THE FIRST VIDEO SHOW...

Finished the first episode of the ”Joe Show,” and it’s posted on YouTube and MySpace with links to Facebook and Just Plain Folks. The YouTube link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HttdPnrZO8. It was about a 6-hour job, for less than five minutes of video—and I’m not sure future episodes will take any less time, at least until I have better technology.

I did it “French style,” ignoring the webcam (since it wasn’t working, and I was tired of investing time to find out why) and instead doing a slide show with audio track and simultaneous on-screen text. Having three things happening at once almost makes it feel like moving pictures. Since there’s no way the thing could “go viral” at this point, I made the video do double duty by having it address the request of Performing Songwriters’ Lorelei Loveridge for thoughts on the current state of the music business. (My thoughts thereon are curmudgeonly, to put it nicely.)

For this one, the song was “The Taboo Song”—the one about the list of 15 things you’re not supposed to put in a song. It’s not a song that’s going to get played much in public (though it has been performed once with the Friday Night Group, and may get incorporated into the burlesque show). One of the things the “Joe Show” can do is showcase material that doesn’t have the opportunity to get performed often—provided I can do it in a way that proves a point.

I’m definitely going to need a lot more photos if I keep doing it this way. The camera needs to go everywhere I go, with extra batteries, and needs to get used. A lot. There are transition tricks in Windows Movie Maker I haven’t used (but I have seen them used in French videos), and I’ll have to try the less annoying ones. And I think I can make my digital camera take short bursts of video, that can be incorporated into these shows (with text overlays).

The first breaking of new ground always establishes a template. Since I like working in a box, one of the first things I do is define the box. What I did in the first video is going to be the box, since I don’t know of any “industry standards” that define what I’m doing; as I run into things, or get constructive feedback (which I hope I’ll get), the dimensions of the box could change. I have watched the video a lot—“devouring my young,” a former editor of mine called it—and I’ve been as harsh a critic as possible on my own. There are some things I’d make sure to do differently next time—but not many.

Right now, the box looks like this. The video is going to be a little over 5 minutes long (maximum 10 minutes), with more than half the time taken up by the song. It’ll be “French style” until further notice—I might as well explore what I can do with the genre. I’ll need 6 to 12 slides per minute—that’s a lot of photography—and they’ll not only need to relate to what’s being talked about, they’ll need to be different each time. The discussion (scripted out ahead of time and rehearsed, as always) will be short and punchy; like the songs themselves, there can’t be a single wasted word, because the more time I take, the more photographs I’ll need. (That’s one good thing about “French video.” A lot of the amateurs who make “regular” YouTube videos do tend to ramble on, because they have no incentive to be concise. I do.)

The song needs to be able to illustrate a point made in the discussion (and the discussion will be first, according to our template). The song also has to be able to be illustrated with photos—it’s not like we’re just pointing a webcam at me playing the guitar. Some songs come across better in the “French video” format than others.

It would be fun to try next “Leavin’ It to Beaver,” a song I wrote over 30 years ago when I was rhythm guitarist for the Dodson Drifters. It’s only been recorded once, on that first, limited-distribution album that had just me and solo guitar. The song does get requested now and then, though, like some other songs the Dodson Drifters made famous. It would be easy to “video-ify”—but it is a long song, over 6 minutes without a lead break. (It’s a fast song, too—requires some very strategic breathing.) Could “Alice” the ‘puter handle something like that? Could I?

The discussion, I think, could be about INSPIRATION—where it comes from (like I know where it comes from), and how one can take advantage of it. Like they say on TV, stay tuned.

Joe