Recently I found myself in a situation where I was asked at work to take on a monumental long term project: produce and publish an extensive library of skills based training videos for our field level employees. Cool, I said, I can do that no problem. Of course in saying that, those I’d just committed to, had no idea I had no idea how in the hell to do any of that. At all. I mean, I’ve watched plenty of YouTube, it can’t be that hard right?

Ha! I knew so little I wasn’t capable of knowing how much I didn’t know. But I was committed and determined to figure it out. I went through several iterations of freeware editing software and poor attempts at filming on my iPhone before realizing I’d need a bit better tools. So back to YouTube I went. Eventually I came upon a video showing DaVinci Resolve Studio for iPad and thought I’d give the free version a try on my 2020 iPad Air I already had. This immediately made more sense to me for whatever reason, namely the touch controls. So that part was solved temporarily, next was what to shoot on. Due to the nature of the where and what I am filming, I opted for a DJI Osmo Pocket 3, and while I know now it isn’t the most ideal solution, its a heck of an upgrade from my 1st generation iPhone SE.

Now I’m cooking with gas. Except I still don’t know how to actually film anything quality to give me a fighting chance once I get to the editing page. I knew I needed a shot list and some form of a script so I at least can make sure I get the shots I need, I wrote those up and went on location and went to work. Luckily, I have over a decade of learning, performing, and training on these skills, so the subject matter I have an in depth knowledge of, this helped immensely.

Video shoot. Check. Fully edited and published. No check. Twenty some odd hours later I took 35 minutes of raw footage and turned it into 3.5 minutes of video. I was stoked though, I’d made something.

I’ll get into the tools I use at some point, it’s unconventional and possibly insane, but it’s working for me. In six weeks time I now have 9 videos published for our field guys to now have access to. They’re not polished, fancy or professional, but they are concise, effective, and efficient.