BTM: Fear

Camera: Samsung Camcorder

Editing Program: Windows Movie Maker

Other Equipment: Public School’s Library Computer

If there is one thing you need to know about me, it’s that I’m hilarious. The second thing you need to know about me is that I know an asinine amount of trivia about U.S. presidents. The third is that I am not the best at prioritizing.

Now my terrible prioritizing skill only really affects me. I almost always get everything done by their deadlines, but my methods of doing so can be unorthodox if I am not smart with my prioritizing. That is why this video was edited at the very same time I was finishing up my eighteen page thesis about British local politics. When I say this video and my eighteen page thesis were finished at the same time, I mean I had both the Movie Maker and Microsoft Word  programs open at the same time on one computer screen and I would interchangeably work between the two projects.

Actual photo of me writing my 18 page thesis on British local politics.

Why was I did I do this to myself? Well it was a Monday and I didn’t have a video ready so I had to edit this video so I could upload it when I got home, but my 18 page thesis was due in like two hours so I had to get that done too. Obviously that meant I had to do both at the same time and believe it or not, but I finished both of them in time for their respective deadlines.

However the result of this conundrum is a video-editing disaster. It’s just lucky there are only three instances where the video cuts at the wrong time. Other than that the audio is too low, the video is the wrong size, and the jump cuts are too…jumpy. There’s no rhythm to this video. It’s all over the place and that’s partially because filming went very poorly. At this time, I still relied very heavily on scripts and I had no script for this video. That led to some very funny moments, but overall I should’ve tried to hide the fact I didn’t have a script better. It brought the video’s quality down even lower and it could’ve/should’ve been fixed in editing, but my insistence to write an eighteen page thesis at the same time ruined those chances. It probably didn’t help that I was using a public school computer for all of this as well.

Pictured: The Interior of a Typical American Public School

But I have learned from this video. I rarely use a script for “Real Talk” videos now just because I liked how natural this one felt compared to previous “Real Talks” where I used a script. My jump cuts are a lot smoother now and I hide my faults better in editing. Overall, this was just another step in my journey into making better videos with better quality. You can’t be a success unless you learn from failure.

Another thing I learned from this video is that I am a multi-tasking god who should be worshipped and feared for my ability to successfully write eighteen page papers and edit a video on Movie Maker at the same time.

Maddie Gudenkauf: Multi-Tasking God