Writing

It’s baaaaaaaack! And you can’t stop it!!!

I reached out for feedback on my Guess Who infomercial last week. Let’s just say some of the comments were less than exemplary. A few people really liked it. Their praise was offset by a “that was fucking stupid” comment or two.

One of the problems a couple people commented on was the pacing. And I totally, totally agree. The video seemed to move too slow. The cues had little gaps between them, which caused the pacing to feel sluggish.

I admit I saw the problem but left those gaps because fixing them would have taken hours.

Well…you reap what you sew, and I should have done it right the first time.

Over the end of last week and this weekend, I spent hours cleaning it up. All in all, I removed 15 seconds. Considering the script is the same, that’s a TON!! Imagine fifteen seconds of random silence. That’s an eternity!

In addition to the pacing, I also redid some of the voices. Someone felt they weren’t quite “emotional” enough, meaning some of the lines felt a little flat.

That may have been true, but there was a good reason:

I recorded the first round of voices in Chris’s truck.

LOL that’s right 🙂

There wasn’t a place in the house I could have recorded without bugging the crap out of Chris (I’m imagining screaming “BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!!” while Chris took a work call). And Windy had taken my car to work that day. Soooo, I ended up driving the truck to a random neighborhood, parking, and recording the audio. With a microphone.

Yes, I sat in the truck in 100 degree weather, yelling into a microphone over and over (I recorded each line separately…. my iPhone has like hundreds of little audio files). I should have taken a picture.

That’s dedication. And it made me look like an FBI creeper taking audio surveillance.

This time, I waited til Chris and Windy were both gone. That way, I could record in the house and go all out.

Here’s the result:
(NOTE: Hopefully the vocals and pacing are better. To any of you who didn’t like the concept to begin with, you shouldn’t watch this. Other than one line, the script is the same. WHEEEEEEE!)

(NOTE 2: At times, the video is blurrier than others. The original is nice and crisp, but YouTube is adjusting the quality.)