Category: Video

Daily Loop #12

On a day with too many video calls, a crappy run, and force-feeding my eyeballs with way too much Capitol-siege footage, we get to here. By 8am I had most of this loop done, so when I sat down at about 7pm it was ready to bake.

I can go for a run without thinking of winning a race, which is a mindset I need to apply to this project. A steady practice of running got me here, nearing five years of running. Do I have trophies and winnings to show for it? Nope.

This daily practice of loop making, then, is not for press coverage or the myriad of other random goals that music makers could hope for. In the late 80s I just wanted to be shredder and travel in a rock and roll band. Priorities (and markets) change, so I’m okay with not holding out hope for that.

Sure, there are 100 different articles I could link to and discuss here tonight. Lord knows I read 1000 Tweets, streamed a few hours of news coverage. But tonight, right here, this is for a Daily Loop. A soft place, an open invitation… permission, I guess. Make the thing, do the thing, ship the thing (as Seth Godin says). To hold back is to withhold our magic from the world.

Video by Athena from Pexels

These ‘Desert Crust Series’ Videos are Amazing

Sometimes you just need to watch some trippy 10 minute long videos. This collection from Andrew Benson is a treasure.

I sat with them for many months, thinking I should find some way to share them, but I was torn by not really wanting to revisit and “finish” anything and not knowing when I’d ever have an opportunity to show these in an ideal way.

See all of them here (via @boop).

We’ll Never Join the Galactic Federation

The delivery, the snark, the attitude – god, I love this so much.

I love that in a second, in just a few thumb-swipes on social media, you can come across a video so well done that you’re saying the lines to yourself while you’re making coffee.

“Logistics? You want me to write… logistics?”

“Oh, you still have prisons!”

Like, growing up with Star Wars, Ghost Busters, Air Plane – there’s just random movie quotes that we all know from our years of watching movies. Then of course Key & Peele (“I said bisssshhhhhh”), or “it is you!” Then Vine, and videos like this; the videos get shorter, but the quotes are just as strong.

Collecting

From Kottke:

Many think some people are special but usually those people just put a lot more time in it than others. This applies to sports, arts, almost everything. It’s worth doing something for a long time, even if the benefits are not always clear. Good surprising things come out of it. You also learn about yourself in the process.

Another Bandcamp Roulette

Made another Bandcamp Roulette. Still messing up (note the right side screen clip doesn’t take up its full space), but that’s how we learn, right? Also need to figure out an audio ducking solution. Right now all the audio gets recorded into ScreenFlow, while the video of me is recorded using an iPhone. Separating those two channels of audio is easy, but its getting them in sync in post production that’s the hard part.

Part of How I Make My Videos

My first Bandcamp Roulette in awhile. My roomie watched the series for the first time recently, and said she thought it was great, and of course that was the kick in the pants I needed to make a new episode. OUTSIDE VALIDATION. I need to remember to make these things for me, and to keep discovering fun new music.

Still trying to fine tune my process. I used to sync iPhone video (w/ audio) with screen capture of the Bandcamp slider for the first part of the video, then make another video using the same set up, but screen capturing a different section of the Bandcamp website. As you can imagine that got a bit tedious, more moving parts, more room for error.

Now I just capture the full Bandcamp website and zoom in on relevant sections during post production. More editing, but I like being able to shoot it all in one take, which I think keeps thing more spontaneous.

My video editor of choice is Telestream’s Screen Flow, which I’ve been using since my Skull Toaster days, as you can see in this post from 2018:

At the time iMovie just wasn’t working for me, and though I’ve used Final Cut Pro before, it seemed like overkill for what I was trying to do (as you can see above). I stumbled upon Screen Flow from a software bundle pack and I’ve been using it ever since. There’s a learning curve for sure, but once you figure it out you’ll be making videos in no time.

Ten Episodes of Bandcamp Roulette

I’ve told lots of friends to “just start,” and how episode 10 will be better than episode one, and on and on. One of these days I’ll believe that for myself, and my own work, but this the struggle, I suppose.

Thinking out loud here – I’ve been doing video on and off since 2006, never really committing at any one point. Not to say I want to build a YOUTUBE CHANNEL and have a million subscribers. Hell, I don’t know what I want. I’m 44, and have done a lot of shit over the years. Sometimes I feel like I’m just running into walls with stuff, and still trying to make heads of tails of anything at all.

Very Noise

What? How? Is this even real?

Really enjoyed IGORRR’s 2017 album ‘Savage Sinusoid,’ but haven’t been keeping up, but really stoked I stumbled upon this clip. This song is from a new album, ‘Spirituality and Distortion,’ due out in March.

It’s video likes this that push me forward. With all the ills of this world, the strife and turmoil and impending supernova of Betelgeuse (maybe?), music is as important as ever. Getting a bunch of people into a practice space, or sending MP3 files back and forth over the internet to make music like… this?

Yes, why not?

How to Make a Podcast

Holy heck this video makes me want to start a podcast again, for the 100th time. Seriously, this looks so damn good.

I think I’m okay at building newsletters, because they’re very direct. I created the Skull Toaster email newsletter because it gave the answers to the metal trivia I posted everyday on Twitter and Instagram.

The Metal Bandcamp Gift Club newsletter gets sent out when someone has a birthday, and it links to their Bandcamp Wishlist.

Both of these newsletters serve a purpose. Want answers to metal trivia? Yes? Subscribe here. Want to help support music and labels? Yeah? Click here. Boom.

Podcasts, though, have eluded me. I did one called the Workbench Podcast with my pal Bill Meis for awhile, and Metal Minute (a sort of parody metal news show), but haven’t really done anything since.