LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION – The Road to Launch my First YouTube ad – Day 6

Welcome to the sixth day of this blog series – The Road to Launch my First YouTube ad. Today it was LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION, as I set the camera up and start recording.

It really is amazing how seemingly uneventful moments in your life can come into play decades later.

It’s almost like everything happens for a reason.

It’s true, once I was obnoxious

I was a 12-year-old boy when I was taking part in a school play. I was cast in a mock-up of Cinderella and I got the part of “Obnoxious” – one of Cinderella’s ugly sisters. My friend Ray got the part of “Brutal”, the other ugly sister.

Yes, I was cast as a woman and the part was amazing for me because funnily enough playing the part of a woman allowed me to portray my ugly, mischievous, and hateful side. As a young boy, this was a lot of fun for me.

Anyway, how did this help me make a YouTube script?

I remember reading through the script and seeing how the scenes were broken up – scene 1 – act 1, scene1 – act 2, and so on.

Apparently that’s all I needed to remember in order to structure my YouTube script.

Breaking the production into these segments really helped me create a journey and break the video into manageable sequences, which are ideal for the video editing process.

So when I was 12 I was in a play as a woman, fast forward 24 years later and it turns out I learned something useful.

God only knows what I am learning today and when it will come into effect. I guess I got to just keep on learning.

It reminds me of that movie “Slum Dog Millionaire” where the contestant of the hit TV show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” draws upon various memories he had that just so happened to allow him to have the answers for questions he would have otherwise been clueless about.

LIGHTS CAMERA ACTION

With my scenes and acts all laid out I began to film.

I had a script already laid out so I downloaded an app to use as a telepromter.

This ap is free (Elegant Teleprompter) and is amazing, it really made the entire recording go so easy.

My friend and I lined up the shot until we were happy with it.

Take One

The first take was a full run through from start to finish. It was just a warm-up to get a feel for what we were doing.

I got a chance to get a feel for the telepromter for the first time in my life which was a great experience. It did require many adjustments on read speed and text size to get it just right.

Take Two

In the second run, we realized we needed some supplies.

My mouth was getting dry from the first run. A bottle of water was needed, along with a note pad and pen for taking notes.

This time we broke it into the scenes, stopping the recording at the end of each act.

This meant the entire recording was broken up, into much more manageable portions. It also allowed me to keep up the energy and tempo of the recording.

This decision made for a much more spirited and flawless recording.

Take Three

Then we did a final third run.

While I was really happy with the second run. I wanted another version, just so I’d have more material to play around with when it came to the final edits.

In summary, we spent about 2 hours filming for an ad that will take about 5 minutes of viewing time.

I was really happy with the outcome and can’t wait to sit down at the desk and start putting this masterpiece together.

Day 7 will review the editing process

Missed day 1?

Check it out here – The Road to Launch my First YouTube ad. Day 1