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Thursday, July 14, 2011

Imperfect Video


79º ~ rain in the early hours and continued cloud cover keeping us a bit "cool" so far, still, it's swampy out there, friends and fans of the Kangaroo

Another "as promised," I worked up a video of several poems from Tuesday night.  I've done this before for several readings this past spring; however, this was the first time working with video of myself.  It was excruciating.  Why does my voice grate on my ear like that?  Everyone else says it's not grating, but I cringe!

Just before the reading, I bought a 7" flexible tripod (highly recommend).  I was able to place my Flip camera right on the lectern, which seemed like a great idea at the beginning.  Seeing how close up the video is, though, gives me more to cringe about.  Still, if it weren't me in the video, I'd love the closeness!  The Flip camera is so small that it didn't get in the way at all. 

Ok, this video is IMPERFECT as I'm still learning the ins and outs of the editing program.  I might have kept aiming for perfection but it's taking a long time and I'd rather move onto writing some new poems! 

There are four poems in the video.

1.  "From Fence Line to Hill Rise" from Blood Almanac, previously published in Midwest Quarterly.
2.  "The Once-Winged Saint" from In a World Made of Such Weather as This, previously published in Escape into Life.
3.  "The Fledgling Saint" from In a World Made of Such Weather as This, previously published in Escape into Life.
4.  "Midwest Nursery Tales" (the title got chopped out of the video and I couldn't get it back!) from Midwest Nursery Tales, previously published in Escape into Life.

Uhm, wow, I hadn't realized that 3 of the 4 poems were from EIL.  You can read the text of those three poems here.

***In a World Made of Such Weather as This and Midwest Nursery Tales are currently unpublished and in search of homes. 


4 comments:

Tawnysha Greene said...

Love the video! You were awesome!

Sandy Longhorn said...

Aw, thanks, Tawnysha!

Nancy Devine said...

hurray! you have the video up. (btw, your voice is not at all grating) lovely work.
it is surprising how much work even a short amount of video can be. did you edit the video with the software that came with your flip video and then send it up to youtube?
oh...(unsolicited advice time) you might not know you can make the video fit within the confines of a blog post. when you embed the video, simply tweak the width numbers in all the jumble of html code. 450 seems to work.

Sandy Longhorn said...

Thanks, Nancy! I knew there was a trick to sizing the video, but didn't know the specifics. Yes, I'm using the Flip software and YouTube.