It's all about processor speed

I completed another video last night. This time on an annual girls softball tournament held in Boulder County around the Fourth of July. There are over 150 teams in the area playing from 28 states. You can read a story by Christine Reid here.

The original idea was to shoot a story about the little rituals, chants and superstitions that usually are associated with sports. I went to the 18U tournament in Boulder thinking it would be easy. Didn't happen.

Most of the teams there at the Stazio Complex in Boulder didn't do much along those lines. And since I feel like I am a first year intern again, trying to learn how to do this video gig, I basically froze up and tried to force the issue. The storyline changed to the scope of the tournament in the realm of girls softball nationally and for college coaches. What I should have done was go to the 16U brackets. Those girls, I learned from Christine, were more into the funky chants and rituals. Next year I guess.

It's been humbling to step back and learn how to be creative with video, yet make comprehensive videos that make sense. I could have ran around with a still camera and shot tons of photos, thrown together a gallery of 20-plus photos and it would have been a cake walk. I could have even gathered audio to make an audio slide show and felt a bit more comfortable to complete the project in a timely manner. Developing a storyline and backbone to hang a story on in video is still a challenge at this point. I know it will get easier. I just didn't think I was going to feel like an intern all over again. I mean, I was so confident with my still camera that, before I left the complex I found one situation to shoot. Nailed it in 15 or 20 frames and headed back to the office to begin the task of editing my video. The photo ended up being the 1A photo.

It took me a little more than three hours to shoot about 30 minutes of video to produce a 01:24 video. (Oh yeah, after a two hour detour to a Final Cut Users Group with video/web 2.0 guru Danny Holland, it took about four hours of editing and watching a processing bar creep across the screen.)

I just plan on producing more and more content so I can ditch the training wheels and upgrade to the race bike again....let me know what you think.