Bill Cammack

Effective immediately, Bill Cammack joins Drew Olanoff as a member of “Team SCRIGGITY“. :D

When I first got involved in videoblogging, a little over a year ago, I used to troll blip.tv‘s recent uploads to get ideas about shows that I thought were good. One of those shows was Jonny Goldstein’s “Reinventing Television” (reinventingtv.phovi.com). I got involved, immediately. => Text chat from Reinventing Television Episode 2 (October 12, 2006).

Another show that I thought was cool, interesting and innovative was scriggity (scriggity.com). Eventually, I met and hung out with Drew @ several NYC events, including Videoblogger Meetups, Network2 get-togethers and PodCampNYC.

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Meanwhile, I was gearing up to do my own show… I mean, I *HAVE* my own “show” already, but it’s more like a feed of stuff that I do day in and day out. It’s not a actual show, but rather an indication of what it’s like to be me on any given day. So… I was gearing up to do an actual show and started filming episodes of “The Lab”.

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What I found out, and outlined in my notes about the project… was that while I enjoy MAKING shows, I don’t enjoy the rest of the process. The “paperwork”, as I call it of all the stuff that has to be done PAST production and post.

Interestingly enough, Drew decided that he doesn’t want to edit. :D We chatted this morning, and I’ve joined “Team SCRIGGITY”, and we’re looking forward to big things. :D I always enjoy doing projects with friends, and I’ve been a fan of Drew’s concepts for a long time now. Thanks to Drew for the nod, and…

it’s ON!!! and it happens to be POPPIN’!!! :D

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billcammack

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(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 wanted, and received, the understanding of what it takes to put together a weekly internet show absolutely from scratch. Before the ides of March, hehe, I had absolutely nothing….. I mean, besides outstanding equipment and infinite skillz. :D I had nothing. All I had was an idea to do a show based on films that adhered to certain parameters that friends of mine (who know who they are) told me were attractive features to have in an internet show. I chose films because I’ll never run out of them, and I chose the format because I could do everything myself and wouldn’t get hung up for shows if other people dropped the ball, like they always love to do. It’s Monday right now, and I haven’t even CONSIDERED doing a show for this Friday, except doing out-takes from “American Pimp”, and I could do that show in one afternoon. The point is that as I sit here now, I know what it takes to deliver a show four days from now that’s virtually indistinguishable from my other three episodes (Not counting the two BlogHerBiz episodes, 1, 2). That’s what I wanted, and that’s what I have.

I may or may not do a new episode of “The Lab” for this Friday. I haven’t had the chance to devote brain cell #1 to ANY of the fantastic ideas I got from BlogHer Business ’07, and I still have clips to upload from the conference. I have two very interesting ideas on the table to discuss with a couple of the BlogHer ladies, regarding text blogging, audio blogging or video blogging. I also have to start thinking about practical implementation of Justin’s ideas.

It’s also currently videoblogging week, 2007. There’s a wiki about VBW’07 @ http://videobloggingweek.pbwiki.com/, and you can search for videos tagged “videobloggingweek2007″. I might use this week to test out a daily version of “The Lab”, and STILL do my film show for Friday…

’cause I’ve Got It Like That! ;)

I had used the time between when I “finalized” my final revision of my dialogue script (as final as it was going to be until I actually started saying the lines and feeling them out), and when I was emotionally prepared to “attack” my lines to finish the rest of the edit. Everything was done except for saying and then loading my lines, color correcting them, tightening up the edit to work on the timing I felt was proper, then noise-reducing the drive sounds out from under my lines, watching the whole piece for timing, compressing and uploading. Everything went smoothly, like it’s supposed to, :D and I had my video uploaded by the time I headed out on Saturday around 4pm to play Ultimate Frisbee in Central Park.

I was actually a day late with my release, but there was nothing ‘good’ I really could have done about that. I had so much to do last week, including switching concepts entirely when I found out that “Witches of Eastwick” didn’t have what I needed to make a show, that by the time I got my final dialogue revision written, it was Friday evening or Friday night, and I had ZERO incentive or energy or DESIRE to read my lines AT ALL. Being a morning person, I woke up with ‘attack’ energy, prepared the set, then did my 45 minutes on-screen. It actually went pretty quickly, because I knew my lines, and it was only the break points that were tripping me up. Some of the takes I ended up using were the second or third ones, and I *KNEW* that I had aced them when I finished saying them, but I did several more takes anyway, for ‘safety’. That’s why it still took 45 minutes. I was going over the same lines, just in case.

Having internalized the process, I see that there’s an order I need to use when I to this format of a show. The MAIN thing is the clips. Until I have the clips I’m going to use, thinking about dialogue or writing dialogue is worthless. I have to make sure I have clips that are short enough that they’re all done in ~ 1:30. I have to have a punch-out, or I have to write one when I get to the dialogue. Part of what made the process tedious was looking through the whole film for clips to use. I probably ended up using 1/5th of the footage that I thought was useful from “Clerks”. I ‘wasted’ a lot of energy thinking about bridging clips that I ended up not using at all. Next time I do a show in this format, I’m just going to be looking for the short stuff that illustrates the point and sets off my dialogue. It gets easier every time. All the rest of it is cookie-cutter formula at this point.

Having said that, I don’t actually WANT to do it.

continued…