Forums » Smalltalk » My video of 2014

Here's a little video project I wanted to share with you all. Last year, I set out to film one second of every day and then when it was all over, edit it together into a video. It's a great way to be able to look back over the year and remember everything I did.

So if anyone is curious what a Sith Lord gets upto, take a look!

Oooh me too! I was so inspired when Darth did this in 2013, that I joined him in doing this project during 2014.

Here's my 1 second per day of 2014:



My life is apparently mostly programming, dance practice, endless coffee house work meetings, and LARP/tabletop games.

There are also 4 RPR members who appear in mine. I'll let them identify themselves if they feel like it.

If people have questions about specific dates, I can try to answer.

Looks like a great year, Kim

And you're right, I did do a video for 2013, so if anyone is curious I can post that too.

Also, if anyone has any questions about the shots in my video, as with Kim, feel free to ask.

You really like chocolate, don't you Darth?

Wow! I really love this idea and both of you had pretty cool videos! It's literally a year flashing before your eyes, and how there are motifs but they usually go back and forth.

I totally wanna do this now, hehe. Maybe I'll even start now, while I'm only a few days late, though I don't know if I'll post mine. Not sure honestly if it'll work as well with my life. You'd probably be seeing way too many videos of screens, word-filled papers, maybe a lecturer or just me looking dead, and of course, alone. I still totally wanna try this. Maybe it'll be extra motivation to do interesting things more often.

In any case, how many takes do you usually make for each day? And how do you choose the second you use for each day? Basically, what is the process?

That sounds like a pretty accurate record of schooling, to me! I intend to do this project for many years, and I suspect even my less packed years will be of interest to me in the future -- after all, an ENTIRE year, no matter how exciting or how boring, is compressed to just 6 minutes. One day you'll look back and be all "That was what life was like, before ________!" and suddenly all the paper writing will seem oddly nostalgic.

I definitely found that working on it throughout the year made me more conscious of when I was falling into a pattern and more interested in breaking it. Sometimes all that meant was I would take a walk so I could get a picture of something other than me coding, but even that was something new! So it may well.

Some days I'd make one take. Some days two dozen if there was a ton going on. Usually, I'd catch about 30 seconds of video for each take, just so I could be sure to find a second out of that where something was happening, even if it was just the subject changing their expression.

Often when I got up, I'd know what was likely to be my "second," for instance if I was scheduled to visit with someone or do a particular activity, so I'd wait to take my shot until then. This bit me a few times when the thing was for evening but then the thing canceled and I'd gone a whole day without shooting anything... So I'd end up with something less interesting.

But other days were more routine, and often what got caught on that day was just what I happened to be doing when I remembered I needed a take. Then there were days when something unexpected happened -- one day I pulled my hamstring a week before I was scheduled to be in a week-long dance training, and it was a major enough event that it only made sense that I use a picture of me icing my leg that day, overriding whatever other thing I had planned to include that day. The hardest days were days when several important things happened all on the same day. Then it was either decided by 1) Sometimes I was only allowed to tape one of those events, such as at performances where photography is not allowed, so even if that was a more important event it got eliminated, 2) Sometimes I only remembered to tape one! The trouble with exciting things is that you are too interested in them to think about other projects and 3) If I had my choice of several very different clips, I'd try to ask myself, what would I be most interested in remembering in a few years?

Early on in the year I fussed and fussed and fussed with each of my clips trying to find the most interesting second out of all of them, but by the end of the year I just picked any old second that looked okay -- after six months of careful comparing, I learned that one interesting second is rarely that much better than any other interesting second! If there wasn't an immediate clear winner, then it wasn't worth fussing.

Unless you were asking about the technical process, in which case I took my videos with my android, loaded them all onto my computer, and every 3-5 days used Sony Vegas to cut the latest batch of videos into the larger project.

Wow, this looks so interesting ^^
I think I might wanna try it
Though I think my vid might be kinda boring

I support that! I'd have wished to know about this before 😊 Cool videos! I'll also try to have one for next year! Now I'm looking forward to this 🙆🙆

Does it show?

Like Kim said, your video will be great to remember your time in class. A few years from now, you'll have a record of before you graduated.

As for how I choose a shot for the day, it really depends on the day. Sometimes I'll take shots of several things and pick the one I feel best represents the day, sometimes I'll set out knowing something will happen and plan to get a shot of that when it does, other times I have no idea what the shot will be and then something random but interesting happens.

Basically, I aim for whatever the highlight of the day, even if it's just a slice of toast.

I actually tend to take about 5-10 seconds of footage per day, so there's a little bit of room to play with incase it's blurry or there's some other problem, then trim it down to just 1 second for the actual video.

That happened to me as well


For those of you wanting to do this as well, go for it!

Don't worry that it might not be interesting, I had that same concern when I started. You'll be surprised how quickly you'll find yourself coming up with new ideas to represent each day.

As for the six days that have already passed, try and get some shots of things that were important on those days, even if they've already passed. Did you get something interesting in the mail? Maybe an interesting photo or perhaps even a Facebook post?

It'll be interesting to see what everyone comes up with a year from now