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Experiments with mini movies

A video posted by Em. (@ohgoshem) on


One of my favourite bits of Blogtacular was the video walk
that Xanthe Berkley hosted on the Friday.


Video isn’t something that I have ever focused on in the
past because, in my head, video was all about YouTube vlogs on your latest ‘Primark
haul’ or your make-up regime. My make-up is basic and I am not about to sit
down and vlog a haul and if I do, please punch me in the face! I really don’t
want Jim knowing all the stuff in our house hasn’t ‘been there for ages, I can’t
believe you haven’t noticed it’ (plus I’ve not even entered a Primark in about
a year!)

But on the walk, Xanthe opened my eyes to videoing what’s
around me rather than having to appear in the video. We discussed how the output doesn’t have to be a long video of me talking to the screen (I can’t honestly think
of anything worse) but it can be a series of little scenes from the day, or the
weekend, or trip, edited together to form a mini movie. And now I think I might love video.
On the walk we wandered as a group round Covent Garden. The
session started with some phone video tips from Xanthe including holding the
phone landscape, not portrait so that when you’re editing it fits better, that the
best ways of holding the phone still whilst you film, with your arms in close
to your body for stability, that we should really invest in a tripod because handheld timelapses just don’t work, and we got a list of video scenarios to look out for
and filming options on our phones, like slow mo, boomerang and hyperlapse. 
As I’m an Android user, I thought maybe there would be limitations, or that the afternoon might focus heavily on iPhone features (I’ve sat in on some phoneography webinars and they have always been iPhone focused), but all the techniques we used to film we available on all our phones. I’ve played with Boomerang quite a bit, but not the other features of the video on my phone since upgrading to the S7 Edge. 
We got to play with the fabulous mirrored walls in Covent Garden, with Nikki McWilliams being very obliging with some leaping and umbrella twirling for some slow mo shots and Boomeranging, there were line-ups coming out of the mirrored corners, we experimented with time lapse and Xanthe in her yellow coat, we saw opera singers and flowers full of bees. We amused tourists and locals alike with our posing, our mass filming and the timed umbrella lunges. 
It was so interesting seeing the things Xanthe, with her experience in mini movie making, looked out for as we walked around Covent Garden. It was more the little shots she took notice of, the details, and the small movements, that I found interesting. 

I didn’t make it to her talk at the actual event but Toni popped along to it and gave me a crash course in video editing with Adobe Clip which is the mobile software we’d been advised to download. It’s so easy to use, you can trim your clips, edit them within the app, change the order they appear in and the fact you are able to overlay music on to the video from the app is a really handy feature. Plus there is the option to make your video and the music ‘snap’ together so your beats work with the movements you’ve filmed.



I’m not going to kid myself that I am great at video, but it’s
something that I am enjoying playing with and to force myself to play with it some more, I am challenging myself to a video of my weekends throughout July, so expect to see more in my Instagram timeline. 

 Here are the other mini movies I’ve been playing with since I got back from Blogtacular. 


A video posted by Em. (@ohgoshem) on
What do you think? Is video something that you’ve spent much time focusing on? Is Vlogging your thing and should I re-evaluate it? Just got any tips or hints for me? Hit me up with your video advice!
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As Instagram will no longer let you embed a hashtag, you’ll have to make do with clicking here to see the videos and photos from the other lovely people that I was lucky enough spend the afternoon with (and you’ll also get a glimpse at the delicious ice cream Xanthe introduced us to afterwards.)

Blogtacular video walk

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