This week I took it upon myself to learn something new: kinetic typography. It’s something I’ve seen a lot, but I’ve never tried it before. One of the deliverables for Praxis this week was to make an elevator pitch video, so I figured it was as good a time as any to go out on a limb and see how creative I could get with a new form of media.
Bonus points to this format: I barely had to show my face (I’m camera shy, plus the difference between non-video audio and camera-facing audio was just different enough to bother me a lot). I still showed my face and tried my best to edit the audio to match it to the other recordings – there’s still a slight difference, however I think it’s something that bothers me more than others because I’m the one that’s been staring at it for over 10 hours.
Yeah, I spent 10 hours on this video. This is a lot longer than I usually spend on an assignment like this, only because regular video and audio editing is something I’ve done many times before and it comes down to muscle memory at a certain point. But with kinetic typography, I threw a figurative wrench in it.
There’s a lot more that goes into this kind of video than I originally thought. Yeah, I knew it would take a bit longer and there’s a little more finesse to it, but I didn’t realize how many times I’d be rewinding and listening to my own voice to get the timing right, or how hard it would be to decide what kind of transition I’d place on each word that appeared. It’s a lot more than “word is said, word appears, repeat indefinitely.” In hindsight, I should have known. But hindsight’s always 20/20.
Let’s bring it back. I’ve always been a fan of kinetic typography. But the inspiration to do one for this week’s deliverable came from a video I found last week. It goes a little something like this:
And I thought, “I can totally do that!” And I could. But it would require a lot of experimentation. What color is the background? What color is the text? Should I use multiple text colors? Which font should I use? Multiple fonts? What style of editing, fast or conversational? Should I use images? What about humor? Serious or funny?
There’s a lot.
All of it really depended on my mood at the time. I came up with my final product because I was in a serious mood, and, quite literally, I had buckled down and gotten into what I like to call the “work trance.” The next thing I knew I had spent six hours sitting in front of my computer, my eyes were burning, my wrist was stuck in mouse-clicking position, I hadn’t eaten, and the sun was down. I got a little confused. Not the healthiest way to work, I remind myself.
I admit, I was excited to do a first draft without having shown my face throughout the entire video. But, as the feedback showed, it wasn’t personal enough. It’s no secret that I’m stubborn as an ox, so I didn’t like the idea of revisiting the project with footage of myself, but I understood how beneficial the changes would be, so I did it anyway. It took me four more hours (I made sure to eat this time), but I made it work.
I’m happy that I went ahead and did a video like this for the first time. Praxis is meant to help me learn and develop as a business-minded, successful, independent adult, so obviously that comes with working hard and trying new things, being open to learning opportunities.
I might do something like this again in the future. I enjoyed it the same way I would enjoy exercising – it’s hard to motivate and hard to do, but the end result is rewarding. And obviously, if I did it more often then I’d get much faster, like I am with normal video editing. But for now, I’m still looking for motivation to try it again. I’d probably feel better about the second one.