Video Storytelling: A return to crafts

It’s done! It’s finally done! I’m not sure if it was me that took this long to make it or the process which took so long, but it doesn’t matter any more. Sorry, sorry, I’m over excited. Let’s pump the breaks and start at square one.

So this blog is about my foray into video creation and editing. I was tasked with shooting then editing a 2-3 minute video about a particular subject. The subject matter is once again my mother and her hobby of creating soaps. You may remember her since she is the subject of my audio profile from a couple blogs ago. My sister joins the process too, helping my mother, so you’ll be introduced to her.

For this video, I chose a more promotional approach for filming. The soap making process is very social, so there is some chatting in the video, even a small portion from me behind the camera. In addition, the video can be repurposed as a promotional video for my family’s farm if I wanted to. Some people may argue that this detracts from the video, to which I say ‘I don’t care.’ Now that I’ve made the finished product, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out.

One aspect of this assignment that I enjoyed was the filming. I somewhat knew beforehand that I wanted to follow up on the audio profile. This made my desire to film very strong since familiarity with the subject matter made my job easier. There was an element of fun to the endeavor as well. I also got an excuse to go home for a weekend, which was nice.

One aspect I definitely did not enjoy was the actual editing process. It felt very difficult to get precise cuts on the clips. Between this assignment and audio profile, I much preferred the profile. But maybe I’m comparing apples to oranges. Or perhaps I’m just not used to the OpenShot software.

As indicated by the opening paragraph, something that surprised about the assignment was how good I felt when it was completed. It was quite the dopamine rush when I exported my video out of OpenShot and watched it entirely. Something that I wish that I could have done differently was prepare clips more effectively. I wasn’t familiar with OpenShot until now, so I wasn’t aware of a few editing tricks that might have made my job a bit easier.

I don’t know how much I see myself using video professionally. While it’s definitely possible that I may find myself in such a job requirement, I believe that such jobs are very specific. Therefore, they may be more difficult to find and apply for. I think it is more likely that I will be using video more personal reasons. I foresee its primary use for my hobbies, and secondary use for doing small videos for the family ranch.