The last 2 weeks
Welsh weather at it’s finest in lovely North Wales!
We spent a week in Cornwall, followed by a slightly wetter one in North Wales, staying in a caravan. The plan was to return from our UK road trips, settle into my office for two weeks, film content, build websites, do some planning, and take the chance to dip out early on Fridays to hang out with my wife and son.
For the most part, I achieved this, though the reality of the tasks proved more complex than the idea. I was productive, but didn’t accomplish as much as I had hoped. Still, it was a useful time overall.
Week 1 of my office time began with a day dedicated to ensuring that all my media from the trips was backed up. I’d done a pretty good job of backing everything up each evening to my Lacie 4TB and Samsung T7 super-fast SSD drive. Once I had logged all the footage, I turned my attention to creating content for my online course. This included structuring the course and considering how to film the instructional videos.
During lockdown, I got involved with a local internet radio station that started up to help people stay connected. My good friend Paul and I did a weekly music-based chat show, which also streamed video live on Mixcloud.com. To make this work, I had to learn OBS. This free software allows you to combine your webcam, graphics, and, in our case, Paul’s Zoom call video so we could both be on screen together between the music tracks.
For this new project—recording my screen and my webcam to teach editing and storytelling—I needed OBS again. I hadn’t touched OBS in a couple of years since we stopped doing our live show when the world returned to "normal" after COVID.
However, as I started creating the different scenes needed for my course, it all came back to me relatively quickly. OBS is always being updated with new features.
The first scene I created was the screen capture, allowing me to show myself in a small circle alongside the software on the same screen. I kept the design minimal, and having made the logo in Canva, I was ready to go. I also rigged up my Chromebook to capture its screen, enabling me to show students notes and illustrate certain subjects using pictures and graphics. These will also be designed in Canva. it’s quick, simple, and perfect for pasting content into template documents. This setup allowed me to do a run-through of one of my first modules, which was helpful for identifying technical issues and refining the content for clarity and ease of delivery.
Audio tracks - all recorded seperately in one MP4 file! Amazing! Viewed in Premiere Pro.
Not to get too techy, but the clever bit of the setup is the audio. I’m using a GoXLR audio interface, a device originally designed for gamers streaming on Twitch. With the addition of a plugin that works with OBS, all audio channels can be recorded separately into a multitrack MP4 file. This means I can drop these files into my editing software and have my mic, application sound, and music on separate tracks. This setup allows the course content to be re-cut for YouTube shorts or promotional material without jump cuts in the music.
All this techy stuff and course planning took up most of the first week. We also managed a trip to Cheddar for some fish and chips. It was great to hang out with the creative folks I share my office with, and being free to choose my hours and workflow was incredibly refreshing.
The weekend included meeting friends in a rainforest (near Newbury!) and catching up with my eldest son over pizza and a walk around a Cotswold lake. Not too shabby.
Week two was busy. On Monday, I filmed at a local business that had just set up shop where I live. I spent a lovely morning filming dogs getting haircuts and interviewed the shop owner. Why? Well, it dawned on me that to teach editing, I’d need footage—so why not shoot some? I aim to edit and produce a 2- to 3-minute promo for them and cover the entire process "live" for my course content.
Tuesday was spent working through the footage and starting to structure the video. I didn’t record this for the course, but I made notes to ensure the process was clear. Now that I’ve done that, I’ll throw those notes into Canva, and I’ll be ready to roll with the course support document.
Wednesday was another day in the office. For a few weeks, I’d had a nagging thought that I needed to be clearer on the purpose of this website versus the content I produce for the educational course. I didn’t want people to think that one was a "funnel" for the other. I spent much of the day chatting with a marketing GPT to create a clear outline of the content requirements. It turned out to be simpler than I had worried about, and I now have a plan with no concerns that the two "brands" will overlap—one is just documenting the other’s creation.
Thursday was a typical day working for a client in Bristol. In the evening, I also rewrote a script for the first video for this site’s YouTube channel, which explains my background and the reasons why I’m doing this. This process was incredibly useful as it solidified the clearest way to explain what’s happening.
Friday flew by as I focused on organizing my video storage, footage, and backups to ensure the vlogs and channel content had their own systems. This included setting up workflows to ensure the footage goes to the right folder with the correct naming conventions. I ended up buying a simple bit of software for £7 that replaces the Windows file system. Most importantly, it allows you to select files and create a folder based on that selection—a useful feature that’s sadly missing on Windows but has been part of macOS forever.
