Bill Cammack

High Tech, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Bill Cammack in the studio… Makin’ it HAPPEN! :D

(Lafayette Hotel)
Neo: Whoa, deja vu.
Trinity: What did you just say?
Neo: Nothing, I just had a little deja vu.
Trinity: What did you see?
Cypher: What happened?
Neo: A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.
Trinity: How much like it, was it the same cat?
Neo: Might have been, I’m not sure.
Morpheus: Switch, Apoc.
Neo: What is it?
Trinity: Deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something….

On May 27th last year (2006), I made the first post announcing Reel Solid TV. My first videoblog post was one year ago, today. [ReelSolid.TV Episode 01]

It’s been a very interesting year… kind of like a wild ride with endless twists and turns. Blogging, Videoblogging, Compression, Editing, Production, Pre-Production, Hosting, Conferences, Socializing IRL, Social Internet Networks, Festivals, New gadgets coming out every day to make it easier to connect with each other……

In the end, I look back across the last 365 days and I see 157 episodes and I don’t even feel like trying to count how many hours of content. :/ When I make a “ReelSolid.TV Season 01″ DVD, I’ll let you know how long it takes to sit down and watch everything I posted in my first year of videoblogging:

MasamiBillShow – 5 Episodes (April 13, 2007 – April 24, 2007)
The Lab – 6 Episodes (March 16,2007 – April 20, 2007)
ReelSolid.TV – 49 Episodes (May 28, 2006 – May 11, 2007)
Eight Million Stories – 97 Episodes (November 20, 2006 – April 05, 2007)

I ended up with several shows because they’re all different topics, styles and lengths, and I didn’t want to dilute one show with another one. I thought that would be beneficial to me so that I could point people to one specific style of video that they might be interested in. At this point, I’m a fan of consolidation. Put the video where people expect to see it. Myriad shows under one brand… one focus… one RSS feed.

Steve Garfield said he subscribes to people. I’ve found out that I do the exact same thing. I don’t so much watch JetSetShow or Galacticast or SomethingToBeDesired as I tune in to see what Steve & Zadi did this week or what Rudy & Casey did or what Justin did. I would watch if it were the same thing every week or if it were different every week. I would watch whether the shows were produced daily or arrived sporadically in their RSS feeds. Similarly, I’m going to consolidate MY shows into MY RSS feed, and people can watch it if they feel like it.

A very special “thank you” shout-out goes out to my Season 01 subscribers! :D It means a lot to post a video and get a certain number of downloads right off the bat. It also means a lot for y’all to post *FEEDBACK* when you watch a video that you like or even one that you don’t like. I’ve had several conversations over the last two months where I started to describe one of my episodes to someone, like my Vlog Deathmatch Music Video Promo, and the person I’m telling goes “Yeah, I saw that… That was great! :D I especially liked the part where…….” and I’m standing there like ??? because I had received ZERO FEEDBACK from that person that they even SAW that video. To date, I have 929 views on my VDM Official Entry (Starring ActionGirl) and I have 27 comments on the page. :/ FOUR of the comments were BY ME, so either those 24 people watched that video 38.708333 times each or the amount of WATCHING far outweighs the amount of COMMENTING! :D

Recently, much has happened to change the game, and BillCammack.com / ReelSolid.TV is going to flow with that. Stay tuned for live events, interviews, contests, forum discussions, collaborations… even AUDIO PODCASTS!!! :O Now that Season 01 of ReelSolid.TV has been spent learning the technology, the ‘business’ of videoblogging and the philosophies behind all of that, Season 02 is going to be WAY LESS about organization, structure and paperwork and WAY MORE about content creation and self-expression through video & audio… which is why I do what I do in the first place.

Thanks again, all… especially those that dove into videoblogging as soon as they realized what they could do and have made their knowledge available to other people, like on the yahoo videoblogging list and freevlog.org.

Deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something….
ReelSolid.TV Season 02 kicks off NOW!!! :D

billcammack

I have literally *NOT* had a chance to update my production blog on “The Lab” since my last entry, which was about ten days ago. There just haven’t been enough hours in each day in the last two weeks.

