Welcome to the final episode, episode 26 of my 2022 training diaries. This week I'm
going to do something a little different, instead of telling you about my training
because really I'm still mostly in recovery mode from UTMB. So I'm going pull back the curtain and
show you how it is that I make these videos. I'll talk about everything from scripting,
to my production set here, to editing. I'll try not to get too technical though, because
my hope is that even if you have no interest at all in filmmaking that you'll still find this
interesting. Then I'll talk about kind of the lessons I've learned with this series because
this was really the first time I've attempted to publish this regularly for this long. Finally,
I'll talk about what my plans are for next year around another possible season of the series.
So let's start with the scripting process.
Throughout the season I've been collecting ideas as I go for future episodes. I use
a program called Evernote to collect my ideas for this and really for everything
in my life. Having a good place to capture and organize ideas is part of the GTD methodology,
or Getting Things Done, based a book by the same name written by David Allen.
If you know what i'm talking about, then we probably have a lot in common.
Now I didn't totally plan out the entire season of video, but there were some key events that
I could plan around like some of my races and travelling. I knew, for example, that I'd be
doing a recap video the week after each race, and where it would make the most sense to talk about
tapering or recovery. I could then sort of pull from my bank of ideas on the other weeks, trying
to tie the various themes in wherever it made the most sense with what I was doing at the time.
I'd also been negotiating with a couple of different sponsors that you've come
to know. So these contracts I negotiated way in advance and then I was able to plan
the integrations around some of the themes I had planned for upcoming videos. So I've
been planning since the Spring, for example, to feature Surfshark VPN while we were travelling
in Europe because I knew we'd be using a VPN there as I typically do while travelling and
so it would be a more natural segue. Same with Athletic Greens, I tried to plan this
around different themes I was hoping on talking about in my series, like nutrition or travel.
I'd usually sit down to write my scripts just a day or two before filming,
sometimes even just the day of. Some were pretty straight forward and
only took an hour or so and others took a bit more research and time.
Now I conducted sort of an informal poll on last week's video where I
asked you all to guess whether I use a teleprompter or not. And first of all,
thank you so much for all of the kind words that came along with those guesses. You guys
are way too kind. So the results were 12 for yes, and 24 for no. That tells me one thing.
That I've gotten pretty good at reading from one of these things.
So yes, I do use a teleprompter for every single one of these videos, and for all of
the review videos on my channel. I even brought my prompter with me to Europe so I could use it
there for these videos. Fortunately, the one I use is quite small and portable and uses an iPad mini.
And the way this works is pretty cool. There's a piece of glass at a 45 degree angle directly
in front of the lens which is reflective on one side, the side that I'm looking at,
so it can reflect an image of the iPad where the text is being displayed. I can in turn control the
speed of the text by using my iPhone which i keep directly in front of me on a stool. But the other
side of the glass is completely transparent so it gives the illusion that I'm still looking directly
into the camera, even though I'm actually reading the text that's being displayed in front of it.
So when it comes to my Training Diaries,
every word you're hearing, even what I'm saying right now, is scripted.
And I do that for a few reasons. And the first is really just I value your time. I
want my communication to be as clear and concise as possible. I don't want to be fumbling for my
words or adding in unnecessary ums and uhs. And I think this also result in videos that are more
engaging. I'm a video producer by trade and have done a lot of work as video marketing strategist,
so I'm not stranger to things like analytics and I pay pretty close attention to where
my viewers tend to drop off in a video, and which parts tend to get the most engagement.
The second reason is that I actually just find it faster to record when reading from a teleprompter.
I'm less likely to forget things or to make mistakes, so I can usually bang these things
out pretty quickly now in a single take. I might do a second take just for safety,
in case there's a problem with the audio or something, but the key here is that I write
it in my own words to begin with, and in the same way that I speak. This is important to making it
sound natural as well, which is something that I learned years ago when working with clients.
But ultimately, in some of my videos I'm trying to communicate some fairly complicated ideas and
really just a lot of information.
I'm a pretty analytical and introverted person,
so I really perform better when I have time to consider what it is that I want to say in
advance. So scripting it word-for-word like this just works better for me.
I use it for all of my product review videos as well. The only exception really is for my
documentaries where I'm on location and where it's less about communicating a bunch of information,
although in those cases I still often script and plan at least roughly what I'm going to
say in advance. If you want to learn more about my process for making my films,
be sure to check out the Making Of Racing Namibia video that I published a few months
ago which goes into detail on how I produced that series.
Now its taken me a lot of practice to get comfortable enough in reading from a prompter
to trick 2/3's of you like I evidently did into thinking that I'm not using one. In fact, I've
improved a lot just through the course of this series, if you go back to episode 1 you'll see
what I mean. But I've been using a prompter fairly regularly for years in my professional work,
and I've directed countless people on-camera, both amateurs and professional actors. There are a few
tricks I use, like keeping the text nice and small and centered in the screen to minimize how much my
eyes are moving back and forth. You'll probably notice that I add in some pauses here and there
and might even look off screen, all of which is intended to give the impression that I'm sort
of thinking about what I'm about to say when really I'm just reacting to what I'm reading.
