Write 31 Days- Day 27 Yes, I ditched you

I'm not proud of it, but sometimes you do what you gotta' do.

Yesterday, I decided I had to make a tutorial video for a new feature that YouTube is rolling out called End Screens. These are the links and buttons (we call them annotations) that appear at the end of a video. I didn't want to make a simple "this does this, that does that" so I decided to show the steps on how I set up the last 20 seconds of each shoot to accommodate the YouTube features.

So I had to make a sample video segment which included using Adobe Photoshop for the graphic element, audio recording software to capture the voice-over, Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the video and the YouTube End Screen editor to test and plan the video capture to follow. I then used OBS software to capture the on-screen action and an audio recorder to get the narration of me doing what I had just tested but now to show and teach the process. Finally, I had to edit me doing all of that and finally add THAT video showing you how to do what I had just done.

It took most of the day and WELL into the night.

I was creative, I just didn't share it until the day after.

So here you go:

PLANNING YOUR END SCREEN

Write 31 Days- Day 25 Late Night Television

You know who was a creative guy? Doc Severinsen. I know that some of you have no idea who I'm talking about. Let me learn you something.

Once upon a time when televisions had to warm up and and they played the national anthem when they went off the air (yes, TV stations used to stop broadcasting when most of us were sleeping) there was a phenomenon known as late night talk shows. Not the craziness and variety there is now but only a couple of selections. I don't know what the "other" choices were because I was (am) a dyed-in-the-wool Tonight Show with Johnny Carson fan. And in those days TV shows not only had theme songs (not the dramatic A-minor chord pad of today's shows) but an honest-to God orchestra. Case in point was the one playing with Johnny Carson: the Tonight Show Orchestra headed up by Doc Severinsen.

Doc was a trumpet player. That's an understatement. Doc was an amazing trumpet player. And he was funny. He started playing with the Tonight Show Orchestra in 1954 BEFORE Johhny Carson was the host and was there until Johnny retired in 1992. Thirty-eight years.He release several albums, toured like crazy and was generally regarded as one of the nicest guys in the business.

And his clothes.....oh my goodness. This is where the creativity of Doc shined brightest. Or not, depending on your personal taste. I've seen him in metallic prints, be-dazzled to put a Vegas show girl to shame and feathers. FEATHERS I tell you. Johnny and Ed joked with him and he just laughed it off. He was making a living doing what he wanted to do...who cared?

Doc Severinsen being Doc

Be bold in what you do. Life is short an no one gets out alive, so have fun.


Be creative kids.

Write 31 Days- Day 24 James is a Slacker

But, in my defense, I was medicated for a combination of bad-knee-getting-worse and kick-butt-immune-response-to-pollen. So there.

Today I'm problem solving an issue with reports that some of my videos are "stuttering" and getting out of sync. They play fine on the Godzilla-sized system I edit on and I can replicate the problem when viewing them online (sometimes) on various devices(sometimes) so I blame the Interwebs and YouTube.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to not try to fix the problem on my end if I can. So, I'm doing a little experimenting with rendering settings and the like  which is TERRIBLY exciting (said no one ever) and in the process I came across this little gem of a clip. I say gem for no particular reason other than it is one of my earliest attempts at shooting video with my Canon 7D digital camera. I've gone through as replaced the music (long story of a disagreement between my buyout music company (since taken over) YouTube, and myself. I tried to clean up the cuts as much as I could but the original files are long gone and this came out of a silly $20 editing program I bought and consequently hated.

So with that bit of dross out there in the open here's the video of a winter snow storm that hit Yokota Air Base, Japan in 2012 when we were blessed to live there. For me there's nothing better than winter weather and to experience it in a land that has you mesmerized is a bonus.

a great day to be out and about

Be creative kids.

Write 31 Days- Day 22 Creatively Uncreative...or the opposite

Today was one of those days that was necessary yet painful. They say the day you stop learning is the day you stop living (ok, I don't know if anyone really says that but it sounded good) and today I crammed in a bunch of learning from the YouTube Creator Academy.

