Encouraged by Tess (and inspired by the Second Life machinima she's been making) I was spurred to start learning a new skill I've been meaning to get into for ages. I've been taking digital photos for years (and sharing them on flickr since 2007) and I've also had quite a few ideas for video-based work in that time, but never had the time and energy to learn how to drive the editing software. In the last few months I've made some videos, some of which I've posted on Vimeo. This post is a few notes about what I've learnt so far.

Over the years I've shot lots of short snippets of video with an eye to using them somewhere. Some don't really connect with anything, others fitted a plan which I conceived over time, the best example being my film water flows for which I collected clips between January 2013 and June 2016.

In contrast Paris by Tube was one of several shots I made of the Pompidou Centre, inside and out, but I decided to use it standalone, and experiment with the soundscape instead. The music clips are all from my personal music library, with a couple of additional sound effects from the iMovie library.

So far I haven't really met any limitations of iMovie, though it'd be nice if there were a wider choice of transitions and caption styles. I've learned how to crop, pan and use backgrounds for dealing with clips at different resolutions and in a mixture of portrait/landscape.

I'm still learning how to use my smartphone gimbal, and I have some ideas about doing things with moving backgrounds, words and voice recordings. I want to try shooting/cutting video to complement music (maybe something CC licensed). I've acted in a couple of amateur short films, with my Warwick colleagues back in 2005/6, and I'd love to direct a live action short, but I don't know who I could get to act in them. I've thought about making a stop-motion film using Lego but not sure I have the patience. I have a synthesizer and some (very simple) ideas for the soundtrack for a project I have under way that I've collected clips for in several countries so far. In the meantime I have an app which can process sounds, which I used to add reverb to some of the sound clips in Paris by Tube, which I will experiment with some more.

I continue to take still photos (mostly of my puppy at the moment) but learning how to make videos as well gives me yet another creative outlet. It's fun.