What is Up With Those Videos? Part 2

What church looked like for so many people during the plague.

In my previous post I wrote a bit about the "whys" of the process of making youtube videos.  You should probably check that out for more information.  That said, the reasons  are pretty basic.  One is that they provide a creative outlet for me. They are a way to generate a dialogue with nature and with others who might be interested in the experience.  Also, this experience is a bit of an experiment into the possibilities for spiritual communities, who will increasingly find themselves in need of creative ways to reach out beyond their doors.

In addition to the previous post, you might be interested in the reasoning behind the initial project or my attempt at a method for sabbath walking, which underlies a lot of this work.  

However, what I would like to do in this post is share some videos, talk about my motivation to make them, and discuss a little about what I have learned from them.  I will be going in reverse chronology--most recent to least recent--as it may help to set where I am now before talking about where I have been.

Mount Watatic in Winter:
​This video is fairly typical of what I have been trying to do.  The format is fairly well established at this point.  It opens with a description of why I am hiking the trail and what I--or we--hope to see.  I also talk about my relationship with the walk.  In this case I am climbing my favorite mountain. Earlier hikes up Mount Watatic helped me to refine my thoughts on mindful walking.

Technically there are still problems.  While the music has improved a bit, I am still not a great musician.  There are compression issues and sound issues, too.  These are all problems that could be fixed with money...which I do not have.  I am using my phone for all the elements of recording.  I am using a fairly basic editing platform (Filmora) which is probably best suited for end-of-year high school slideshows.  The musician is free.  Also, I was not terribly satisfied with much of the footage I recorded initially.  It took quite a bit of work to tell this story.

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Mount Kearsarge (South) in Winter:

This video was fun to make because I had the company of my wife Allison!  She did some recording of me and I could also record her.  The addition of people--including an anonymous fellow traveler--gives the video more motion to carry the story.  Also, while Watatic is important to me, one could argue that Kearsarge has more general importance. There were a lot of human (historical and artistic) resources for this video, which helped.  The view from Kearsarge is also one of the best in New England.  

By the time I got to this video I felt I had hit a wall technically.  The music needed to be updated. You will hear some of these same cuts in every video as we go back in time.  Why bother with music?  It helps to move the story along.  There are walks-and-talks that need a little something sometimes. There are moments when the view is the story and some framing is necessary. That said, it went together fairly quickly, which was nice. 

Tecumseh in Winter

This was a fun one.  I recorded it just a couple days before the Kearsarge hike so many of the points in that video are relevant here.  I had a friend with me--Andy Linscott--and we knocked out one of our favorite 4,000 footers.  Here we had the challenge of too many people, which made recording awkward at times.  For some reason editing was a BEAST.  You will note a couple spots where the sound gets clipped a bit.  I will say that after this video I tried to develop a method for layering the various elements together; completing one layer before starting the next.  The system is imperfect but having one was probably the adjustment that made the Kearsarge and Watatic edits go more smoothly. 

Finally, this marks--I think--the ideal length for one of these videos.  Keeping it Between 8 and 9 minutes tells the story before tedium sets in.  I feel this way about sermons, too.  However, it seems easier to stay tight when you have another hiker with you.  My solo climbs are all a bit longer.

Poet's Seat, Deerfield, MA

I had the most fun making this video.  It is different from the others in that the hike, itself is relatively unremarkable.  Instead I spent time talking about the poet Frederick Tuckerman. He is relevant to the walk.  Things don't always work out that way so I took advantage of the opportunity  You will note there is no music in this.  My one assignment from my son was to record voice overs instead of leaving long stretches of relatively silent (or scored) walking. Thankfully Tuckerman had enough poems to fill things in.  

Also, this was the first time I used a tripod mount for my phone.  This enabled me to film myself sitting and walking. It feels ridiculous while you are doing it.  However, it does help to give motion to the narrative.  This is a worthwhile practice...if you can avoid other people.

Starting Seeds and Hiking High Ledges

Before these videos--and you are welcome to look--my channel was mostly either panoramic views of mountains I climbed, sermons I wanted to share, or music from our various music ministries.  I think one can also find some of the earliest pandemic worship services hosted here before we got the church youtube page updated.  That was fun too.  The services were even necessary. I do feel, though, that the two videos below mark the beginning of something new. 

Like the pandemic worship videos, they are self-contained and internally consistent.  The goal is not to record something and say "look what is going on out there." Instead they say "look what is happening right here."  That is an important distinction between, say, an edited youtube worship video and a recording of a live-streamed worship video. The first has an immediacy.  The second is a document of something that happened in the past.  With these nature vids I am looking for immediacy. They differ from the pandemic material in that while they may be spiritual or even worshipful in some ways, they are not beholden to the traditional ideas behind those concepts.  They are meant to have their own patterns and pacing because both the media and the context are different.

I am putting these two together because they show some of the same challenges.  They are both too long,  The planting video in particular drags in the middle and is saved by my cat.  There are too many musical interludes in the hiking video and there is a sort of "reflection" bit that goes on too long at the end of both of them.  I think that somewhere in my subconscious was the form of a traditional worship service.  I wanted a "sermon" of some kind. 

​Still, I like them.  They are watchable and they represent an effort to do something creative and new.

The struggle in all this video-making is the same struggle any artistic act has.  I try--as in preaching--to ask myself how I am inviting others to inhabit this world I am presenting.  After all, true inhabitation of life is part of the goal of a good sabbath. Putting yourself out as a religious or spiritual professional means building those bridges so that people may cross to that "place" (an emotion, idea, action, or actual place, for example) that we would like them to journey to and dialogue with. 

The goal is not to impress others with your accomplishments or enlightenment, but to reach out to where they are and welcome them on the journey.  It isn't what I see but what you see that is important.  I am just pointing out good places or moments to begin. 

This change in media has helped with this process of mindful composition.  I hope to do more when I can.  That said, I am back at work.  Palm Sunday and Holy Week are on the horizon.  These are steeped in tradition. It may be a while before the next great explore...