The other trick that I use to speed up my production process is to use a consistent
setup here in my living room. Now ideally, I would just leave all of this stuff setup all the time,
but unfortunately I do have to set it up each time. But placing the camera
in the exact same spot and using the exact same lighting setup saves me a lot of time
because these are decisions I just don't need to make again every week. Early on in the series,
I experimented with a few different setups before landing on this one, and of course when
I'm travelling my setup is completely different and I'm not brining any big lights me with. But I
thought I'd now show you what I've got going on here for my standard living room setup.
So beside my camera here is my primary light, what you'd call a key light,
which I keep pretty low. I then use a secondary light over here on the stove which I bounce off
the ceiling to bring up the overall ambient lighting in the room.
I then place a small light
directly behind me to create some separation, this you'd call a backlight. I like
my lighting in a scene to feel motivated, so this implies that the light is coming
from the window behind me, and it's adding that rim of light that you can see here on my arms.
And the last light I use here is just a small one that I place in this lamp at the back of the room.
And this is a pretty common trick used on films sets, where pretty much any lamp you're seeing in
the background, what we'd call a practical light, you can pretty much bet that they've replaced the
bulb or are shining a different light from above altogether to give the appearance that the lamp
is being used. And one reason can be that some bulbs flicker if they're not operating
at the same frequency as the camera which is particularly a problem with cheaper fluorescents,
but more often than not it's because the colour temperature is wrong. All of these
other lights I've used are daylight temperature which is quite blue by comparison, whereas the
bulb in this lamp back here is incandescent so it's a much warmer light which would look just
horrible on camera plus it's way too bright. So by using this little light I can not only dial
in the color temperature but I can also dial the intensity way down so that it's not too bright.
It might seem crazy that I'm paying this much attention to a detail like this,
but honestly I've been lighting sets for so many years that this kind of stuff just comes naturally
and it would totally bug me if I wasn't to do it. And as I mentioned, now that I've got the
set designed, it really only takes me about 5 minutes to set it all up each week anyway.
The camera itself is a fairly cheap Sony APS-C mirrorless, the A6600,
but I use a fairly good lens a prime 16mm with a very large aperture and that's what
keeps me so sharp while making the background so blurry. That's again just fundamental camera
theory that you learn as a videographer. And i shoot in a flat colour profile,
a custom one I've designed so that I can grade my footage in post-production.
For audio, I use a wireless lapel mic. Sometimes you'll see this clipped on to my shirt when I'm
feeling lazy or in a hurry, but other times I'l actually tape this under my shirt which is pretty
common practice on film sets.
But this can lead to a bit of rustling noise if your shirt moves, so a trick I learned from
a sound person years ago is that you want to tape the mic to the thing that is going
to cause the rustling so in this case you actually want to tape the mic not to your
skin but to the shirt itself. So a little pro tip there for you other videographers.
And I'll include links to all of this gear in the description in case you want to learn more.
So once I'm done shooting which again, I can usually get done in just 25 minutes or so,
I then copy my footage into my computer and make a backup,
before importing it into Davinci Resolve where I do all of my editing and color correction.
Now I usually will have actually got a jump on editing my b-roll in advance. This is something
I'll sometimes do as I go throughout the week. I tend to shoot for the edit, meaning that when
capturing footage say during a Wednesday speedwork session, I kind of know that I'm looking to edit a
scene of maybe 45 seconds or so in length and roughly what my sequence of shots will be. So
when I get home, I might transfer my card and quickly cut this together. This way when I sit
down on a Monday or Tuesday to edit this scripted stuff, I've got these scenes ready to pop in.
I then have to find music and I use a website for this where I'll occasionally
go and will preselect a bunch of tracks that I like so that when I need something
I can just quickly go and find one that will work from my existing collection. I
also do a fair bit of work on the audio, depending on the footage. Sometimes it's
too windy so I'll actually add back in the sound of birds and footsteps and things.
I do a lot more of this kind of work on my films,
but I try to keep it simply on these weekly updates.
The next step is color correction and I do have some pre-sets or what we'd call
LUT's that i use to start with and then I have a fairly standardized workflow involving a series
of what are called Nodes in Davinci Resolve so I've got this fairly streamlined. And I'm
fortunately to own a hardware control panel that speeds up the process a little as well.
But color is an important part of the creative process for me. I'm planning on making a video
as soon I have time which talks more about how to shoot and color correct GoPro footage
in particular and I'm considering providing the custom LUT that I've created as well in
case anyone wants to achieve a similar look with their footage, so stay tuned for that.
The graphics I try to keep simple, in fact the most time consuming part is to create
the Strava snapshot that I show most weeks. I'm not sure if any of you have noticed, but I edit
this a fair bit in Photoshop because I want to be able to show both elevation and distance on
a single screen and I want to remove any other non essential elements that might be distracting.
