Take #2, Take #3, Take A Lot

Then and Now. I did pause to look back
at the fifteen year old me who was so very
shy and reserved. Obviously, things have
 changed .

Or stick with what you know.

I must of opened and closed my new plein air easel about eight times over this weekend just to get the hang of it. On the eighth time, I decided to film my fumbling  to show you the easel is not a snap to put together-- though there are plenty of parts to snap and screw.

While making a video of myself making a fool of myself,  I also spent hours trying to figure out how to add the video to this post--to the point, I should  have forgotten it!  BUT:  Making videos is as much a curiosity of mine as painting in plein air.

The video process is much more involved than assembling the easel. This first effort clearly shows that video making  requires many "takes"-- a loose script and some rehearsal time wouldn't hurt either.  But my effort was impromptu so not much was expected and not much was achieved.

I did have a lot of fun laughing at myself in the two takes.  The first was a disaster. I cut off my head.  But it clued me into what to correct for the second take--position the camera just right with relationship to the action and the actor, figure the height of the tripod, the tilt and the level of the camera, don't overlook the stage and do get rid of unnecessary clutter.  Having no stand-in for myself, the star of this fiasco, a lot of running around and a few timed stills were necessary to check the set up-- from the looks of it, a few more stills would have been helpful.  I do apologize for my lack of make up and wardrobe. A gal can only do so much.

If I ever publish a book on video making,
this self  birthday portrait
will be good on the jacket.  I hope my
driver license photo comes out friendlier.

After watching Take #2, it was clear  a few more Takes-- a lot of takes--were necessary to produce a smooth film.  But I had whacked myself out.  Thankfully, Ellis came to the set carrying two glasses of champagne and called for a  break.  I may be lousy at videos, and setting up a French easel, but  I am an expert at drinking champagne.

Now this guy knows what he's doing with the easel--and he's obviously got a friend who knows how to make a video. It takes two to tango and a partner would have been great, but then I would have missed out cavorting behind and in front of the camera and spending additional hours trying to figure out how to edit and publish. Splicing film was easy, publishing revealed a different story:

I couldn't for the life of me upload  my wmv file to this post. I kept getting a dialogue box saying there was an error. My only choice was to click OKAY for it to go away, but it wasn't.  After trying this and that and surfing for help, all I could figure out was Google video/Blogger video had initiated a new way of doing things in the last couple of weeks and now wants personal videos to go through My YouTube, which Google did buy . So I opened a You Tube account and uploaded my French easel little horsing around clip and tried it again. Sure enough it posted. Now will it publish?

FORGET MY SUNDAY MORNING ANTICS. This guy knows how to use his knee for the plein air advantage. But I've had enough for now.