I Love Editing

Vlog Every Day April, day five: an unedited video about how much I love editing. I probably should have edited. 😀

Referenced videos:

• “Thanks, Oppy” (a tribute to the Mars rover Opportunity)
• Day Three; “How many chuggas come before choo choo?”
• Day Four: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

[spoiler title=”Video Transcript”]

Oh! God, look at this…look at this bright sun! You wouldn’t know that it was just POURING practically minutes ago, it seems like.

Hello, Earthlings. I’m Adam the Alien, you are watching Adam the Alien. I’m already screwing up my own intro. Today is day five of Vlog Every Day April, and I’m not editing today. Because…AHH! The last two videos I made were supposed to be quick, simple, easy videos. Just do ’em quick, done, bam, boom. And they’ve gone up really late, uh, in part because…well, ENTIRELY because I got really, really, really into the editing. And that…in one sense, that’s a very good thing. I have lately been falling back in love with editing again, and…that-that’s kind of what got me into videos in the first place, was just playing around with other people’s footage and seeing what-what I could turn it into. Seeing what I could take and turn this raw material into something. And that sentence didn’t work out to be a complete sentence, but we’re gonna…we’re gonna go with it anyway, because we’re not editing!

Um…one of the things that’s really made me re-fall in love with editing again lately was making the tribute to the Opportunity Mars rover that I made. Um, because I didn’t have to worry about anything but taking all of this raw material that was available to me — the…the various public domain shots, and-and footage, and photos, and the press…uh, the-the press…junket? I’m losing my words. Anyway…I-I watched that whole thing and-and was just, like, looking for a few quotes to use in what was originally gonna be, uh, mostly a…a musical montage. But I found so many quotes that it…it drove the story, and I started, uh, editing, and guiding, and creating some kind of narrative out of it. And I have so much FUN doing that! And, likewise, these past few days I…there was the first, uh, of the edited videos: day two, where…honestly, I was not entertained by the video I shot. So I…in post, in editing, I sought to make it more interesting to me, both while I was editing and so that I could watch it after. Because one thing about editing? You have to watch it again and again and again, so you’d better like what you’re editing.

Then yesterday, I was just going to read a poem, maybe put a few shots of daffodils over it. But as soon as I sat down, I’m like, “You know what this needs? This needs music. And now that I’ve got music, let me actually just break it up more, and add more shots. You know what? Let me look up the various footage that I’ve shot over the years of daffodils, and ooh! Wait! I’ve shot a number of cloud long sho-uh, I’ve shot a number of long cloud shots over the years just for the purpose of making time lapses.” And so I tossed THAT in. And…ah, it was just FUN! It was so much fun!

And I got a little lost in that fun. And, um…then you combine that with-with all the post stuff that has to be done, like putting in…uh, captions, and uploading in three different places! ‘Cuz at the moment I’m uploading raw videos both to…all three to…let me start that sentence over.

At the moment I’m uploading videos directly to YouTube, Facebook, AND Instagram because God knows in this day and age of social media, centralization of your content is a guarantee that it won’t be seen. And sure enough, it’s been working. I get more…I get more views right away, spread out across multiple platforms, uh, than I do just uploading to one. So…

Ah, that-that’s basically all this video is about today, is just rambling about editing! Because I love it! I love it so freaking much! And…it’s good to get those reminders of-of-that I *do* love it. Because sometimes…sometimes…it just starts to feel like too much. And…I have to remember that I do it because it makes me feel so good! It…it-it delights me! It…and I don’t CARE if it’s not someone else’s cup of tea, because…God damn it, I love doing it!

So…ah, that…that’s it. I love editing. That’s gonna be the title of this video: I love editing. And that’s why this video isn’t edited, because this video WOULD NOT BE UP in time, and i just want…I-I-I…I want a video up NOW! Not…less than ten minutes before midnight! Or after, depending on the platform. Because uploading in three different places takes time. Though not as much now that I have fiber-optic Internet. Which is a glorious blessing. The rendering might take a long time on my computer, but…hooo! These videos upload in MINUTES as soon as they’re rendered. That is AMAZING! And that’s wonderful!

And I’m not going anywhere with this right now. So, uh…I love editing. I love all of you for watching me whether I’m edited or not, and for commenting and participating in what I feel and hope is an exchange of…I dunno, our lives and our passion. In fact, there! Yeah! Without editing, I’ve come up with a question to ask you for the comments. And that is going to be: what is something you love? What is some weird little passion that maybe nobody else will ever understand unless they really, really, really share that level of passion in it? But…what makes…what-what gives you this kind of joy? That-that might not…it might not give others that joy, but you don’t care. It’s just…it’s just yours.

Anyway, that’s-that’s the question. God, I wish I had decided to edit this, but I…we’re not doing that. And now I’m rambling. I’m at six minutes and almost thirty seconds, so I should say: I’m Adam the Alien. Until next time, fare thee well.

And now, we’re gonna do a little…little-little end screen dance. Little end screen dance. There-there’s probably some stuff over there to click on, if you’re watching this on YouTube. But, uh, if you’re not, like this is Facebook or Instagram, there’s…there’s links elsewhere. Well, maybe not on Instagram. AdamTheAlien.com! YouTube.com! I’m going too long! This is too much end screen! There’s no editing! Fuck! [/spoiler]