Boss Lady & Bob: Back to Our Roots

Thirteen years ago Bob and I each graduated college with degrees related to television and radio. I have a concentration in video production; he journalism.  That lasted about five years... He moved on to the Pharmaceutical industry which eventually lead us back to our hometown and I left the TV News industry to be a SAHM.  And...you know the rest.

Over the last week though....we both found ourselves back where we started our careers: on either side of the camera.

Just over a week ago we had a request from a longtime partner to produce a lengthy in-depth video on using the newly released Silhouette CAMEO 3 machine.  It was a Wednesday night and the finished product was needed by the following Wednesday.

A week doesn't seem like much of a stretch for a 45 minute video...but when you have two kids home for the summer, not in summer camp, a weekend (when we typically don't work, with the exception of answering emails once daily) in the mix and you're a little rusty on the editing - a week deadline is quite a lot of pressure.

Producing a 45 minute video may not seem like a big deal...perhaps it even seems like it should take 45 minutes, maybe 2 hours. ERRR wrong....20 combined hours later we turned over the finished video!

We divided and conquered on this one for sure.  Ironically our rolls were reversed from where we started our careers. I was always behind the camera and Bob was always in front of the camera. But I'm pretty sure no one - including Bob - wants him on camera talking about Silhouette for 45 minutes.  Not saying I didn't have some goof ups...but...

Our biggest setback was right off the top when we recorded what would have been about 15 minutes of content, only to realize our camera was not recording audio.   Talk about a frustrating start...

Once the on-camera portions were recorded Bob got to editing those pieces together while I recorded B-roll.  B-roll is basically the video that you put over that talking parts so you don't have to stare at my mug for 45 straight minutes. It's what gives the video some flavor and breaks it up a bit. It also strategically covers the jumps between each section.

I handed them over to Bob and he added them into the timeline....then I moved on to creating the graphics using PicMonkey.

I handed them over to Bob and then moved on to re-recording a few sections...I handed them over to Bob and then... you get the point.

A good 20 combined hours later we were finally ready to hand this 4GB file over...but how do you email a giant video file?!  Challenge #2505....we ran it through Handbreak, which another blogger recommended to me, and we were able to get it over to our partner! This week the 46 minute video course went on sale!