Still Trying to Self-Teach Myself Final Cut Pro…

…but it’s gotten a hell of a lot easier now that I’ve sort of gotten my head around the basics of color correction and color grading. I’m not a huge fan of the way that the interface presents itself in FCPX, with the color board and the knobs, but I’ve got a rough workflow worked out after messing around with the salvage of a video I ended up not posting.

Actually found this free plugin that allows you to create adjustment layers you can apply color grades to – something that my version of FCPX doesn’t really let me do. I’ve seen a lot of videos that incorporate Motion into the mix, but this is miles easier for someone like me who’s still rather illiterate towards this whole thing.

Here’s the link for anyone who’s interested: https://sellfy.com/p/Nxcc/

After you install it, you basically just drag and drop it on your timeline after you’ve finished with your edit and your primary color correction. Then you can just open up some color correction on your snazzy new adjustment layer, and apply a uniform grade to all your clips. It’s so much easier than individually grading each clip, and I definitely wish I’d found out about it sooner…

 

Still Trying to Self-Teach Myself Final Cut Pro…

I Hear “Creamy” Being Used To Describe Paper A Lot…

…and I get it, but it still sounds kind of gross sometimes.

Why am I thinking about creamy paper? Well, I started journaling in earnest the other day, despite what I said in this post from August of last year. Maybe I’m just in a different head space now. I don’t know. I talked a lot about how there was so much minutia that I’d have to lay out on a page – that I’d just end up boring myself over the sheer amount of nothing I’d be committing to what’s basically now written history. But I’m reading that now and thinking about how much we forget with every day.

As human beings, we’re all, at least, acutely aware of the fact that we don’t retain everything. But if you sit back and think about the sheer amount of dust that’s piled away in that head of yours, it’s all a little bit staggering. And I sort of rage against that aspect of, well, being, by making videos – committing certain memories into visual containers, and stringing them together into projects that I want to share with people.

But you can’t save everything. And the amount of video it would take to even try would be exhausting. Hell, just look at vloggers dropping in and out of the Youtube game nowadays.

I think my problem was that I was thinking of a handwritten journal as something for posterity outside of myself first and foremost. And while I do think it’s true that all writers write with even a subconscious want for someone to read their work outside of themselves, I’m thinking more and more recently that I do want to do this for me.

Thoughts on their own just kind of vanish into the ether after they’re had – regardless of the context, emotion, or weight behind their conception. Yeah, I can’t save them all, but I can save some. There’s something comforting – almost meditative about putting them down in this little black (fourteenfuckingdollar) Moleskine I carry around with me.

I Hear “Creamy” Being Used To Describe Paper A Lot…

Upwards

It’s been exactly a week since I hiked the Stairway to Heaven in Vernon, NJ. I’ve got a mess of footage backlogged on my computer, and I’m still not completely sure what kind of video I want to come out of it.

On the other hand, it’s been about a month since the FOMO video came out.

I keep going back to the process of making that video in my head. It was this structured (though completely chaotic) process that saw me with a script in my hand, a rough shot sheet laid out, and a somewhat cohesive end product when all was said and done. Before that point, my actual method for shooting a video was just to have a camera on me while I was doing fun things – the video would show itself as long as I had enough footage.

And I feel like I shot lots on top of that mountain in Vernon. The clips I’m trying to string together definitely feel the way I felt while I was up there, if that makes any sense at all. But I guess I sort of miss the clear direction that working on FOMO had me create.

I feel as though I’ve got to keep the quality of the content I produce for the channel moving constantly up, all while juggling this drive I’ve got to just put stuff out there – to have something to show for all this time I’ve got on my hands now.

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Upwards

FOMO

 

New upload’s up and out in the ether. This one’s a bit different though – I’m currently doing a minor in Digital Communication and Information at my college, and this is my final project. Along with a write-up and a presentation, I basically had to produce some content that links to some of the concepts we’ve explored as part of the program, so I decided to put my English major chops to work and write a small monologue about a bit more of a reflective, subdued view I’ve got on social media as a whole.

A concept that I picked up was this whole idea of FOMO and FOBM – the “Fear of Missing Out” and “Fear of Being Missed” that’s pretty much inherent when we’re working with a culture so driven by what we share, and what we consume online. I think that social media is an absolute benefit to modern culture, but it’s got it’s pitfalls, some that we’re well aware of, and some that are quieter. FOMO and FOBM speak to a bit of a twofold effect where on one hand, we’re constantly worrying about the disconnect that not being connected to digital media brings, and on the other, we’re connected to a culture where we produce as much as we consume digitally, and as individual voices, its tough for our contributions not to get lost in the flow.

Anyways, that’s the rough writeup of it all. I should stop before I end up writing an actual essay. Give the video a look – share and subscribe if you dig it. :3

FOMO

Peak

 

It’s Wednesday again – that means another video, served up piping hot on the Fernway Films channel. Give it a look!

To be completely honest, I like my hikes more in the winding and horizontal position, so doing this was a little new. Took us about an hour to make it up to the peak of Mt. Tammany – a climb that was more like a walk around the block to the seasoned Alps veterans I went with. As for me, I was scrambling along a few feet behind, trying not to slump over too much on the rocks.

The payoff was great, though – one hell of a view of Mt. Minsi across from us, and the Water Gap below – all milky mountain mist and beams of iridescent sunlight breaking through the clouds…

…you know, if you’re into that sort of thing. 😉

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Peak