doing. In my opinion…
I just started with the videos since I tried the Polar Bear Challenge. I think it is mostly aimed at moto-vloggers since that was the format of all of the other submitted videos. I.e. some sort of narrative unrelated to the ride video. I think mine were the only ones with a fixed camera, music and any narrative was text on the screen. Not very interesting but 3-minute videos were part of the challenge.
I like watching your videos and the 3 minute limits for projects are good goals. I think it’s always better to leave people wanting more than have them looking at their watch wondering when it will be over…
Video Blogging is the way to go, people no longer want print media, most people will go to a video website for anything from instructions, to laughs, or news . 2015+ are the years of videos and films.
Video blogging is definitely growing with so many tools now available. I’ve been thinking for a long time I need to take advantage of the media.
But then, I’m old, and don’t do anything exciting. If I could crash once a week on video I bet I would have a lot of followers!