The Chronicles of Building & Filming (Patreon)

Four and a half years into this job, and one of the things I still really wrestle is building and filming at the same time. Or, actually, more like building and filming and talking. 

Two is manageable, but doing all three at the same time somehow makes me run out of both brain power and arms.

BUILDING AND FILMING WHILE BEING QUIET: got it.

BUILDING AND TALKING BUT NOT TO A CAMERA: got it.

FILMING AND TALKING BUT NOT DOING ANYTHING INTELLIGENT WITH MY HANDS: can go for days. 

BUILDING AND FILMING AND SAYING THINGS THAT MAKE SENSE WHILE THINKING ABOUT HOW IT’S GOING TO COME TOGETHER IN A VIDEO: …

…

…

… can I just take a break and watch videos of blanket octopus instead?

Even if I’m all by myself, rolling cameras while building can feel like someone watching over your shoulder when you're typing something. I can't find the study but it's scientifically proven that the person standing there creates a physical force field stopping you from typing the way you would normally. Trust me. It's been proven.

The Shitty Robot Phase

So throughout the years I’ve tackled this problem in different ways. Up until fairly recently, I didn’t film the build process at all. Pretty much all of my shitty robot videos was me building a project off-camera, and then the video would just be me playing around with the machine, sandwiched between a heavily scripted intro and a heavily scripted outro.

Nail robot aftermath

My natural instinct is to hide in a corner and not show anyone until I’ve figured everything out, especially if I don’t really know what I’m doing. This was really put on its head during a pilot episode for a show that never went anywhere. Remember when I hunted a robotic deer covered in tofu? No? Well, here it is in case you want to watch it. 

During that project, I suddenly had a full camera crew stand and watch me silently as I tried to figure out how to build a robotic deer. On top of that, pretty much all of the crew was ex MythBusters, a show that I was a huge fan of and had dreamed about being on since I was a kid watching Discovery Channel in Sweden.

It felt like hours and hours of me picking up things, looking at them, and then putting them back down, while not being able to think about anything other than the imposter syndrome that was raging in my head. At one point, I had to excuse myself, and go off and discreetly cry on the parking lot outside. Luckily my director now-turned-best-friend Yvette found me, and was like “Easy! We’ll just leave the cameras rolling and kick everyone out of the workshop. Take your time, we’re all here to figure it out together.”

Sometimes hiding under furniture helps

The 'Amass a Bunch of Footage and Then Figure out The Story' Phase

I still don’t fully understand why, but after Brian The Brain Tumor, I didn’t want to build shitty robots anymore. I think we can all relate to the things we build being some sort of reflection of what’s going on inside, and shitty robots just stopped feeling right.

The unintended consequence of that was that suddenly, I couldn’t just rely on building a project off-camera, and the video being me playing around with the thing I built. There’s only so much tea you can drink next to a coffee table you built before people leave to watch mukbang videos instead. So as I transitioned away from projects with a clear, gif-able punchline, I had to find the story elsewhere: the build itself.

Luckily, I started working with an editor, because boy did I start hoarding footage. Truckla was close to 10 hours of footage, and weeks of editing. I would leave the cameras rolling, do quick, unscripted pieces to camera, and hope that the story would somehow magically come together in the edit.

But all it really did was transfer the work to the post production. My editor had to try to stitch together hours of unclear build steps and rambling pieces to camera, and all it came down to was me having to backfill a bunch of stuff. So I’d try to match my outfit, get the workshop to look like it was in a similar disarray, and hope that nobody would notice that there had been weeks between the first part of the scene and the last one.

The Evan & Katelyn Method

Enter the current era, ruled by the Evan & Katelyn Method, named after Evan & Katelyn that run the YouTube channel Evan & Katelyn.

I had been watching their videos and really enjoyed the balance of talking and building and how nicely the process flowed from one step to the next. So I asked them about it, and here’s the magic trick: editing on the fly. So building, and then at the end of the day making a rough cut of the footage.

The fan that I used to build a base for the brain shredder

I tried it while building the brain shredder (out next week!) and it’s been the most effortless video I’ve ever made. I would film for a day, and then spend just an hour synchronizing the footage and cutting it together really loosely. Then next day I would watch my edit, and know exactly what I needed to say to make the transition to the next step.

Moreover, I change tactics depending on the difficulty of the build. If there’s a really easy step, I’ll film and talk while doing it. If there’s a more difficult part of the build, I will only shoot b-roll but not worry about talking. And if there’s something really difficult, then I’ll give myself the time to figure it out off-camera until I’m ready to film and talk about it.

I’m so happy with how the Brain Shredder video is coming together. I really wonder if you’re going to notice a difference with it, and how the process affects the content.

In Conclusion

I don’t know if this is such a job specific problem that it’s wholly irrelevant to you, and that this was just a long post of me mumbling into my keyboard. So here’s a TLDR: if there’s something that you find really difficult, instead of smashing your head against it, try to find ways of making it less difficult. A different approach might make the whole difference. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Now: pack for Australia! I fly there tonight to work with my manager Luke, plus two of my best friends are getting married! On a beach, in a national park. Only two things are guaranteed: I will cry, and I will get a sunburn.

XOXO
Simone