Lil Frilly are beautiful sterling silver plated hoop earrings covered with a wide, scalloped crochet design with eco friendly white bamboo thread. The scallops are accented with summery orange glass seed beads.
Beautiful sterling silver plated hoop earrings are covered in eco friendly unbleached natural bamboo thread with crochet. Glass seed beads in a random assortment of colors are worked in the stitches around the front of the hoop.
These will be a simple, earthy, & fun addition to your summer wardrobe. I never fail to get compliments when I wear mine.
So I have been thinking about doing a craft video, but was iffy about getting started.
Watching myself & hearing my own voice? -_- blah. Plus, all I have is the built in webcam on my laptop & my digital camera shoots video, but I worried about the sound on it.  (Turns out it’s pretty good.)
Monday on the CrafterMind’s tweet chat we discussed videos, so it seemed the right time to bite the bullet. I decided rather than jumping into a demonstration video, it would be easier to start with a product review.  I decided to go with the Darice Craft Caddy, because I own it & have been using it for a couple of years.
I had a lot of fun making my video review & I hope you enjoy it!
Hopefully you enjoyed it, or at least saw the potential of it. Watching/listening to myself in the video wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. At the bottom of this post, behind the cut (if you’re reading from the home page), I have added a transcription.
I ended up using both the laptop & the digital camera for shooting. I used the laptop as the main & the digi cam for a side view. In the future I think I will use the digi cam as my main & I don’t know if I’ll use the laptop. I do like being able to watch myself as I’m shooting though. I may still use it, but differently.
Anyhoo, here are some things I learned:
The main thing I will do differently next time is shoot my video in segments rather than one long shot. I tried editing it down more, but the cuts were not very smooth. This also kept me from using alternate shots. Breaking it into smaller sections will make it easier to cut parts out & to add in shots from other takes. I really would have liked for it to be about 5mins shorter at least.
It definitely pays to have your notes printed in clear, well organized text taped up by the camera so if you have to look at them you aren’t looking away.
Some good advice for lighting from the chat – shoot during the day, near a window of you can, & a good light bounced off some white poster board works nicely. I wish I had had another light when I shot mine.
Don’t undervalue test shots. I took cell pics while I was getting ready so I could see how things would look on camera. I took more pics when I was checking for shadows. I used my model head on a stand where I planned to sit to check the light.
Set dressing & declutter your shot. I decided for the second day I would be more comfortable sitting in my usual crafting chair. Unfortunately it’s a hideous, yet very comfortable, chair from the 70’s, & in an ugly corner. I found the best softly colored sheet I had & hung it over the wall behind me (after running it through the dryer to knock out the wrinkles & draped a quilt over the chair. The sheet had a medium pink & white flower pattern on it & the quilt had a small pink & white floral design on it, so I thought they worked well together. The sheet had to go around a corner & over a sconce, so it didn’t hang perfectly, but on film it read like a curtain, especially at the window. I cleared my craft stacks from around the chair & dressed the top of the shelf next to it with craft books & related items. The test shots showed you could still see the clutter on the lower shelves, so I cleaned them up too.
Be comfortable & be yourself. However goofy, twangy, rambling, or, god forbid, even boring, my video might be, my personality came through. I was far more comfortable in front of the camera than I thought I would be. It’s painful to watch someone uncomfortable with what they are doing, and the discomfort of seeing/hearing yourself in the video is very short-lived once you actually start (at least it was for me). When you are a one woman production crew, you are too busy worrying about lighting & editing to be worried about fat rolls & eye bags.
Give yourself permission to be imperfect. Isn’t that what the first time is all about? Making mistakes & moving forward smarter.
I would love to hear what you think about my first effort:)
Have you made a video? If so, how was it? What did you learn? Any suggestions for my next video? If you haven’t made a video, have you thought about it? What sort of video would like to make? What’s stopping you?