… 2021
As we closed out 2020, my thoughts drifted into the coming year. 2020 was a strange year and I’m keen to leave a lot of it behind. It wasn’t all bad though, and I’m looking forward to taking lessons from the past into the future.
I gained or enhanced some skills and I’m looking at how I can use some of this new knowledge. 2021 is likely to be a year with some experimentation, given how much we don’t yet know about many things, such as when it’ll be safe to travel again, what people’s finances will look like and where they’ll want to spend anything after bills, and what people will be looking for in their entertainment and adventures.
It has occurred to me in the past that not everyone can take a physical trip to a chosen destination – and 2020 was the epitome of that! – and so I’ve considered some version of virtual tours before. It’s still rather “fog of the future” (see: CGP Grey’s thoughts in his video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVmEXdGqO-s) in that looking back, I’ll see where my path forward was from here, but for now, it’s a lot of theoreticals and ideas.
So what have I learned and what am I considering?
Being home and online a lot seemed to open up a good opportunity to learn more about my style when it comes to being in front of a camera. One thing I’ve learned is that my live theater background is heavily ingrained when it comes to dealing with flubs.
You see, we have spent part of 2020 doing videos of online events in LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online, an MMORPG set in JRR Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth during the 3rd age, roughly around the Fellowship of the Ring). We’ve been learning more about what works for us in our process of recording and editing. Thankfully, Billy is a great editor when it comes to some of the wacky choices I make on film. 🙂
And it turns out that my resistance to learning my lines continues from those of my youth. I much prefer an outline to a word-by-word script. Good to know.
We’ve also spent time getting a lot more familiar with online video chatting, including how to use old cell phones as video cameras, positioning tripods and people (us), and various software that helps put it all together.
Another thing that has stood out comes from an experience we had.
Back in April 2020, we were scheduled to take a trip with some family members. It was going to be a riverboat cruise around the Netherlands, and I planned to take pictures and write blogs about the various destinations.
When the pandemic cancelled everyone’s travel plans, we searched for video of the locations to have a virtual tour via email with family. It turns out that a lot of Dutch cities don’t have video tours easily findable online.
So that’s the big project we’re considering: creating videos of some of these cities and towns and making these videos available online.
Of course the questions arise: how long of a video, what content do we cover, which cities, and so on. We already have thoughts about all of these and have started putting together information, and I’ve been using my enthusiasm about LOTRO to spur me on to create more videos and learn more about the process (and learn about myself and the process).
I plan to also continue to post blogs and videos about things we see, hear, encounter, and learn about the Dutch way of life. Sometimes it’s hard to parse into words, such as my opinion that food here is healthier than food I generally encounter in the US. Why? I’m still working on how to quantify that.
Sometimes it’s difficult to put into words other differences, like general life outlook. For example, in recent negotiations in the EU with regards to Brexit, the EU worked out the differences and put into place trade agreements. In recent discussions and plans regarding funds to help EU countries with recovery from the economic effects of the pandemic, the Dutch were known as the more frugal in the talks. How do I show that to you, oh blog reader? I hope to become more eloquent in the coming years, or at least find sources that explain things well.
For us, we have hope that this year we will be able to start by traveling to a few Dutch cities for the project, take video and record audio, and begin putting together some informative travel-focused videos.
There’s even hope that I will stay on script. 😉