I always imagined that I'm going to come up with a new moviemaking or documentation technique that will arouse a lot of interest among imitators. It never happens, but I don't let my spirits be dampened.
I use a lot of graphics in my videos, something that I don't see many others doing. Most people simply use talking head presentations and get away with it just fine. Including PowerPoint-style text in is relatively rare. My hope is that it will help people to follow what I'm saying.
Up until this point I have made my videos by performing the speech as I would on stage, all in one go. It's hard to memorize a 15- or 20-minute script down to the word. With my present two speeches on evolution I'm taking a different approach. I'm going to film one slide's worth of material at a time. Read a page or so, then stand in front of the camera and record that material speaking directly to the camera, not reading a teleprompter.
It will take me about ten takes to do an entire video. I can then use editing software to splice it together, inserting my text overlays to simulate PowerPoint. It may not all take place in one day one day. Will people find it odd if I am wearing different clothes in different takes, or even if I have some of it indoors and some of it outdoors? I hope they will accept what I have to say and not be distracted by such things as the as the setting. I'll await your feedback.
I enjoy making movies out-of-doors. The garden is very green at this time of the year. Wartime helps because I don't have airplane noise in the background. I think I have learned well enough how to use my lapel microphone and to edit the sound. This has been a question of incremental improvement. I have always used the noise reduction feature. I have recently learned how to do audio balance as well. As my lapel microphone seems to oversample the bass, I move the slider down to zero to remove the lowest frequencies.
Our war news is rather scant. Russia threw flocks of rockets and drones at Ukraine, Kyiv especially, over the last week. Our air defenses have been effective knocking them down. We barely missed any sleep in these nighttime attacks.
Yesterday Ukraine claimed it mounted a counterattack in the Bakhmut area, recapturing a couple of square kilometers. I have seen that figure from only one source. If so, it is huge news in a battle in which an advance of 10 meters, one city block, has been standard for the past few months.
So far, the promised spring offensive has not materialized. The analysts say that we are taking our time, knocking out Russian logistics infrastructure before we strike. That to me is eminently good sense. My own assessment is that Putin's position is getting weaker. He appears to be losing the support of his elites. The delay might work in Ukraine's favor, saving lives on both sides.
This week I visited the newly completed "Be Clever" school just a block from our home. It's a second campus for a school that has been established for several years in Poznyaky, about 5 miles from here. The building, which I would guess cost around a million dollars, is maybe 9000 ft.² sitting on about a fourth of an acre. The classrooms are new and well appointed. It appears they are well organized, able to show parents their standard operating procedures for hiring teachers, grade administration, discipline and so on. Quite a contrast to the parent-initiated Sunflower School's seat-of-the-pants operation.
Tuition is 15,000 hryvnya per month, or $400. Almost twice the cost of Sunflower, which Oksana favors for Zoriana. It is good that we have a credible backup in case Sunflower does not get enough enrollment or somehow goes out of business.
Here's a picture of our garden. Grandmother Nadia has been very active. That means me too. She complains that her shoulders hurt in her arms hurt, not surprising for a lady in her 70s. Since I don't have such complaints, I get to do the heavy work. I spade up the garden and break up the colds, and then she rakes it and plants. It is not a bad arrangement. I have worked this ground for several years now and is easy to turn. All the big stones and bricks for out of it, so is nothing but nice rich black dirt. We have tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, onions, garlic, pumpkins. Unfortunately, despite spraying one peach tree has serious leaf curl.
As I dictated this I was walking down to the playground with Marianna. She played a little game with me. She cried and demanded to be put on my shoulders. I said if that's the way you want it, we will go back home. She immediately relented and we walked all the way. She's a smart girl. She probably understood as I dictated this text. On the way home, when it was me who wanted to go, she got to ride all the way.
Oksana is taking Zoriana on a Sunflower School excursion this morning. She has talked kindergartener Zoriana into the first grade, much the way Eddie entered six years ago when he was still in kindergarten. Since they had scheduled no first grade the next year, Eddie spent a few months in the first grade as a five-year-old and went with the rest of the class into the second grade. We'll see what happens with Zoriana. Her reading is good, but her social development seems no better than age appropriate.
Babysitting, banking, dealing with the water heater and so on all take me away from my major project now. I am doing two videos on evolution using a PowerPoint-type approach. I use drawing software to make slides, text in this case, to superimpose on the video.
I have two purposes. The first is to provide structure, so a viewer can follow the points visually. The second is to provide an easy connection to the script of the movie, available on my web site. Video is a valuable medium, but it does not lend itself to hyperlinks, footnotes, or bibliographies. A written work serves better for that. I'm sure that I flatter myself in the amount of use they will get. Interest in my topics - human evolution, fertility and child rearing - is limited.
You readers saw my exchange with Margaret Anna Alice last week about the Russian propaganda in Ukraine. As a reminder, she sent me a link to a video by a young woman who purports to have been converted to believing in the Russian clause. I found that the points it made were easily refuted.
The war is not the primary focus for either of us. Margaret Anna Alice is most interested in who is responsible for the Covid democide. She believes that it was a planned, that they are killing us on purpose. I am not quite as convinced that all participants were in it to thin our numbers, although I am quite convinced that that is what's happening.
Her quest is to expose the guilty and call them to account. Mine is to recognize what's happening and raise my children accordingly. That's what my videos are about. I view what has happened to us as a more matter of evolution and therefore tend to be more with the mass formation people in not attributing total blame to malevolent actors. There certainly are those, and though it does not in any way exculpate them, I believe that they are a product of their environment. Whatever the case, it is not my problem to resolve.
I am focused on dealing with things within my power, mainly the bringing up of my children. I attempt in these videos to anticipate the world into which my children will mature, and thus establish how I can position them to survive, thrive and have children in the world the world as it will be.
That's the (longer today) news from Lake WeBeGone, addressing what's going on with the strong man, the good-looking woman, the kids, and the war.
All the information about movie making is a bit beyond me but look forward to the finished product. The view of the garden is interesting as a picture does indeed save a thousand words. It makes me think I should think about a small greenhouse and enclosures as we have just finished our third short cool summer in a row and already have had snow on the nearby hills which would have been previously unheard of.
Have you experimented with screen capture software with voice over? That may allow merging of various PP slides with other textual or graphic material.