Day in the Life

I really enjoy watching software engineers ‘day in the life' videos during my lunch break. So it’s always been in the back of my mind to have a crack at it at some point. Rather last minute, and halfway through my morning routine, I realised it was the perfect day as I was home alone to record one.

Perfectionism will stop me dead in my tracks when it comes to videos, so I’ve intentionally tried to ignore the things that would nag at me to change. I recorded it with just my phone, but in the edit, I went much further with it than I set out to (couldn’t help myself).

What I learnt from this

• I seriously need to work on my posture lol
• Keep it simple when filming (it's not meant to be visually impressive, so I don't need to worry about collecting lots of shots – content is first)
• I really enjoy speaking to camera, but I often speak too much, and then spend a lot of time tidying it up in the edit. I should write a mini script of points to speak about and focus on my openings and closings.
• I say 'um' too much, but I already knew that ahaha
• You need to cut out more ramblings than you'd think (even if you think it's interesting and 'adds to the plot')
• I am beholden to the wall clock (I'd like to be able to move clips around for areas that didn't work, or I didn't capture enough of, but you can't really lie when the time gives you away immediately)
• The biggest takeaway: edit the video as soon as I can after filming.

In my case, it was in the evening after work, and then every evening after work for the rest of the week. This worked much better for my brain than trying to juggle other projects at the same time. But it was probably the momentum that built up that had the biggest impact, and it meant that there was little room for me to overthink why I was doing it in the first place. In the past, I would have left it a while before doing anything with the editing, and that's always been the graveyard for my projects.

Closing the gap between creation and putting it out there.

Speak soon,
Will