Starting where I am

Yesterday I made my third tutorial video,  for my new blog How To Paint Acrylic, and I am starting to get the hang of it, even though it’s not production quality yet.  This is my setup on my desk by my front window in what used to be the dining room of my house.l

My video camera rig and desktop studio

The video is a tutorial for how to paint acrylic still life, and the set up and partially completed painting and palette is shown along with my neighbor’s garage.  My daughter has a nice Lumix camera that even took clear image of the screen on the window, which you can’t see here, of course, in this low resoultion shot.  The blue masking tape on the top of the light holds the web cam in the center of the light, where I took out the magnifying lens.  I can change the focus both manually by moving the arm on the lamp, and on the camera, although it just isn’t designed to be closer than 4 feet from the subject.  But it’s a learning experience.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Plan the video with some kind of outline – even if you write a whole script
2. Paintings do not follow a script. Go with the flow.
3. Get a USP microphone and narrate as you go. Putting in voice-over later takes three times as long
4. Shoot short segments – stop the camera every five minutes and take a short break. It lets you assess what to do next, and YouTube does not like long videos.
5. Be okay with less than perfection…aim high, but accept less while you are learning.

Now to get the hang of uploading the segments. It appears that you can’t do anything else while uploading. Maybe the dishes will get washed today after all!