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.