But the rest of the graphics are mostly just
lower thirds to show locations and distances and things which are pretty much just copy and paste.
I then upload the video to YouTube privately so that I can preview it in 4k on my television
before making any final tweaks, usually just things around audio levels or maybe a typo I might
have missed, before then setting it up to publish. And of course this also means creating a thumbnail
image which honestly is my least favourite part of the entire process, I'm sure other creators can
relate to why that is, you've created this video you're proud of but ultimately how compelling your
thumbnail image is could determine how many people actually watch it.
The title is actually something I plan during
the scripting phase, so then it's a just a matter of writing the description and adding tags. But
the captions are something that take me quite a bit of time because I manually create these to
make sure they are accurate. Fortunately though, since I am scripting these videos word for word,
it's really just the audio from my B-roll that I need to transcribe. According to my analytics,
roughly 24% of my viewers watch my videos with captions turned on, so this tells me that many
of you are either watching with the sound low, say on the treadmill, or potentially for many of
you english is a second language. So I definitely try to invest time in these, but it's something
that I fell behind on for a few weeks while I was travelling this summer, so my apologies for that.
To be honest, when I started this series I really wasn't sure how long I'd be able to keep it up,
so I'm a little surprised that I've made it this far. But this was definitely a
very useful exercise for me and I learned a few things along the way.
As I like to say, you can do anything but you can't do everything, and this is definitely true
when it comes to video projects. And I think I underestimated how much work this series would
be and in turn how much time and energy it would take up. And unfortunately, that just meant that
some of my other, bigger projects have taken a back seat. Because every hour that I spend on this
series is an hour I'm not spending on editing, say my series from my race in Georgia back in June.
But I think there's something to be said for giving yourself a consistent deadline,
having to publish once a week like this. I'll always remember what Stephen King said in his
memoir called On Writing where he talked about how he became such a productive and
prolific author. And it really was about setting a goal for himself of sitting down every morning
to write 10 pages. They didn't have to be great, it was more about the practice of
consistently putting pen to paper. Seth Godin talks a lot about this as well,
the idea of shipping your work, and not getting held up making it perfect.
And with that consistency comes the opportunity to fail fast and to iterate more rapidly. I think
I honed some specific skills quite a bit this season when it comes to things like shooting
with a 360 camera, for example. I was using it on a weekly basis, and immediately editing it to see
the results, and then applying what i learned the following week. So when it came time to use it on
a big project, like my recent race at UTMB, the stakes were much lower because I'd really mastered
it by that point. And the same thing goes for my overall production workflow, by forcing myself
to find efficiencies I've learned to be more productive and efficient for the long term.
So for anyone who wants to become more productive with their own craft, I'd challenge that you to
think of your own goal you can set, something that requires you to consistently put your
work out in the world, that's the key part. This could be something you try to do daily,
or weekly, or monthly for a few weeks or a few months. And the key here is to have someone to
hold you accountable - I have all of you who came to expect a weekly video, and so when
I'm late or thinking about skipping a week, I feel like I'm letting you all down. And that
was key to my consistency. But I also think there needs to be an end point, you need a finish line,
and for me that was always going to be once my season officially came to an end as it has.
So what's next? Well, actually I haven't decided yet, mostly because I still haven't set any goals
for next year. I may end up just doing another season of weekly Training Diaries like I did
this year, although I'd want to iterate in some way if that's the case in terms of my approach.
But I think the key to a regular series like this is having a somewhat standardized format,
because otherwise there are just too many creative decisions to be making on a regular basis which
takes just way too much time. Whatever I do, I may aim for a shorter series, say around 16 episodes
instead of 26, just to give myself a bit more time to focus on other projects. But let me know what
you guys think, would you rather see more content like this series, or would you prefer that I focus
my energy on my longer race and adventure films, knowing that it's sometimes hard to balance both.
My season is over when it comes to my goal races, but I am actually planning on running
one more race just for fun, a race called EPIC Azores the first week of December,
on the Azores Islands which are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It looks
like a beautiful location and I was fortunate to have been invited by the race organizers
to join them this year. So I'll try to come back to you guys a couple of times
this fall to tell you about that race to let you know how my training is coming along as
I try to get at least a little bit of running volume back in my legs. But in the meantime,
I've got just an overwhelming amount of editing to do so I better back to work here.
And a reminder that we'll be launching a weekly newsletter where we'll be highlighting all of
these new films as they're released, along with links to other resources,
and to online discounts, and more. So be sure to sign up at the link below to make
you start getting that as soon as I we begin publishing it, likely in the next week or two.
So I hope you found that interesting and that you enjoyed this entire series. It was a super
rewarding project for me, and the feedback has been just so consistently positive so thank you
all for coming along for the ride. As always, give this video a like and be sure to subscribe
if you haven't already because I've got a lot of really fun content coming your way .