I rushed production on “American Pimp” because I had to get it done before going to BlogHer Business ’07 with Rox from BeachWalks.TV. I shot video @ BlogHerBiz that I STILL haven’t finished uploading. That was on a Thursday and Friday. That Sunday, I went to Central Park with Mike, Eric & Sandra… more video from that… Then I spent the rest of the week preparing flickr pictures, editing and uploading videos and working on my next episode of “The Lab” that I had wanted to finish by that Friday.

So I had decided that in honor of my new BlogHer friends, I’d do this weeks show based on “The Witches of Eastwick”….. Only to watch the whole movie then realize there wasn’t enough material for me to comment on in an entertaining fashion. So I had to switch gears and select another movie, which was “Clerks”, which ended up having way more material than I needed.

So I watched the movie and selected the clips I THOUGHT I was going to use. I then started writing my dialogue based on getting from clip to clip. What I SHOULD have done was time the clips from the beginning when I selected them. I like to aim around 3-4 minutes for an episode, so including intro and credits, that should place me around 1:30 worth of clips, leaving the rest of the time for dialogue. AFTER I got the clips together, and AFTER I wrote my initial run at the dialogue, I found out that I had probably 5 minutes worth of clips, so I needed to get rid of most of them and find a new ‘out’.

I needed a new ‘out’ because the old one was a joke based on the fact that Dante’s ex-girlfriend was getting married. In trimming the clips, I cut out all the references to Caitlin getting married. In fact, I cut out all references to Caitlin altogether. There was literally no time in the timeline to set up the ‘out’, so the ‘out’ had to go along with everything else. This meant my final dialogue was useless, because it set up the ‘out’, and it meant my intro dialogue was useless, because it set up things that I wasn’t going to talk about.

continued…

My lines are done for “The Lab” Episode 02. It wasn’t as ‘bad’ as doing the lines for Episode 01, but now I know why actors take so many drugs. There’s a positive high that comes with ‘wrapping’. There’s also a negative drain on your system as you release the character you were portraying for the last however-long. In my case, it was ‘only’ an hour. It was an hour for Episode 01 also, but for different reasons.

Last time, I had no idea about the process I was getting involved in and just jumped in, resulting in the max-headroom-esque video style that I used to edit sentences out of various takes that I did over the course of the hour. This time, I knew what I was out to do, so I had notes ready and I had spent the better part of the day before writing, practicing and revising my lines to match what I already had from Brainy and selecting more clips to bridge from my comments to hers.

Anyway… When I was done with my lines, I was simultaneously elated and depressed. That was after only one hour of being in character. From what I hear, some people do 16-hour days as actors. I can’t yet imagine what it feels like to come back to reality after ‘being under’ for that long. I’ve edited for 16 hours straight… more than that, even… but I don’t have to “be somebody” while I’m editing. Actually, the thing about editing is that you have to “be NOBODY” and devote yourself to the process. After a full day (or double) of editing, I feel like I haven’t been myself in HOURS. I recognize now that that’s a different feeling from “being someone else” for hours.

The reason I call it “being someone else” is that you’re not talking to ANYBODY AT ALL! NOBODY! You’re looking into a lens and remembering to deliver lines AS IF you’re talking to someone, perhaps someone in particular. You’re delivering lines AS IF you think this clip is amusing that you already saw 85 times when you were deciding whether it goes in the piece or not. You’re delivering lines AS IF you just watched the clip, so you’re basically working off of memory and emulation of having seen the clip. I’m reminded of “300″, which I saw @ the IMAX and was really good, if you’re into warrior-type stuff. All of those backdrops were bluescreened in. The actors had to PRETEND that there were ships being destroyed in the water and that there were thousands of guys rushing them with swords and axes. All they were looking at was a blue screen, and MAYBE some actual terrain under their feet.

Anyway, I’m glad that’s over. Now I get to try to load my scenes and finish the piece in the next five hours so I can meet up with Masako and head over to Bre’s party.

In response to The Lab Episode 01: Swingers, Randolfe wrote:

It was well edited and entertaining.

Thank you. :)

Ultimately, I think you fell into the trap of allowing the film to pull you down to it’s (their) level.

This statement assumes a couple of things. A) It assumes that I’m not “down to their level” already. B) It assumes that whatever I say in a video has anything to do with my actual personality. C) It assumes that “their level” is below someone else’s level. I see why you feel that way based on your statements below.

