Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

The other day I was listening to a podcast of the latest Snide Remarks humor column, You Panhandle the Truth. At the end, author Eric Snider gives a melodramatic rendition of a donate-to-good-causes PSA (public service announcement.) I thought to myself, “I bet I could make that into a video clip.” I rewrote Eric’s PSA text slightly and got out my camera.

When thinking of PSAs, I remembered the Fake PSAs from the Office DVD. To understand the critical elements of a typical PSA, I re-watched a few of them, and then drove out to get some supplies. I got

• three king-sized bedsheets: a light brown, black and white
• three cans of spray paint (black, silver and gray)
• two halogen flood lights

When I returned, I dried the brown sheet with a wet towel to remove the fold lines. Then I laid a tarp on the ground, placed the sheet on top and used spray paint to create a faux marble texture. An hour later it was dry, so I pinned it to the wall. On either side of the backdrop, I attached part of a black sheet to form a three sided filming area. I plugged one floodlight into a light socket mounted on a small step ladder and pointed it at the center of the backdrop. The other floodlight was placed in a box and covered with a white sheet for ambient lighting.

The script was divided into four scenes and each scene was taken zoomed out and zoomed in. I had considered filming with two cameras simultaneously, but the difference in color balance between two different digital cameras I found was significant. Consequently, it was all filmed from one camera, my trusty Canon PowerShot SD800 IS. Once we had the clips, it was time to put it all together. I re-recorded the voice segments, found some royalty-free piano music and began to edit. Since I wasn’t doing anything fancy, I decided to use Windows Movie Maker. Sadly, WMM only makes wmv files (but I converted that wmv to an AVI with Visicom’s video edit converter.) I mixed in the dubbed audio (recorded with Goldwave) and the sound track with Audacity. I stripped out the old audio and reinserted the new track with VirtualDub and finally I converted to flv with Macromedia’s Flash Video Encoder. The hardest part was the filming; getting the lighting right and the shots (and remembering the lines) was time-intensive. Once that was done, the rest was comparably easier.

What would have made things smoother? Two matching video cameras (for the two shots), a teleprompter (or cue cards), recording the final sound on site with a good microphone, better lighting, and composed music.

Said Eric Snider after watching the clip, “Very nice! And what an odd thing to do with your time!”

If you’re interested in photo backdrops you can buy them, or make them with directions here, here and here.