Thanks, everyone.
Wow! Great video. I'm guessing you are an engineer. That is a great space and well organized.
As close as I can claim is that my father and older brother are engineers. I'm a philosophy major whose day job is writing fiction. But I think there's some engineering in my genetics that I'll never be able to shake.
Very nice, the garage and the video. You pulled off the natural look.
Love the clock, where did you find it?
And what's that black thing on the end of the cabinet by the sink, it has a long coiled cord attached?
Jim
The two-faced clock is a pair of inexpensive clocks that I mounted back to back. I'd seen some railway station clocks like that, but the real ones were too expensive. It was pretty much the only way I could figure out to be able to see the time from anywhere in the shop.
The black thing dates back to 1953 and was an eBay purchase that no one has ever restored. It was kind of strange to plug it in (had to hardwire it in, actually) and use that rotary dial to connect through a satellite somewhere to my cell phone. It's got much better sound than the cell phone, for what it's worth, and I never have to fish it out of my overalls while I'm working.
Awesome Video AND garage Jack!
I loved your comment "Obsessive Dip$h!t from California"
comment! I laughed my **** off on that one! I will say though that 'The OCD Garage' may have been more apropos for your fine workspace...not saying there's anything wrong with that.
Very well done Jack...Kudos. BTW, how long did it take you from beginning to 'posted' on the video?
I was born and raised in Illinois, so I have some awareness left of how weird I've become as a Californian. But I've been out here for 32 years, now -- so I'm probably unrepairable at this point.
It was about six weeks from when I first tested 'interviewing myself' out there to this point. My method was to just talk into the camera and then re-watch the footage and try to work out a kind of beginning, middle and end to the video. It was surprisingly difficult, considering I write for a living. I just had no idea what the main ideas of the thing should be, and how much I'd be able to fit in without it becoming too boring. There was a 14-minute cut that was MUCH too long. And even at 10 minutes, I think I'm testing the modern viewer's attention span. But 10 minutes is where I landed.
The convenient thing was that I could work in little bits of spare time and just go out and record a little audio or a couple of shots in a few minutes. The bad part about that was that there's no end to how many times you can sneak out for one more take. I eventually just decided that many of the shots would not be perfect and that this could not become a more-than-two-month-long project.
great video and good choice in the adult beverage dept...
I didn't see a fridge in there..did I just miss it?
No fridge. In one version, there were more coffee and beer shots, and more 'jokes.' By the end of the editing process, there was that one stray beer bottle shot. I can't speak to the choice, other than it was what I had in the fridge. It was 9:00 in the morning when I shot the beer stuff, so there were a couple shots of 'opening' the bottle, and then a couple of other shots where it was progressively more empty. But it just didn't seem right to be drinking it that early, so it went down the sink and water was used as a simulation beverage.
Nailed it!! Bookmarked.
Only thing I woulda done different in the video is have a shotgun sound when closing the cabinet latch between segments.
While I like the transition using the stronghold door closing, you went a bit too far for me.
That was my only complaint as well. After seeing it over and over, that element got old.
My wife who was in another room thought I was watching something where they were closing prison cell doors.
Will that one door not stay closed? You need some help with it? You had to close that thing like 15 times during your video.
I was waiting to get blasted for criticizing Jack...
Not at all. It's funny -- when I was done editing, I showed the clip to my wife. She works in television, so viewing edits is something she's used to. She had me re-record two pieces of dialogue, and suggested that I come up with something else for the door closing.
She was right, but I was too lazy to come up with something new as a 'divider' -- and when there wasn't something between the different bench descriptions, the clip seemed a lot longer.
She's enjoying that her note has been echoed by the clip's audience.
She's a smart woman.
Other than that I liked it, did you have a helper when recording or did you use some sort of homemade rig to make the camera move?
Well done Jack! I too want to know more about your video and editing equipment.
I didn't have a helper, so I had to hit the record button and then move around in front of the camera.
My equipment was pretty bare-bones, although in retrospect I see that some of what I spent was wasted. I've got an older DSLR camera (a Nikon D5100) that is able to record 1080p video at 30 fps. It can't record more frames per second than that, so I wasn't able to do real slow-motion. And it's not an ideal video camera, since it can't really autofocus effectively with video, so I had to just set it and hope that the action would stay in the right plane.
I bought one light, a second-hand tripod, and a $30 refurbished camera slider. Since I couldn't be behind the camera to operate the slider, I bought a cheap DC motor and a timing belt and some pulleys to automate the process. This allowed me to use the slider like crazy -- maybe too much. But it does make for more professional looking shots. (I'll probably get more restraint as I slowly figure out what I'm doing.)
Here's a clip that shows the slider working right after I rigged up the motor and belt:
I bought two extra lenses above and beyond the one that came with the camera. Both were relatively inexpensive, since they weren't the new autofocusing type. One was a 50mm prime lens, and one was a 28mm prime. They work well for video, since they let a lot of light in and allow you to have the soft-focus background and narrow field of focus (or whatever it's called). I tried to record everything with a 1/50 shutter speed and as wide an aperture as I could set -- but I am untrained and maybe untrainable when it comes to photography.
When I started out, I had one particular shot in mind that needed an 8-foot crane. As it happened, that shot never came to be, and so I've now got a (refurbished) crane that cost me $147 that I've never used.
On the plus side, I now have the gear to make a video. On the minus side, if this is the only video I make, it was pretty expensive. Here's what I spent:
Stuff I used
Second-hand Libec Tripod: $48
Second-hand 28mm lens f/2.8: $100
Second-hand 50mm f/1.8 lens: $150
20"x28" diffuser light and stand: $24
Refurbished 33" Glide Gear Slider: $30
Additional fluid pan head for use with the slider: $36 (ouch!)
Lavalier microphone: $14
Stuff to motorize the slider: $40
(So that's the $442 that turned me into a one-man production outfit.)
Stuff I could have done without
Rode directional microphone: $60
8' Glide Gear crane/jib and stand: $147
($207 wasted, at least for this project.)
I came close to buying a better Nikon camera for the sake of slow-motion shots, but couldn't bring myself to write that check, even for a used one. I edited the clip on Final Cut Pro with my laptop. There was a lot of Googling to see what the best camera settings would be for shooting video and also for how to use Final Cut Pro to improve my audio and to fake slow motion and other stuff.
