“Into the Unknown” video project

I’m so excited to finally get to share this finished work with you! It’s been a long process for this project. I wrote about the first part of “Into the Unknown” book project here. In that post I talked briefly about the next steps of: taking my book to the beach to take it for a swim, videoing the process, editing the video, having my nibling score it (for college credit!!), then releasing the final video. There where a lotta steps to work through even after I made the book!

Take it slow

This project has taught me a lot of things, probably the greatest of which is patience. I like things to be finished. It’s taken a while, well over six months, to get to the finish line. There’s been a lot of waiting with this one. And I learned to feel pretty good about that waiting because the waiting was always in service to something that I was really interested in.

I’ve talked a lot about getting out of the “get it finished” mindset. I like to finish things and move on to the next thing. This project has had a ton of built in stops that were basically unskipable. And you know what? I didn’t hate it. And I guess that’s because several of the stops were things that I couldn’t do myself. I couldn’t get to the beach any faster. I was allowing for Sam’s school schedule. None of those things bothered me so I was content to let the project sit and work on other things during the waiting.

So really maybe its more about trusting myself to finish things. If I wrap it up quickly then I don’t have to worry about it. It’s done. Whereas if I let it rest for any reason, I might not go back to it. Seeing this pattern in my own work behavior is a bit of a light bulb moment for me. After all of this time I think I can trust myself to go back and finish the things that are important to me. Or to make the decision to not go back to things that aren’t working for whatever reason.

Project timeline

Taking it to the beach Thanksgiving week and filming was fun. I ended up tying the book to my ankle so I could film it and wouldn’t get away from me while it was sloshing around in the ocean. (Watch for the brown twine while it’s in the water. The other end is me!) I liked filming and seeing what worked when I put it together afterward.

If I do a project like this again, I would like to get a tripod and film even more or get a cameraperson to do some footage so I can work in front of the camera or both. I don’t always know what I’m looking for when I’m filming so until I develop that sense, I’ll just need to shoot a lot of footage and work from there. There are definitely things I wish I’d filmed this time. So that too was a learning experience.

I did a rough edit to give to Sam almost immediately after Thanksgiving. He sent me back a set of options to choose from shortly after that. I fell in love immediately with one option because it was full of the things he and I had discussed. When we got together at Christmas he had fleshed it out a bit and from there it was VERY clear that my rough edit was way too long. I was fairly sure of that before he did the full music but it became obvious when watching the video with music where I needed to make cuts.

Then I enlisted my partner to help with the next round of edits because he’s been doing video editing for a long time. I made an initial set of cuts and then he suggested additional ones. He took it from five-ish minutes down to three-ish minutes. Then it was back to Sam for a music edit. The new music cut is amazing! Working with my nephew was kinda a dream. Now I pretty much want him to score my whole life.

Collaboration with the youths

I’ve collaborated with other artists in the past and had a great time. This time felt different. I worked with my nibling Sam, who is a college sophomore music composition major. He was professional to work with, interested in what I was doing, and excited about what he could add to this project. I loved hearing what Sam came up with!

I also recently collaborated with my younger young adult when I made calendars to give as Christmas gifts. Once I finished working on the three sets, my kiddo took them out of their original sets and recombined them for each family who was receiving them. I loved seeing their curation my work with each group’s preferences in mind.

It would have been so meaningful for me to have this kind of collaboration when I was their age. I am inspired by their energy and vision. I hope they were inspired by my…perseverance maybe? Wisdom? Drive to create? Tenacity? Regardless, I hope they have gotten as much out of it as I have.

The video

Okay, that’s a lot of chit chat if you just came here to watch the video! Please enjoy the world premier of “Into the Unknown.”

What long term project have you signed off on recently? I’d love to hear about it! Email me or start a conversation by leaving a comment on this post! If you’d like to keep up with what I’m working on, I’d love to have you as a newsletter subscriber. I include blog posts from here, cool things I find online, and pictures of my dogs. Sign up here.