In particular their pre-production boot camp series. It was a number of lessons about certain aspects of what happens before you record the first seconds of video in video, multiple choice and short answer questions. There were sections on story brainstorming, script writing, storyboarding as well as workflow and time management (and even some budgeting thrown in just for fun).

when my brain makes it onto paper

Now my video style doesn't lend itself to as much pre-planning as a traditional short film (the intended audience for this boot camp series) but I did learn quite a bit. And even topics that weren't directly relatable to me did trigger some thoughts as my mind wandered a rabbit trail or two and I ended up with a bunch of mad scratchings on the old Mk I mod I paper.

If you're a YT creator there's still time to sign up and plow through the material; it ends the 25th of this month (like in 2 days) so you'd better get on it.

Ya'll be creative 'n stuff.

Write 31 Days- Day 21 Creativity and the Secret Squirrel

This is kind of an odd blog entry because I spent the majority of the day (minus an exciting trip to the legal office to update our wills) creating something I'm working on that's, well....a secret.

Like many creative people I have multiple outlets for my creativity: as a maker, a video series host, as well as a writer of the more technical side of that creativity. But I'm also a writer of the purely creative variety; a world filled with situations and people that are both fantastic as well as boringly ordinary. I don't write in a genre where "anything goes" as some have the luxury of doing, but in a world bound by the reality a person of similar upbringing would easily recognize. IF situation X were to happen, a large group of people would reasonably expect A, B, and C to follow.

The rub is trying to weave those expected reactions into a story line that makes you want to turn the page. The challenge is to have the situation evolving in a way that makes you NOT want to put the book down when it's time to get the kids from school. Creativity tasked to the max. Does it hook you or not? How hard (or easy) it is for a test reader to walk away from it when you tell them supper is ready?

Try it. Come up with a tale of some sort and get it on paper. It doesn't have to be terribly long but can you get it to a point where you think "This will get them!" and hand it to that person 5 minutes before supper. Tell them they have 5 minutes (make sure you don't give them something that takes 3 minutes to read) and then see if they're late. Or if they come and start asking you questions, looking for more info you didn't feed them in those pages.

Just a thought.


Be creative folks.

Write 32 Days- Day 19 Gibberish

It feels as if I've always been on this island. Fleeting thoughts of friends, loved ones...I catch them out of the corner of my eye. I hear voices I do not recognize, smell perfume that is familiar yet strange. I know this is what happens when you're alone, but knowing doesn't make it better. It only lets you know how bad it's going to get.

I've gotten myself into a pickle. I under-cooked something and spent the past two day laying in my shelter trying to dehydrate myself from either end. There's no wind, so the sweat stays where it wells up from inside. I stopped sweating. That's when I knew I had to get up. Months upon months here and I have sweated every moment. When you stop sweating, you die. I don't want to die. Not here. Not like this.

I would like to die in a bed laying on crisp cotton sheets, a down duvet folded neatly at my feet. Tickled by waves of air dropping in rhythm from the ceiling fan. Droplets of water running down a glass of ice water within easy reach. A Bible on my chest, making me feel my breaths become slow and shallow. Slower and shallower. Then gone. Happy.

But I'm here. Crusted from the havoc my body has wrought because of some invisible bug in my gut. Frazzled because I don't have a razor and my skin is raw and oozing under the damned beard. My feet are raw from wading in the cove trying to find a fish to eat then they're sliced by the thorns and  shells and rocks. My gums bleed, my fingers bleed. My lips are split and chapped. It's hard to see at night and I have a headache. This ever-present headache that makes doing anything impossible and doing nothing unbearable.

I do not want to be like this. I am alive but not among the living. I have thought of a million ways to end it, to be done when I say I'm done. Not when the island beats me down to the last stinking breath.

I will not. For when I die, it will be on cool sheets, dusted by a breeze, water by my side and a Bible on my chest.

***********************

And that's what you do when you have to post on creativity and the day has been nothing but putting out fires caused by people other than yourself.

