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Because I’m Woefully Indecisive At Some Things…

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…I think the hardest part of making a video isn’t editing it, putting it together, or even grading the footage (although admittedly, I’m still figuring out that last bit).

It’s picking the damn music.

As most people who use the platform know, YouTube runs a tight Content ID system that flags your videos if you use any kind of media that doesn’t allow reuse or modification. You can still post videos that feature, say, carefully edited footage of your six year old trying to ride a bike set to the entirety of Psychosocial by Slipknot, but you run the risk of YouTube flagging your video for copyrighted content, and rendering it impossible for your video to be played in certain parts of the world, or even for you to gain any kind of revenue if you’ve enabled ad monetization on your admittedly weird little video.

Now, with less than 20 subscribers to my name, this really shouldn’t be an issue. Realistically, I might as well just play the numbers, use copyrighted music, and take the hits because 1) I’m not pulling enough weight to make any substantial money off ad monetization anyway and 2) For the most part, companies won’t wholesale BLOCK your video, and instead opt to place ads before it that they can monetize from.

But clearly I’m a sadist and like making things so much more difficult for myself, so I search for Creative Commons licensed music to use more often than not, immediately shrinking the radius of the space I can search for music that I think definitely fits with the vibe I’ve got in mind for a video. I’ve had whole projects go on stall because I can’t decide on music that’ll work well enough with the clips and edits and the vision of how I want this video to go in my head.

Using the SoundCloud filter on the Creative Commons Search site works well enough, but I’m really not into heavy electronica or any kind of EDM really, and while I like chillhop and lo-fi tracks, I can’t make every video with a mellow radio filter beat thumping in the backdrop. Sometimes, I just feel Bon Iver coming out through the cuts between clips, and I have to end up settling for a remix of one of his songs instead.

Granted, there are some good ones out there, but still.

Anyone else really nitpicky about this end of making content, or is it just me?

Because I’m Woefully Indecisive At Some Things…

Still Trying to Self-Teach Myself Final Cut Pro…

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…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…

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…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

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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

[AUDIOCOFFEE] Sepia

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Whaaaaat? Those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while might remember the old AudioCoffee series I used to do on here. Well, I decided to flex the old creative muscles again and try and put that concept into video form – you can check out what I came away with in the embedded video above, or check out that and more on the Fernway Films Youtube Channel. We’re looking to get more frequent and really start growing in the community, and we’re counting on you guys to help us out. Give us a look, toss us a like, tell us what you think, share the video with people who might like it, and if you really really like what we do, maybe hit that subscribe button for us. We’d really appreciate it. 🙂

The transcribed poem is going to be in the description of the actual YouTube video, but as per tradition, I’ll go ahead and post it below, too:

Sepia

I don’t get stuck – I just think a lot.
I’m my head, I’m
constantly seeing the
world with this
sepia tint.
Not enough to
make the memories feel
ancient –
but enough to make them feel
warmer.
And it doesn’t matter if it ends up
being warmer
than it actually is.
I just don’t like having to
clench my fists when I remember.
As if the world doesn’t have enough
of that.

[AUDIOCOFFEE] Sepia