My goal this week, with my vlog video was to talk a bit about my experience with this pandemic. I accomplished that goal and along the way accomplished another goal of talking to a camera. Starting out this experiment, I wasn’t very comfortable with the idea of talking to a camera. Something about it makes me nervous. I started by making notes on post-its of the topics I wanted to cover so that I had some way to lead my conversation with my phone. I ended up with about four or five videos of just the beginning part of my video where I kept messing up and retrying. Finally, I got through the talk and hit the points I wanted to. I think the reason it took a few tries to start was that I needed to get into a flow of talking. I needed to push through the initial embarrassment and get into more of a conversation feeling instead of a “talking to a camera” feeling. In the end, I was relieved the experience was over, but also wondering what I was so nervous about in the first place.
If I were to do this video differently, I would take more time to film different segments. I may film myself actually baking the cookies in a time lapse and embed that into the video somehow. I may also film some clips in public, but maybe that’s a bit of a leap. I still need to get more comfortable talking to a camera alone in my room with my family a door away, worried that they are making fun of me, but finding out later that they weren’t because really all they could hear was muffled talking. Something else I could try is to attempt different angles to break up the monotony of a single frame with the same contents. Anyway, at this moment, I don’t think I would try to vlog again. It is not much of an attractive hobby to me.
My favorite “youtuber” right now, if you can even call them that, is Bon Apetit. Bon Apetit is a group of people who work in a kitchen together developing recipes for their magazine or their own cook books. Their work is very fun and lively and the people who run some of their top shows are such lively and relateable people. I enjoy the shows Gourmet Makes, It’s Alive, Reverse Engineering, One of Everything, and Making Perfect. Of these specific shows, I enjoy watching these people try new things and attempt new challenges in regards to cooking. Each person brings their own energy and sense of humor. Not to mention the behind the scenes crew like the camera people, sound people, editors, etc. Especially in It’s Alive, the sense of humor from the editor takes the show to a whole other level of enjoyability. From their shows, I gather that you just need to be yourself and do what you love to do.
From this experience, I learned that authenticity and performance can exist together and do not need to be two separate entities. Authenticity is the genuine personality of a person. Performance is a structures show that is put on. In this vlog, I felt I was putting on an authentic performance of sorts. Since, I wasn’t as comfortable with speaking to a camera as I would be with a close friend, I had to plan and put on a sort of performance to be able to complete the talk. However, I wasn’t not my authentic self. Every part of that talk was myself talking from my own personality and set of opinions. I believe the same is the case for people like Jennifer Aniston. Obviously, someone wants to put on the best version of themselves, and when that’s in a studio it is more structured and formatted so that neither person rambles on too long. From home, there are less resources, so some lee-way is given and perhaps a more genuine or authentic person is shown. However, that doesn’t mean that either is not being authentic, but instead are just being authentic in their own circumstances.
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