Background
Publishing a shop tour video has been on my list of things to do for a long time. There are several reasons why I had never gotten around to it — inertia, procrastination, lack of knowledge, busy with other things. Honestly, however, inertia and procrastination were the two biggest factors. About a week ago, I finally decided it was time to buckle down and get it done. I find that I have a hard getting going with content creation. I know I still have so much to learn, consequently, it always feels so daunting.
Equipment, Education, and Experimentation
As I discussed in my blog post about Getting Serious About Content, if I am really going to make content creation a significant part of what I do, then I needed to actually spend some time working on how to do that. In that post, I talked about the camera and related equipment that I purchased at that time. I also purchased a new computer that was capable of doing at least moderate video editing.
With some better equipment in my possession, the next step was to learn how to use it. In the last month, I have watched a lot of videos and read a lot of articles. Two of the YouTube channels that I have benefitted from the most are pal2tech and Peter McKinnon. The pal2tech channel taught me how to use my new camera. Peter McKinnon taught me about filmmaking and photography.
I knew I had only scratched the surface of what I needed to learn. These two channels, as well as others, made me comfortable getting started with my new gear. The first two videos that I created were very short (here and here). I used them as exercises to work on the techniques that I had been learning.
While I was happy with how they turned out, the idea of filming the shop tour still felt intimidating. I knew that it would be a big step up in effort.
Process
In late January, with my daughter’s help, I recorded a bunch of shop tour videos with my phone. That experience and watching through the recorded videos prompted the purchases and the post on content creation mentioned above.
With my studying done and the first few small video experiments complete, I started filming again for the shop tour. It was about a week ago when I started filming the main segments. I also recorded B-roll footage and took still photos that I thought would be useful for the final video. After viewing the main footage, I decided to reshoot some of the main scenes.
I then started editing. Several months ago, I spent time learning how to use Davinci Resolve. However, in the intervening months, I had not spent much time with the program. I needed to brush up. Davinci Resolve is a very sophisticated video editor. It takes a lot of time to get up to speed on how it works. I really only know the basics at this point. My goal is to learn a little more each time I edit a new video. There are a lot of resources on YouTube to help with that.
The editing process took several days. It was very slow at the beginning as I was getting familiar with the controls. I would stop at times to watch videos when I came across something I didn’t know how to do. There were also times when I realized that I needed another still photo or B-roll shot.
By noon yesterday, I had finished the editing and was ready to render the video. Once that was done, I uploaded it to YouTube. I then began gathering all of the information needed to write the description. During the night, YouTube finished processing the video and I was able to publish it this morning. I then updated the Shop Tour page on my site.
Conclusion
There are a few things I would like to change in the final video, however, I have decided to leave it as is. I doubt that I will ever produce a video with which I will be 100% satisfied. I will take the things that I found and learn from them for the next video.
It was a long process and I now have a much greater appreciation for channels that have good content. I also have plenty of ideas for future content. Stay tuned.