Had a productive day, both on the filming side and on the editing/ computer side. A word of advice for technophobes out there: working out how to use these new cameras, with only internal or flash memory, is quite a hassle; they don’t advise you that you’ll also need to spend $40 on some conversion software, and that you’ll need to be willing to faff about with preferences and compression rates once you’ve got it. Or maybe they’ve just made it hard for Mac users.
Anyway I am attempting to upload all the videos I’ve made to Youtube, since this software (Voltaic) has a nifty setting which sends everything you convert straight there, and of course I still have a channel on there from when I was doing my Facebook diaries. Unfortunately it’s failed so far, and, as usual, no reason given as to what the problem is. Cue another 2 hours reading forums to try and make sense of it.
But IF it succeeds, I was envisaging a kind of diary/ bank of videos, all replete with appropriate title plus instruction, showing the results of my interpretation of them, like a score with corresponding action. This would allow me to use the footage in different ways, firstly as already mentioned in a kind of daily database fashion, then also shortened into 20 seconds fragments for selling to stock video sites and finally as footage for the separate film I’ll make as a result, which will have no audio but will have a voiceover instead. I think that’s the plan so far. See below for one of the videos, and also to go to Youtube channel.
Meanwhile, yesterday we went on a day trip to New Haven, home of Yale- and IKEA. We even went there for lunch as Sujin, one of the artists, had yet to experience the specific pleasures of IKEA. Lunch was pretty good though.
New Haven was pleasant enough, we went to Yale Art Museum which was also pleasant but hardly exciting, there was quite a wide (but not especially extensive) range of work, from African to 20th Century American and European. The visit paid off though, as I got an idea related to the stock videos and titles of paintings. Will think about this more and return to it later on, as it could be my plan is about to change beyond repair.
Finally, its Independence Day here this weekend. Americans get to gloat over getting rid of us, we get to gloat that we don’t even need an Independence Day…the joys of petty national rivalries. Not that anyone here actually gives a toss, but it’s a great excuse for barbeques, hot dogs, burgers, beer, corn, you get the picture, and in fact we are starting early since that’s what’s on today’s menu. Especially corn since our chef, Bob, inadvertently ordered 8 bags of corn (instead of 8 ears) so our kitchen resembles a corn-field and we will be eating it til next week. Lucky it tastes so good then.
I’m off now to try and catch the sunset for one of the video clips, which might involve a bit of a hike since here, deep in the forest, the trees cut out the sun’s descent. There must be a vantage point somewhere though, up near the falls.
Action 2: what could be more boring that watching someone meditate?
