Candid Video Ideas and/or Requests
 

I had to reschedule my shoot (for solo scenes) today. My photographer isn't able to shoot until June 15th so in the mean time I'm going to shoot some candid videos to cover for the professional videos. Any ideas or requests for candid videos would be very helpful (please think of reasonable, realistic ideas).

That long planned tour through your house comes to my mind. You could leave out your brothers' room. (closed door) ;)

Video ideas - both fanciful and realistic
 

Reasonable? Realistic? :(

That sounds like a splendid idea!


Now, to make it LESS realistic, one should produce it as if Isis were doing the cinematography. This would involve using a small radio-controlled moving toy which would mount the camera, and require recruiting Dani's brother as its driver. She'd lead the tour, always visible in frame, now and then looking at the camera to talk to "Isis." Later on, one could add meows to the audio track at appropriate points.


If the toy were a model army tank, the turret motion could let "Isis" pan up and down. (One can spend hundreds or even thousands of bucks for a pro drone, but the toy store would yield up a gadget good enough for carrying one of today's teeny cameras for not much more than the cost of a family outing to McDonald's.)

Actually, I think you can now buy cameras you can attach to your pet, but there simply isn't enough time to send Isis to film school. (But when doing ordinaty vlog shoots, putting such a cam on Isis would let the editor opportunistically alternate between two views at any point during the shoot.)


A bit of humor could be had by having "Isis" get distracted by a mouse during the shoot, leading to Dani's angry rebuke. Or one could shoot on two (mythical) days, because on the first day "Isis" had done too much catnip and kept messing up, forcing a cancelation of work on that day, so she could sober up. Bad cat!


But if I *HAD* to be realistic, I'd suggest putting together an audio-annotated slide show, using snapshots from the recent trip to Mexico, or some other handy collection of extant photos.

A related suggestion is to borrow a concept from Playboy magazine. I think starting some time in the late 1970's (yes, I'm that old... sigh!) they amended the layout of the Playmate of the Month pictorial to include three snapshots on the bottom of the Playmate Data Sheet page, taken when the Playmate was younger - even a young girl or infant. I'm sure many long-time fans woud be curious what Dani looked like before she got into commercial erotic work.

This is a cool idea. I'll have to figure out where to get a microphone (or if I can use one of my cameras as a microphone only.

I shall do this! I will probably wait until the cleaners come by before shooting it though :D

Getting started with audio recording
 

Hey Dani,

I'm surprised you don't already have a PC headset with attached mike for gaming ("trash talk"), Skype, or similar uses! Go figure...

I'm neither an audiophile nor an audio specialist, but I do have a substantial technical education. That said, I've never been displeased with any PC microphone I've used. For example, about a decade ago I was helping a poor elderly person get into computing, and easily found a $1 (sic.) desktop mike that worked out just fine for them.

Also about a decade ago I was happy to discover the "behind-the-neck"-style headset (with mike), which obviates anxiety among women concerned about mussing their hair-dos. One example of such a unit is the Logitech PC Headset 120, under $6 at Amazon. One might prefer a slightly fancier unit which includes an audio volume control, rather than depending on making adjustments on the PC. This unit uses standard analog audio connectors. For the best electrical pickup noise immunity one could use a so-called USB mike, but I've never found it necessary.

Some people are concerned that sometimes a headset's mike boom is not long enough to allow the mike to be placed directly in front of their mouth. Actually, that is intentional, because a common beginner's mistake is to place the mike in front of the mouth, rather than at its edge, with the pernicious result that plosive sounds (like b's and p's) result in unwanted "popping" being heard in the recording.

While one might worry about discomfort in wearing a headset during a long recording session, using a headset-mounted mike helps avoid the pickup of unwanted background sounds, and also prevents the audio volume variation one could get when using a desk mike while moving around. A headset also lets you carefully listen to a sound track parallel to which you want to record your voice (e.g. a music track against which you sing.)

Before starting a long audio recording, do a short recording to check sound volume (including that you have not muted your mike one way or the other!) and verify that no background noise undermines your work. A forced-air heating/cooling system is a potential hazard, as is road noise pickup.

I've not bought a speech recognition kit in many years, but they used to bundle in special noise-cancelling mikes to make the software work better.

Any decent video editing software should let you record audio and construct audio-annotated snapshot shows. For stand-alone audio recording and editing, the free Audacity program works just great and includes many tools.

Happy audio recording!

P.S. Once again, happy birthday :)