(Well, BTS as in behind-the-scenes, not the Korean boy band.)
Not long ago I uploaded my Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme review video. It was originally just a somewhat mundane episode for me to shoot -- product reviews can tend to be formulaic -- but a mistake turned into an opportunity to try something new.
When shooting the talking-head piece, I used a prompter as I normally do when I have a lot of technical dialogue to get through on screen. (I do this not because I can't remember specifications and details, but rather to keep me from forgetting to talk about certain things.) It's a DIY affair, made out of black foamcore and a piece of picture frame glass to hold an iPad Mini running a prompter app. There's a hole cut in the back for the camera lens to stick through, and it works well.
At least, it works well when you remember to stick the camera lens far enough into the opening. If you don't, you end up with a shot that looks like this:
The front lip of the prompter ended up visible through both full takes of the script. I didn't notice it because of how small the preview image shows up in the camera remote control app on my phone. My first thought was to just punch in slightly to crop off enough from the bottom to eliminate it, but then the image would end up slightly soft from being upscaled.
I had always wanted to try shooting something in Cinemascope format, like 2.35:1. This mistake was my excuse to try it out. I actually shot all of the B-roll twice for this episode, with one set of clips composed for 2.35:1 and the other as a safety in normal 16:9, in case I decided to stick with that aspect ratio in the end. I found shooting wide to be harder than I thought, simply because I had to compose most shots much wider than I normally would, and keep the background in mind.
There were a couple of clips in the final video that stayed 16:9, namely all the screen capture footage and the webcam test. This was intentional as I figured cropping this would generate complaints from viewers, so the final video was actually rendered out as letterboxed 16:9. Turns out I was completely wrong on this, as there were quite a number of people who hated it. Apparently most of them were watching on ultrawide monitors, and because it was letterboxed 16:9 instead of native 2.35:1, they got a much smaller image in the end. So, lesson learned: Pick an aspect ratio and stick to it. (I still think it was fun, and I might try it again sometime.)
In other news, there's a fair amount of retro Apple-related content coming up. It's largely coincidental, just a number of stories and opportunities that have come my way lately. Thankfully it's a mix of hands-on DIY and retrospectives, so hopefully it doesn't become too repetitive. I'm also working on a retro/obsolete audio format episode, but I've been losing a lot of Yahoo Japan auctions lately for the parts I need to put that one together.
Finally, I'm undecided how I feel about the weird 486 video from a couple weeks ago. Apparently it somehow triggered the YouTube algorithm to be recommended widely (sure wish I could figure out how that works). It's great because it's what every creator wants, to have their work reach a wide audience. But at the same time, the style of the video fell flat with a lot of viewers -- it seems like many would prefer a concise, direct here-are-the-facts presentation instead of the "let's explore together" angle. I'll work on a way to split the difference, where I can present in a laid-back way but with less waffling on ;-)
As always, thanks for your support!