This one took far longer than I thought it would. It also came out shorter than previous videos. They’ve all been getting shorter, in fact. Maybe I have less to say or the edit is getting tighter.
I recently finished reading Rick Rubin’s book “The Creative Act”, where he writes about cutting a work back as far as possible, seeing how much you can remove and still keep the essence of the work. That was definitely in mind when making the video. I’m not monetizing my videos, so hitting the 8-minuite mark to add mid-roll ads isn’t a concern. I say what I need to in order to make my point, not just in the voiceover, but the video that goes with it. I see a lot of essays that are text-first, with video clips just laid over the top that go on for 20-30 minutes. Maybe it’s because my attention span has worn away or the fact I HATE writing, but I just want to be concise. Big fan of using match cuts to make connections between movies, the “Dressed to Kil” to “Psycho” to “Fatal Attraction” one is probably the best example.
Next video will also be short, but that just fell out of my head in one sitting, rather than two months building a patchwork of deas into a coherent whole. As ever, I had visual ideas (and the thumbnail) ready to go and have to write something that’s essentially captions for when I’m trying to convey.
The two after that will be longer and take a while (lots of research), but I’m doing this for the process as much as the end result.