“IF” I were fifty years younger and female in gender (‘if’ is a famously BIG word), I don’t think I’d be interested in getting to know you better and/or dating you.

This is an interesting statement because I realized after I read this line that in all of my calculations about set design and show concept and DVD selection and graphics and music and decisions on commentary and editing….. that I gave *ZERO* thought to A) whether females would watch my show or not, B) whether they’d want to date me, or C) whether anything I said might increase or decrease my chances of getting a rap.

The reason I can’t be concerned with that is that it’s tough enough to get topics that I want to talk about and make it all happen without adding in the filter of “I can’t use this clip or say this or that because some chick might not want to hook up with me”. :D

I agree with you that if my goal were to present myself as a candidate for marriage, talking about not only manipulating women, but in fact manipulating guys into having abilities beyond their natural capacity to “pull chicks” would be just about THE LAST thing I’d want to do. :D

As a matter of fact, if you watch the video again, you’ll notice that I call guys out for their bullshitting, lying behavior. They don’t ACTUALLY own yachts and expensive apartments. They just SAY they do because that’s what they think women want to hear in order to give them some. They’re hoping they can hit it before she figures out that they don’t have any of that stuff. That’s why Mikey got caught in a lie. Instead of just coming at her straight up, that he liked how she looked and wanted whatever he wanted from her, he went the typical route and tried to talk himself up and got busted. The problem with that technique is that so many guys use it that it’s effectiveness is diluted. You may as well walk up to her and say “I’m about to lie to you so I can try to get laid”. :)

Anyway… Having thought about what you said, and appreciating your comments, for sure… I STILL can’t be concerned with whether some chick wants to hook up with me or not because she doesn’t like something I said in a video. hehehe Something about that just makes me laugh. :D

Actually… Your suggestion that I tailor what I say on the show to present myself in the best light as a suitor is merely a different technique of manipulation. That would be as bad, ethically, as the behavior I just finished discussing. :)

This “game” single males (of all orientations) play demeans the really important dynamic in sexual-social relationships by reducing them to the level of a sport like fox-hunting and/or archery practice.

Yes. You are right about that. However, that doesn’t make “the game” any less of a reality for very many guys. Some guys chase chicks just for sport… just because they can. Other guys try to develop skills because they CAN’T pick up girls to save their lives. It’s because of Mikey’s lack of confidence in himself that he decides to lie about his job and what he owns and what he plans to buy. It’s because he doesn’t believe this girl will like him for who he actually is. For some guys, having some sort of tactics are just plain necessary, or they’ll never get on in their entire lives.

I had a parting of ways with a friend of mine over just this very issue. For some odd reason, he wasn’t getting any interest from girls that he liked. I mean, he was really in a bad way about it. Once he started learning how “the game” works, his first reaction was JOY that now, he could pull girls that used to NOT give him the time of day. Eventually, he rejected “the game” for the very reasons you mention. What he wanted was a girl that he liked that also liked him. You can’t get that by lying to her, because she likes who it is that you told her you are, and she doesn’t know a damned thing about YOU at all. She likes what you told her… It’s not that she likes YOU. What he learned for himself was that he was better off going the honest route and throwing his hat in the ring, win or lose, without manipulating the ladies into giving him what he wants. Unfortunately, once he “converted”, I represented the dark side of the force to him, so we didn’t hang out after that. I respect his decision and wish him all the best.. but that path doesn’t work for everyone.

I agree with you though that “the game” has a desensitizing effect on guys. Women become expendable when you can get another one five minutes from now or by turning the next corner. The more effective you get in “the game”, the less each individual “success” matters at all. It’s merely repetition and reinforcement that the same stimulus creates the same response in many different women. *YAWN* For guys that can get on without gaming chicks, I recommend that you don’t get involved in the sport of it all.

You’re a bright perceptive guy. Focus on more serious and deeper stuff. Leave films like this one to the loners and losers who inevitably end up living them :-).

Thanks. :) However, you’re projecting _your_ value system onto *me*. I’m sure there are serious as well as deep topics that I’ll get into eventually… however… hahahaha it’s NOT going to be in Episode 02! :D If you disliked Episode 01, you’re going to HATE Episode 02! hahahaha

Please take all this as a compliment not as criticism.

