I really enjoy Youtube, the never ending selection of interesting and entertaining videos is great. Of particular interest to me are the likes of CGPGrey, VSauce and Veritasium, with explanatory videos on a wide variety of topics. It’s always been something at the back of my mind to try out. But not being the world’s greatest producer, I’ve never given it a try.
Last week (I wrote this several weeks ago) Veritasium released a video showing 5 peculiar traits of nature, with the promise of explaining them in upcoming weeks, as well as the challenge to try figure them out for oneself and to post this online. The first subject was something I’d seen demonstrated in a previous episode of QI, and figured this was my chance to test out my viedographing (my dictionary doesn’t like that word and instead suggests rephotographing as the nearest real word) skills.
I believed I had the basic understanding of the concept at hand, got my GoPro, Cellphone and webcam setup to get some footage. Prepared some lighting and a pen and paper and figured the principle is fairly straightforward, and I’d be able to explain it in 5 minutes flat, one single shoot. Oh boy…
About three minutes in to my production I started to realise my failings. No script to work to meant I kept on having to think of what came next, and the examples I wanted to use took time to prepare as I tried to remember some of the basics of 2nd year Strength of Materials. I somehow developed a sore throat in that short space of time, and silences not interrupted by my throat-clearing were interspersed with long thinking “Umm”s.
I stopped recording after three short minutes, not even halfway through my expected explanation. Cutting my losses and reviewing the horror of my creation. Ignoring the terrible quality of the resulting video, the experience gave me a very good understanding of why I hadn’t tried this before, and an even greater appreciation for those who do this successfully. But it is definitely something I want to try again, maybe with a bit more preparation.