She said, as though she has been making videos for more than a couple of months.
Well, four videos is a lot to make after several years abstaining from such a thing! That's a whole lot to suddenly do. I've really got no plans for how I want to spend my hobby time in the upcoming months, but I may take January off from making doll videos so I can do other stuff: work on my novel (which I've had a hard time with the past two months), crochet, maaaybe get some stuff up on Etsy, finish up other video projects. Or I might film another dressup! Who knows! I'LL DO WHATEVER I WANT!
This week I posted a dressup with my new girl Olwenn!
Under the filming lights, I was totally taken by her blue chips. When I unboxed her, I didn't care for them at all. Clicking them over to the blue and being wowed was such a delightful experience. As I say in the video, I forgot to film more after that. I got excited to take her picture.
Perfectionist me doesn't love that I forgot to film more panning shots of her outfit, but I'm making a concerted effort to try and ignore that.
I didn't mention this before, but I made a little animated bumper for the end of my videos and I'm kinda enjoying it. I plan to change the colors for every video. I matched the colors to Mallow and Olwenn's outfits. It's extra. But you know, sometimes you just gotta do what makes you happy.
I noted this in my video also, but I have undertaken putting closed captions on all my (public) videos. Not quiiite done yet, but I've been working steadily on it. The automatically generated CC are real bad. That's my own fault; I speak sloppily. I will do it for all my videos from now on. I hope it will help someone out there.
Since my last dressup video in April 2017, I'd thrown away the old wobbly desk I used to use for dressups. I'd broken one of my three filming lights. I barely touched my camera. I think I even switched to a new desktop computer.
It was sort of a journey, just prepping to do this. Finding a place to film. Fixing my broken filming light (by hand!). Getting out all my old doll "set" stuff. Cleaning the wicker pieces with q-tips. Getting my filming equipment together. Re-learning how to use my tripod...
Filming was also just a long process of thinking, "How did I do this...?"
You have no idea how arduous filming a dressup can be. My arms are unnaturally outstretched because the tripod is in front of half of me. Like, one knee is INSIDE THE TRIPOD. If I bump the tripod by moving too much, I have to either do something again or cut around the footage somehow. I am looking through the viewfinder of the camera the entire time because I can't see the doll or the clothes due to the angle in which I'm holding her. My camera does not have autofocus for video, so I'm manually focusing it the entire time.
(That doesn't even touch the post-production stuff -- editing, et cetera. That's hours of work.)
However, towards the end of the dressup, I started experiencing some...
I felt legitimately pleased with the outfit and was so enjoying just looking at Mallow, and I really remembered why I have loved Blythe for so long now.
So... I am actually working on another dressup video. I'm also planning on making an Etsy shop update. (When I tell you I've made a bunch of these headbands, I'm serious.) But I've decided that I need to engage with Blythe hobby stuff differently than I was engaging with it five years ago.
My mental health is different. YouTube itself is different. 2020 certainly hits different.
I haven't drawn up a contract with myself or anything, but I'm going to try just doing what I want to do, when I want to do it. I'm going to try not to worry about what other people think of anything -- my hands, my voice. I'm not going to do requests. I'm not going to make informational or tutorial videos. Set boundaries. You know??