I appreciate your comments as well as your being up front about how you felt about the episode instead of just saying something generically nice. I really hadn’t noticed that I honestly didn’t consider AT ALL what chicks might think about my “Swingers” commentary. I’m glad about not caring about that, but I can’t take all the credit for it. Not that I would ever compare a single-episode-show to Rocketboom, but look at the statistics. They had something like 8% of their viewers as females. There’s a low percentage of females in the Yahoo Videoblogging Group. Even out of the females that are apparent, the vast majority of them are in some form of relationship or are for whatever reasons completely undateable. From Friday to right now, approximately 48 hours, I have a reported total from blip.tv of 116 views. Even if all of those were unique visitors (which they aren’t), there are two chances that one of them would be a “dateable” female… SLIM… and NONE…..

….. and Slim left town! hahahahaha :D

I thought the ending credits were the best part :-).

Again, thanks. After all I went through to get Episode 01 “in the can” and then back out of the can, I had to give myself proper credit for doing EVERYTHING. It’s out of my system now, and I’ll be using “regular” credits from now on. :D

Thanks for the note, Randolfe. :)

Spent between 3 and 4 hours last night sifting through the hour’s worth of dialogue footage I shot. I probably got 2/3rds of the way through it or maybe 3/4ths.

I went through the music at the end first to see if it was useable audio-wise or video-wise. I’ll probably end up doing that over, since there’s no visual representation of the guitar. I’ll also probably do it in a different setup, because there’s no decent way to do it with my dialogue setup, unless I stand up.

Next, I went through the last takes I did… the ones that were closer to the camera. That’s because by that time, I had the “script” in my mind from deciding along the way which storyline I intended to keep. After I got that together in a basic timeline, I went back to the beginning and started looking for duplicate shots farther from the camera as well as lines that I just thought worked well and wanted to see if I could work into the piece. There were A LOT OF PAUSES in the front, and it was actually pretty funny watching it, because I remembered what I was thinking when I was sitting there. I was watching myself make my way through the dialogue like a swamp. :)

I’m back in action now, and about to deal with the remaining raw footage. I already had the movie scenes loaded, so once I get this done, I’m ready to start building the radio edit (= Making the show work as far as audio and timing is concerned. The next pass makes the VIDEO work with the selected audio).

Probable project time elapsed at this point (past concept development and set creation):
Preparing to shoot: 30 minutes (getting the set ready, getting myself ready)
Shooting: 1 hour (since I didn’t have a script, and therefore nothing to practice, which will NEVER happen again! :D)
Coming Down from shooting: 1 hour (since I wasn’t prepared for the toll it takes to do EVERYTHING at the same time)
Editing: 3 hours (Not really editing, more like logging the good takes so I can do what I need to do today)
TOTAL: ~6 hours

A lot of people video blog just because they feel like it. What IS a video blog? or a videoblog or a vlog or…. don’t ask! :D There are as many definitions for a video blog as there are _names_ for video blogs. Some people consider any video that’s placed on the internet eligible for the title “video blog”. Most simply, Steve Garfield would say “A video blog is video on a blog”. :D So expand your idea of what a blog is to include a video… ANY video, and there you have it.

Does that make someone that has a blog with videos on it a videoblogger? Again, don’t ask! There’s the issue of what kind of videos are on the blog. Is it video of kids falling off of skateboards? A cat playing with a ball of string? A scripted, weekly comedy show? Citizen journalism from the streets? Someone sitting alone in their room talking to their iSight as if it were a real person they were having a conversation with? Is it made by individuals? Is it made by companies that were formed and funded with the sole object of delivering video content on the internet? is it made by a television studio as an afterthought or addition to their actual television shows? Do all of those count equally as “video blogs”, assuming they meet the base qualification of being “video on a blog”?

What about production values? Does the audio have to be good? Does the video have to be steady? Does the editing (if there is any) have to be decent? Does the video have to show something about you or your environment? Does it have to mean something to anyone? Who’s watching it? Friends? Family? People you don’t know that live in other cities, states or countries? What’s your responsibility to your viewers? Do you make videos with the viewer in mind or only yourself, and if they don’t want to watch, they can “change the channel” by clicking on a different link?

