First of all I I really like pizza. Especially pizza from Stanzione 87. Since the shut-in, I’ve mainly been cooking from home, but this has been the one local place I’ll pop out to grab a pick-up or get delivery from. Usually I don’t stray from ordering a Margherita pizza with extra extra basil and some meatballs. But recently I noticed they started offering a Home Pizza Kit. So I gave it a go… As you can tell, I didn’t exactly knock it outta the park on the first swing. But it was certainly edible, especially the middle parts. And the video was another rep to add to the skill set.
For this edit, I discovered the “Denoise” effect in Premiere. It was a super easy effect to apply and makes me feel like I didn’t waste my money buying the Rode VideoMic Go. And I can honestly say it’s worth the purchase now. For cameras, I’m still using my budget friendly Canon DSLR and iPhone rigged to a DJI Osmo Mobile 3. Noticeably less camera movement on this one, not sure if it’s because I’m feeling less of a need for it or if I’m just becoming a lazy cinematographer. Maybe it’s a bit of both.
My workflow is staying smooth. Keeping files organized, using multiple sequences for timeline versions, and colored labels is really helping me speed up the process and keep the whole thing calm and enjoyable. Diving back into Skillshare classes and taking a myriad of different courses from different teachers on Premiere has really helped me learn and realize there’s still so much to comprehend about the program. Everybody teaches things a bit a different or has a slightly different style or workflow, but I’m starting to gather bits I like from each to form my own and what works best for me.
For this project I wanted to help a local business, and that also gave the project a little more purpose beyond just filming myself. But I also wish I wouldn’t have screwed up… I do feel a little bad I wasn’t able to make their pizza look amazing, but I did manage to make the Instagram cut look shareable and the process look enjoyable. Which is important, the whole point is to make the client (even if they had no idea I was making it) happy and flattered. The other thing is that the screw up made it funny and I guess it might be fun to see that learning something new involves a flub here and there.
For the :30 I used a nifty new trick in Adobe Audition to cut and remix the track. Epidemic Sound was great as always for the music selections. A recent Skillshare tutorial also taught me a nice process to mark within the timeline beats in the music track. I then used those points to cut the footage and it was an awesome way to connect the tracks to the footage. This Focus Chart App was also incredibly useful and allowed me to create a little system to properly focus the camera when I can’t pull off the impossible task of being both in front and behind the camera at once. I also used Media Encoder to render out and finish the files. Small stuff, but again, big steps to break out of amateur habits and really leverage the power of the Adobe software. These SFX in the long-form were actually my voice and really fun (and super simple) to record. To me, these are little things that don’t seem like big progress, but little proofs that I’m learning and getting a little better every time.
As for the lighting, I’m still getting used to my new lighting kit. It’s just not soft enough and it’s coming across too flat. I’m starting to consider getting a flag set or a black floppy to absorb the light opposite of my ket light or maybe even a v-flat book light setup. Two of those would accomplish both and I wouldn’t need to buy a stand. Reason is mainly because my eyes come out a little black and hollow and I want some of that nice bright catch light. The color is also a bit funky to me, haven’t really got the hang of that yet. The reds especially didn’t come out right. My face looks like it’s covered in sauce in the Youtube thumbnail. My final grievance is with the graphic titles, they are getting a bit lost in the whites. While I enjoy the rudimentary simplicity of them, I might need to come up with a solution. Potentially thinking some subtle blinking animation from grey to white might help, but I’ll need to explore. Until next time…