customatic

Tackling any video project comes with its own set of problems. Mine was a lighting issue for my podcast I was creating. It’s called It’s Only Monday Podcast (Feel free to listen to an episode) and I wanted to give it a very bright vibe. I figured Monday morning, bright and early. Those were the visuals that came to mind. Here was my problem. I didn’t have lights strong enough to overpower the sun coming in from my floor to ceiling windows. So what did I do? I struggled for 2 weeks trying different ways to light it how I initially wanted with no success.

After 14 days of fighting with 35.73 octillion lumens (how bright the sun is) I realized this was a losing battle. Suddenly a thought popped in my head.

“If I can’t control the sun, what can I control?”

This one inner question to myself opened my mind up to a bunch of different possibilities that I didn’t even try to think of because I was so stuck on trying to get my initial idea to work. So long story short I figured out how I was going to light the podcast, but that isn’t the point of this article.

As video editors we are going to be in situations where we won’t be able to do our initial ideas. There are many factors at play. But this thought of focusing on what you can control, creates the painted boundaries of the game you are playing. I will leave you with one example. If you have some photo assets that are to be displayed in a video, but some are high quality and some aren’t. Well instead of trying to get everything high quality which may not be possible because someone doesn’t want to update a photo from 1982. Lean into making all the photos look like they all are from 1982. Or lean into a look that is more rustic, or gritty. The possibilities are endless.

Now instead of forcing something that just won’t work. Focus on the things you can physically engineer and get to work!