#40, W Cliff Rd, US Video Is Out

Phalaenopsis Orchid, Santa Clara, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

I managed to release my latest video filmed mostly in Santa Cruz, California. Everything in that video comes from a West Cliff Rd, hence the title, but I expanded it to something broader. And added a little bit of dream quality through color changes. I was cruising up and down the street, filming everything that looked interesting, and then edited the best pieces I could. The filming part is the least time consuming part and most pleasant at the same time. Editing takes much more time, many, many hours. The longest one is writing the music, however, at least several days. It sounds good in stereo, as it is mixed for stereo, but ended up only in mono – not exactly sure why that happened since I did everything to make it sound stereo. The first part of the composed piece is a piano solo, Steinway D to be exact. The second and the third parts just add more instruments but play the same melody. I limited the number of instruments here to: Steinway D piano, Stradivari violin, cello, vertical bass, double bass, string section, and timpani to close it. Not too many but the sound is already getting quite rich. There is a definite need to post my music separately in its highest quality, but this site does not let you do it easily. This becomes more and more urgent. Writing for the piano is indeed the most challenging part of all.
I think I am going to write something for Spanish guitar, finished Celino Romero’s book and listened to the CD, and liked it a lot. Why not give it a try.
Comments do not seem to be working on YouTube very well; the whole site is full of new problems.
What next? Lots of filming, lots of tape, lots of natural sounds, lots of battery recharging, but a little bit of break from editing, and submitting videos.

Lunch: cooked mixed grains of rice, buckwheat, millet, and sorghum with Marie Callender’s marinara sauce and La Mexicana mild salsa. Mint tea to drink, hot not iced. Almost no fat, just pure goodness!

Book: Celino Romero, The Art of Spanish Guitar, Amsco Publications, http://www.musicsales.com, with CD, ISBN-10: 0-8256-3461-X.

#39, Santa Cruz Video

Old Ship, San Francisco, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

Getting new subscribers on YouTube becomes more and more difficult. Seems that times when everybody was subscribing to everybody else are pretty much gone, and now people have plenty of conditions attached to their subscription decisions, and either delay subscribing altogether, or just plain ignore you. The views are also down, probably because the summer is coming, and there are simply more interesting things to do than staring at the monitor. Not long time ago when YouTube was still hot, this would not happen. Oh, well.
In a short period of time I edited four videos filmed in San Francisco around Piers 41, and 42, not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. All of them already went through a 2-3 day peak followed by near death, and received only moderate number of views. I am not sure why, maybe the subject is already exhausted, although I doubt, because I can go and visit those places every single day and there is always something new and exciting to see. But then again, do my videos capture any of that? Maybe, maybe not.
There is no truly good category for my videos, and that has been an issue for a very long time. I do not have much interest in vlogging, and prefer to be on the other side of the lens, and taking care of getting good quality audio as well. I don’t pretend to make travel or documentary videos, but always try to add a bit of artistry to them. Also I almost always write my own music, this actually takes usually several days just for a piece 1-2 minute long. Quite a bit of work. Those are not quite musical videos, either. Simply there is not good category for what I do, could this be partially responsible for lower than expected views? Maybe, maybe not.
Right now I am sitting and writing a piano piece for a Santa Cruz video. It was filmed obviously in Santa Cruz, CA, on a very good and sunny day, under a little bit of clouds. Already decided to change its look quite a bit, why not try something new? As far as music goes, I may add more instruments, violins, cellos, basses, depending on how much more time I am willing to spend on it and when I decide that things already sound good. The piano part alone in its unfinished shape is already good. The Steinway D grand sounds terrific! Aside from filming, I made some really high quality audio recordings at the beach late at night north of Santa Cruz. Those are 24bit / 96kHz recordings on a linear PCM recorder. The weather has changed into something windy, and misty, so I got lots of high wind noise, and trying to prevent various pieces of equipment and my clothing from flying away from me! Good exercise, will do much more of that in the coming days and weeks.
A well known YouTube member announced his departure, renetto, one of the very first members who got things moving around. In my impression he did almost everything he could, got rewarded to some small degree, became popular for better or worse, and the only thing left was to go down. That process already started, and rather than being a witness to his slow demise, exited gracefully near the top. Good job, great job, I would say. Good luck, my friend. Are we going to see much more of that in the near future? Maybe, maybe not.

#23, Three New Videos

Time To Get Up, Santa Clara, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

Yes, I know. I did not write anything for a while, and my goal of writing at least twice a week goes up in smoke. And the goal of submitting a video per week is also unrealistic. I spend quite a bit of time shooting, about a day with preparations, travel, finding something interesting and shooting on location. It is good that in the Bay Area everything is not too far away, usually within 1-2 hours of driving. Editing, as you well know, can be pretty slow depending on your approach. I have, depending on the video length, 30-50 clips to edit. Every single one is tweaked till it looks good and makes sense, and is not out of line with the major theme for that part of video. Still using iMovie, but it is obvious and almost mandatory to switch to something better, simply because many other people on YouTube already switched to much more advanced, and expensive, video editing software. Those with iMovies are simply going to fall behind. Actually I was thinking a bit about the future on YouTube, and since good videos are expensive to make, and require fairly expensive equipment, there is probably not much room for people with small budgets, and cameras built into their laptops. Sad but true. The higher video quality, HD especially, is going to be expensive and not viable to many people making videos today. Do you agree with me?
My last three videos come from Monterey, Santa Cruz, and Mt. Hamilton near San Jose, CA. They look quite good, I believe. I seem to like recording natural sounds more and more, even very basic sounds, ocean, passing cars, and splashed water. The stereo mike I am using is picking up lots of sounds from different direction, even me breathing - not necessarily what I want. A good stereo shotgun will be tried very soon, maybe even on the next video.
Composing music is something I am enjoying more and more and plenty of music books are scattered around my place for easy reference. Today I was listening to the score from Serenity by David Newman. Also today started to read Gabriel Yared's The English Patient by Heather Laing, ISBN-10: 0-8108-5910-6, which is a film score guide. Let me say the Hollywod Studio Symphony sounds good!

PS. First year on YouTube summary as promised - tomorrow.