I got an email from a long time friend of mine, Chad Johnson. He saw my note announcing the upload of my short film “Cranium”. And he had some questions about the production of the film. This film is different enough from my other stuff that I thought it was worth writing a blog article about.
Here’s what Chad said:
That’s great Todd!
Short, sweet, funny. Perfect for youtube. Nice lighting – it looks
professional. Good sound – of course. Watch your eyes – I can see you
reading. Maybe raise the text you are reading, or remember the lines
in short spurts.Is that Beth as a kid? Did you do this with your new camera?
I didn’t originally intend to make this into a video clip for world wide distribution. You see, a few months ago I signed up for a class called “Ready, Set, On Air!” through Boulder Digital Arts. For the 2nd class, they had someone set up lights and a camera for people to practice being “on air”. I didn’t really have anything I wanted to recite, but I had recently bought some software for my Mac laptop which makes it work like a teleprompter.
So I decided I wanted to experiment with the teleprompter to see how well it worked. I didn’t have a script, so I sat down for 5 minutes and wrote a stream of consciousness story and then loaded it into the teleprompter software. The core of this video was me reciting from that.
To answer Chad’s feedback, then:
The lighting was professional, in fact. There was a pro videographer who was doing the technical stuff that night. I wasn’t involved in the camera or the lighting, and it was before I bought my new camera.
Remembering the lines in short spurts would have defeated the purpose of the experiment, since I wanted to see how it looked to use this teleprompter software.
And no, it’s not Beth as a kid. All the other images in the video were things I found online. Same with the music. So, I’m probably violating copyright left and right with this one. That’s why I only put it on YouTube and don’t plan to do any public screenings of it.
Oh, and the “good sound” wasn’t my doing, either. The class provided the lav mic that everyone used. So I can’t even take credit for that!