Category: Video

Use Your Face and Your Voice

ABOVE: the TLDR version of the text below

I’ve been following Loom for awhile, and using their super easy video making software for my Close Mondays operation for awhile now. I didn’t even realize it, but I made 36 videos with their software, dating back to November 2019.

For business, it’s sometimes nice to send a video to someone you work with instead of just a plain text email, especially when you want to show a workflow process.

I’ve also used this for not-business, too. Like this:

I made that video for Metal Bandcamp Gift Club. I link to it from newsletters that we send out, and also put on social media every now and again, too.

The point is this: All text looks like… text. But FACES. VOICES. SMILES. That’s the stuff, right there. Bands could use something like Loom to announce new songs, or shirts, or tours with images of the very things they’re working so hard to promote.

Like, love them or hate them, reaction videos work because they’ve ALWAYS worked. Ask any older music nerd, and they will fondly remember the MTV NEWS breaks… zip zap, here’s Kurt Loder talking about something. Outro music. Done. PEOPLE. VOICES. FACES.

So with the stuff Loom lets you do, you can do just a bit more than point the camera at yourself and upload it.

Add album artwork. Or merchandise photos. Tour dates. Tons of stuff. And the “big scary” part – YOUR FACE. But people like your face, they like YOU.

Again, text is great. Add an image to a Tweet. Cool. But they put faces on billboards and magazine ads and pre-roll videos. Imagine if the was just all text? BORING.

Anyways, go check out Loom.

We Got The Moves

Summer is winding down, but this has become my summer anthem.

Usually I’m not a fan of the “harsh vocals” switching the “clean vocals” and all that stuff that “the kids” seem to like so much, but this just works for me. I mean, the visuals do it, too. Such attention to vibe and style and wit and sass. I love it so much.

Random Bandcamp Roulette

Check one, check two. Made this with Loom, which I’ve used a bit for work, and started to wonder if it would work for Bandcamp Roulette (see below) – and it sorta does! This was just a quick test – obviously some audio things to work on, but I like this. Made this within minutes, without having to mess with multiple video and audio files. There’s some limitation, sure (no ducking, but that’s okay), but I really like this. Considering how fast I can make these? AND not be tied to YouTube? Definitely going to upgrade my Loom account this weekend.

Sure, that looks and sounds really good, but those episodes are a beast to make. And, again, I like the idea of not spending more time on YouTube.

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.