Be creative kids

Write 31 Days- Day 18 Low hanging fruit

I am totally stealing the idea for this post from my friend Michael Ann over at the OutAndBack blog. We've been friends for years going all the way back to our assignment in England where I was a Scout leader for their son and a photography teacher for their daughter. We've kept in touch over the years and she's a great writer so check her out.

Anyway, you've heard me lament about how much fun grocery shopping is. Fun like a kick in the junk. Yeah, that much. So anything I can do to get me in and out is a welcome idea and one that saves me a ton of time is a shopping list (ground-breaking eh?) with our weekly meal plan on the back. The grocery list is specific to our local grocery establishment: when we arrive in a new location (we move every 2-3 years) we make a new one, so here's how I do it.

I bring a blank sheet of paper and a trusty mechanical pencil and start the zig-zag pattern you do in the store. The first area I enter is usually produce and I write down the items we normally use during the month in the order I find them. I turn the corner, note the aisle number, and begin walking through repeating the process. No need to be super picky, but be thorough enough to get the general idea of where the items are THAT YOU USE. I then make a separate column for non-grocery items but I may cover that at a later date. One final swoop down the last aisle to the registers and I'm done. You can see our current list below:

shopping list for our family at our local store
yours will look different

   Bring your list home and put it into a landscape-oriented 4-column document. Don't get hung up on making it perfect, you'll be revising it occasionally (especially when your local shoppery decides to do a RE-SET which screws everything up. Insert a bad word of your choice <HERE>). Now, flip the page over and write MON TUE WED THR FRI SAT SUN across the top. This is where you'll do your meal planning. DON'T PANIC it isn't nearly as scary as you think. Besides, it is a great opportunity to get the family together and work on something together.

Under MON think of a meal you'd like to have on that day. Let's say spaghetti. The way I make it I need a package of thin spaghetti, a jar of sauce, 2 pounds of hamburger, a can of sliced mushrooms and Parmesan cheese to top it with. Flip the sheet over and circle the things you don't have. If you already have Parmesan then don't circle it; we're only interested in what we need to buy today. Flip the sheet back over and continue on down the line until you're done. Here's a handy tip: we designate Sunday as FFYS night meaning Fend For Your Self a.k.a. leftover night. Anything in the fridge is fair-game but you have to make it yourself. Suddenly junior wants to learn how to cook. You're helping his future wife to have a self-sufficient human so take advantage of it. She'll thank you later.

Now you have your week planned out for shopping. Leave the list on a counter and let everyone know that if there's something they need to get it on the list by Sunday night at bed time (I shop on Monday mornings). If it isn't on the list...I'm not buying it. This is when the kids' cereal appears or if they're out of school snacks for their lunches. Then I make a sweep of the fridge/pantry to see what else we'll need to make it through the week: bread, lunch meat, cheese, etc.

Now when you go shopping, you have a list of what you need to make it through the week. No more lollygagging  and looking at the well-engineered and enticing packages trying to sneak their way into your cart. If there's nothing in aisle 6 you need just cruise through without stopping. In and out, easy-peasy.

After shopping you put the weekly meal plan on the fridge and when someone asks what's for supper you point to it. You do this enough times and they'll stop bugging you and go to the list first. If someone wants something out of order, I might agree to change it but only if they help.

This is not rocket science (which is why I can do it) BUT between this shopping list and paying for our groceries in cash (you know, the green stuff) our weekly grocery bill has drastically decreased. Paying with cash is painful. Watching a big pile of $20s disappear before your very eyes hurts, but that's another topic for another day.

So that's my creativity in-action today. Try it for a week then revise your list. Before too long you'll have it settled down and you'll be a shopping master like me. My record is groceries for a family of four from store entrance to store exit in 27 minutes. And I've got a gimpy knee.

If you have a way to make grocery shopping go quicker please let us know below. Life is too short to spend all freaking day at the grocery store. I've got crap to do!

Be creative kids.