See what I mean? :) Don’t ask. Let’s just assume that there’s something called a video blog, and lets assume that it’s “video on a blog” like Steve said.

Now, lets assume that someone has this video blog and they want to make some money from it. They have a few options. They could get sponsored by some group, in which case they are paid to put their show on regardless of how many views/hits/clicks/whatever they get. They could sell advertising themselves and include the ad in their actual video. They could have advertising on their web page and not on the video at all. They could place their video on a hosting site that features revenue-sharing.

If you post video to a revenue-sharing host, the basic deal is that the host makes arrangements with advertisers to pay them to place ads on their site or on their videos. The “sharing” part comes in when the host offers content creators (the people actually uploading the videos) a percentage of the money that the host gets from the advertisers which happened to be generated by a video that that creator uploaded. There are wikis on the technical aspects of this, including “cost per impression” (cpi), “cost per action” (cpa) and “cost per click” (cpc). You might get paid if the advertiser’s ad is seen. You might only get paid if the ad is clicked on by whomever views your video. You _might_ only get paid if someone clicks through AND buys something from the advertiser. Even then, “getting paid” depends on you getting enough credits to get over a certain amount of currency, say $20, because it doesn’t make sense for companies to send out individual checks for 15 cents each to thousands of people.

Once you’ve decided on a host, you need to decide (assuming you GET to decide) how ads are run on your videos. There are several options for this, the basic ones being pre-roll, post-roll and mid-roll.

Pre-roll means that the advertisement comes on before your video plays. You will hope that this video is really short, because people are going to tune out if they decide they aren’t willing to wait through advertisements they didn’t ask to see when they clicked on your video. Then again, that might not matter if you get paid just for showing their ad. Since it’s in the front of the video, the viewer already saw it, so you get paid, right? Well… maybe. It depends on what the host considers a “view”. If “view” means that someone started your video, then you’re good. If “view” means someone COMPLETED your video, and they tuned out because of your pre-roll ad, you lose. :)

Post-roll means the ad comes on after your video has played all the way through. The risk there is that the viewer won’t watch all the way through. Once they get to the end, either you get paid when the ad shows up, or you get paid if they click through or you get paid if they click through and buy something.

Mid-roll means the advertisement comes on while your video is still playing. Mid-roll can be absolutely ridiculous, depending on how it’s implemented. I saw a mid-roll ad that took up the whole screen of the video AND replaced the audio like a regular commercial that comes on television. When the ad came back, the video had been running the whole time, and whatever was said during the time was completely lost. It happened to be on an interview show where the accomplishements of the interviewee were being listed. That kind of mid-roll doesn’t work, because they just throw the ad in anywhere. If you don’t care about your content, however, it doesn’t matter. If you weren’t telling a story anyway, and it doesn’t matter to you when sections of your piece are obscured, then it’s fine. As an editor, I can tell you that A LOT OF ATTENTION is paid to where we go to commercial, how many times we go to commercial, how we go to commercial and how we come back to the program from commercial. Throwing up full-video-sized advertisements just anywhere is completely horrible and ruins immersion.

There are other forms of advertising while your video’s being played. There might be visual advertisements that don’t take up the whole screen and don’t obscure audio at all. There might be ads that don’t run on your video but next to your video the whole time it’s playing. These ads might be animated or change every few seconds. I find these types of ads REALLY annoying, because the motion pulls your eye from the video content and ruins immersion. Once again, this choice is good for people that don’t really care if someone’s watching their video or not. If they’re using the video to get your eyes on their advertisements… mission accomplished.

Personally, I’m a sponsorship fan. There’s too much business involved with monetizing video for it to be worth ANY of my time to deal with it. The more time you spend trying to advertise your videos, the less time you spend MAKING those videos. :) I’d rather leave it to the hosting site, set it and forget it. Also, unless you know A LOT of kids that fall off of A LOT of skateboards, you’re not going to be creating consistent viral video…. well… unless you’re one of these video thieves that steal other people’s content and re-post it… but that’s another issue entirely.

Bill Cammack | New York City | Freelance Video Editor | alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack