Slow Down, You Red Neck (face rather than neck, but face wasn't funny).

Last night was a quite momentous night, although nothing of any great importance actually happened. I did, in the dark of night whilst utilising the wonderful area that is my conservatory, record my first YouTube video. I thought it would be interesting to do a split personality thing where I play two characters roughly known as twins.

My wife had gone out to some fund raising event for Avon and my son had kindly stayed in bed from the moment of his despatch up the wooden hill. All was good, I had the house to myself and now, finally, I was embarking on something that I have only talked about for the last few months and probably bored the life out of everyone unfortunate to witness my ramblings.

Remember that it is pitch black by 8pm at this end of the year and the conservatory only has ambient lights. Also remember that I tend to turn red at the earliest sign of hard work or physical activity. Now remember that there was only me and a camera, ambient lights and one daylight balanced cheap studio light. Yes daylight balanced, at night, pitch black, I know – idiot.

It is very hard to light someone who is not in the place of said lighting when you are trying to diminish the signs of a double chin. It is also very hard to frame someone who is in fact doing the framing whilst not sitting in the frame to... err... frame. It isn’t that hard to act one line at a time, which will help in quick editing, and it isn’t hard to do three or fourth takes of the same line with differing intonations.

However, given all of the technical stuff and script writing and storyboarding, which I dealt with already and hopefully well, it is hard for me to spend enough time doing anything. As soon as I’ve started I want to finish not because I don’t want to be doing it, but just because I work at lightning speed.  With limited time you might think this is wise, get in, get it filmed and get out before the wife comes home to ridicule me for being stupid for wanting to make these videos and the boy cries for his Daddy.

The problem is, and always has been although I cannot stop myself from doing it, is I do not take my time. I rush things thinking ‘I must get it done, now’, which doesn’t make for good production values or the redness of my face.  The redness might be down to high blood pressure and my over weightedness, but will never look good on camera even with such an excuse. The answer, edit it to black and white, which I might do. I think there is definitely a place for black and white films in this 3D high definition era, don’t you think?

So for my next instalment of this saga I must impose strict guide lines and practises to make sure I do a better job.  I’m still going to edit this video though to see where my starting point really is. The perfectionist in me is not going to be very happy and I think he might just be a little too red faced to make an appearance.

     

We Are On FACEBOOK

For all of you lovely people who like Facebook and like following people on Facebook and like err liking people on Facebook you can now do Facebook liking of us.  Phil has created our Facebook page and you can all go and join up, sign up, or whatever the hell it is you do over there and start making comments and stuff by going to www.facebook.com/Transmit7 hoo-rah!

Hopefully we will get our fingers out of our proverbial and start throwing up the odd thingamy-bob too. So please follow us on twitter at @Transmit7 and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Transmit7 and make friendly.

Can Things Get Any Worse?

So for ages now I have been working towards shooting my first YouTube video and I’ve finally filmed what I thought would be my first segment only to find several problems.  Firstly the laptop I have that I was intending to edit on has a really sh*t graphics card. Although it is a HD laptop apparently it is still not good enough to edit HD video on. The logic for this escapes me. Also the green screen that I created is just not good enough, it is simply rubbish. Finally my own performance was diabolical.

These where three, seemingly, insurmountable problems that put me in a hideous mood all day on Sunday.  I thought I was finally getting somewhere with my studio plans, but no the God of all ‘oh no you don’t’ came down and smited me long and hard.  But the torment wasn’t just left to my filming aspirations, oh no, also my camera decided to pack up, break down, get f*cked and so did my Sky+ box (the second to do so).

I really thought that someone was trying to tell me something. My wife was annoyed as The X Factor was on and she couldn’t watch it. So I got the interweb up and made her at least a bit less pissed off with the fact that something we spend literally hundreds of pounds on a year didn’t work.

