production notes — ep4 one night in the firehouse

The video ‘One Night In The Firehouse’ which contains random clips from when family and friends from the New York came over to stay and contains scenes from a stay at The Chiltern Firehouse and The London Rosewood. It also contained a visit to the Tate Modern and London’s Harrods. All shot on smartphone, a vlog ‘recovered’ from these clips that were shot as an afterthought.

We discuss this video here alongside which can be seen the data called ‘relative audience retention’ for the video which shows a particulars video’s ability to retain viewers during playback by comparing it to all videos on the video platform of similar length. This graph will change and skew over time as the video gets more views.

The first set of views tend to from people who are known to you and a vested interest in what content you produce after that your views will generally come from more organic sources and therefore people who have little alignment with you or interest in what your making. These viewers using are using the platform as a search engine, so their primary aim is find something they are looking for which may not be in your video and it is these views that will skew downwards the ‘relative audience retention’ graph line over the published life time of your video. You are therefore best to grab the ‘relative audience retention’ data early in the published life of your video that gives insight to small sample size people who know you to get a rough idea of what’s holding attention with your edits and therefore make a guesstimate of what’s working.

In this section of the clip (pictured above) we are in The Chiltern Firehouse admiring the room that has been provided for us. There is colour correction on this section to match the vibe of The Chiltern Firehouse of rarefied classic luxury. Cutaways from Dominick’s speech to walkabout in the suite to the bathroom help keep this section fresh and shifting.

The Tate Modern on London’s South Bank provides another ideal setting for vlogging along with the fact Evelyn (pictured above) had wanted to visit the best of what London had to offer in terms of art.

Evelyn makes great filming participant as she intuitively understands where to stand, walk and when to go about her business while I filmed her. She never stifled up while recording button was pressed either.

None of this was discussed before hand or during filming, she was like a seasoned pro! Unlike 80–90 percent of people you capture on camea who become an inauthentic inflated version of themselves or worse still awkward in someway. The awkward section of people in the 80–90 percent mentioned above need to be acclimatised to being on camera and even then their personality is always slightly guarded in someway with them never 100 percent putting their personality on the line. As you get better over time you can easily spot this at help people feel at ease.

With Evelyn I didn’t have to help her feel at ease at all. With this co-operative participant, shooting became effortless. Her understanding of cutaways and different angles helped make editing less challenging later on.

The colour grading was different in the Tate Modern compared to clips in The Chiltern Firehouse because the Tate Modern decor like most art galleries was completely white. As you know a decor of that nature helps focus remain on the art and the Tate Modern has this interior colour arrangement in abundance throughout the gallery.

There was a lot of pop art on display and I decided to make the pieces ‘pop’ (see below) even more than they should against the white background with a ‘vivid’ plugin

Evelyn was great as she intuitively sensed where the camera was what I was trying to achieve all without being told and walks past camera to look at the art piece on the wall stopped to ponder it and then wandered off after a while. If only all subjects were like this!

In this shot Evelyn was casually standing next to me casually walked off and left me to it. Holding the shot for a few seconds always helps back in the edit suite because of the extra timing options at the end of your clip afforded to you.

In the taxi cab back to Rosewood London there was some conversation to be had about the cost of living in London which was interesting enough. Employing the technique of switching to black and white to keep things visually interesting. A tiny jump cut exists in the middle of this clip.

Back at London Rosewood trying to arrange a night out but with no B camera or alternative angles to choose from made this section a little bit wanting as is evident by the drop in the graph. Music was added to help out in this regard. This whole middle section in The London Rosewood was added to pad out the length as shooting this vlog was not planned thing.

The graph doesn’t not recover until the section of the vlog that was shot at Harrods where the attention rate improves dramatically. The editing around here benefits from far more choice from all the different behaviours and activities that where being engaged in Harrods compared to back at The Rosewood London in where nothing exciting was happening and/or no B roll was available. The golden rule ‘There must always be something happening’.

The the cuts have more purpose in the Harrods section of the vlog because the subjects ended up having more purpose themselves such as trying on clothing or trying to locate the Public School New York travel range. Just this small amount of purpose in the subjects brings a little certain energy and momentum to the finished video.