Thursday Theater – Chili Night

Welcome, once again, to Thursday Theater!  Every week, we are here to practice our mad video skillz and take some time to document things in movement and sound.

Please add your links (preferrably a link directly to the blog post that contains your video) to Mr. Linky, and play along!  Also, anyone using Vimeo for video hosting is encouraged to join the group I’ve set up for us.

This week’s optional theme is: FOOD!  I also presented a challenge to you: make your clip one minute or shorter.  More on that challenge in a moment, but first…. my video for the week.  Last night was chili night at our house, almost always a hit with Rebecca (Daniel wasn’t into it).  And tons of fun as long as you remember that chili night very quickly becomes laundry night.  Check out how Rebecca has learned to blow on hot food, her commentary on making a mess, and her attention to detail when it’s time to clean up.

Chili Night from Goddess in Progress on Vimeo.

Now, why did I try to have you get your clip in at under a minute? Because I think, here in the blogosphere, many of us suffer from under-editing. Hey, it’s the nature of the beast. “It’s my website, and I can do whatever the hell I want.” And that’s cool.  But what I’m saying is that sometimes you need to consider your audience and edit, edit, edit.

This is especially true in the context of posting video.  Consider your audience.  If you’re sending a video to the grandparents, they probably don’t want you to leave out a single second of your two-month-old’s day.  Just set up a live webcam and they’ll be happy.  But for the blog… let’s put it this way.  I have 120 feeds in my Google Reader that I try to keep up with. I write for three or four blogs.  Oh, and I have two toddlers who need love, attention, snacks, and a ride to gymnastics.  As adorable as everyone else’s kids are, I really only have the available attention for the Cliff’s Notes version when stopping by your blog.

For this video, I started out with more than five minutes of footage of Rebecca eating chili.  Way, way too much. It’s not that interesting, even to me.  But getting it down to 57 seconds wasn’t easy.  I had to keep asking myself: “what’s my point? What story am I trying to tell, and does the entirety of each clip contribute to the story?”  OK, yeah, it’s just a toddler getting chili all over herself.  But you know what I mean.  I had some other bits of Daniel doing funny things with his spoon, and more cute clips of Rebecca blowing on her hot food. I thought they were adorable, and you might even have agreed.  But to keep them all would have made the video too long, and lots of people watching would just have checked out.  This way, I’d like to think, I got my point across before people got completely bored. It’s far from perfect, but that’s what practice is for, right?