I started to work out if I could use either of my old cameras to film on, which in the end I couldn’t do properly, but just then the broken HD video / stills camera started to work again. Hopefully it won’t annoyingly die on me again. Then the Sky+ box started to work again and none of the recorded programs had disappeared so I was getting happier. Three things had failed and two of them were coming back to life.

This just leaves the filming stuff. I think I know why I was so cr*p. I think I know why the green screen didn’t work and I think I will be getting my old edit suite dusted down to give me the power to edit properly, it’s just sitting in my Father-in-law’s office getting unused.  It was just so annoying to have so many problems and doubly annoying to feel so bad and be told constantly by my wife that I was grumpy all day.

So my conclusion is this a) If your technology lets you down, give it a breather and see if it is just a glitch before placing a steel toe capped boot through it. b) If you let yourself down just relax and learn from your cock ups and try again, and maybe by the time you have calmed down your tech will work to. And finally, this one is for everyone else c) Maybe if you know someone who is not on top form and having a bad day because everything is going wrong just maybe you should stop calling them grumpy and pointing out how horrible they are and try and cheer them the f*ck up!  

Please Don’t Judge Me Yet

Finally I have had a somewhat successful first shoot in my shed studio.  The shed.. sorry... studio is 8 feet by 6 feet and filled around the edges with stuff you usually find in sheds, such as lawn mowers of which I have one, garden chairs of which I have many and the obligatory spider of which I have even more of.  Now the shed has four lights and a handmade 4 feet wide five feet tall green screen, tripod and autocue and can once and for all be known as a studio.

After one, shall we say, test recording in my shed a week or so ago the main outcome from said testing was that my face was well lit even though a little red from my physical excursions leading up to the first press of the record button and that I didn’t cast a lot of shadow on my all important green screen.  It is very important, I am told, to reduce the amount of shadow placed upon a green screen to allow the technology involved to transport the person in front of the green screen to where ever the computer tells it to well, which I think I have accomplished.

Of course I’ve been arsing around trying to set things up just so, and make it as easy as possible to just slip in to the studio when everyone has gone to bed to record my videos without interruption and more importantly to stop anyone from standing outside the shed door in the dark sniggering at my attempts at creating entertainment.

Having finished the preparations and having rewritten my first introductory videos script, the first draft was very poor and I’ll leave the rest of the world to judge the second draft, I was ready to power up the lights and let the camera roll, although cameras don’t roll anymore.  I was ready and set to capture my first video, the first ‘The Tag Hour’ episode or at least the ‘to camera’ part of it.   I would film the inserts and comedic interjections from the secondary character the following night, which just happens to be tonight as I write this.  

And then came the amazing understanding of how easy everyone else seems to make it look. Whether their videos are scripted and scrolled in front of their faces on an autocue or not, it became quite clear to me that even though I know I can do it and have little trouble telling other people how to do it as soon as I pushed record on the camera my knees started to wobble, my face turned red and my tongue tried to escape through the back of my head.

I have acted before and I see no real difference in what I am attempting now and after several takes I was beginning to feel more at home.  I’m sure after a few weeks making several episodes of my fledgling show that things will become easier and more natural and my imagination will start firing and they may even become funny and entertaining. But it was a shock and it will be even more of a shock when I come to edit the footage over the next few days and see my awkward face staring back at me, red, uncomfortable and screwed up.  What have I let myself in for?  Only time will tell.

Our 1000th Twitter Follower is Revealed

Here is @theveryshortone, or Hannah to her Friends and family, who became our 1000th Twitter follower. We promised a T-shirt and we delivered. Hannah is wearing our own design called 'Freedin' Da Monkey' and Hannah asked us to sign it for her, how celeb are we? Of course this new found fame wore off quickly and it was back to the day jobs.

We are now only approximately 400 followers away from 1500 and our second set milestone and another T-shirt give away so tell everyone you know that they too could have one of our amazing (coughs) designs plastered across their chest in the very near future all they've got to do is follow us on Twitter at @Transmit7.