solitary world
Originally, I was planning to put out 1 episode every month, but that didn't work out so well. It took over two months to get this puppy finished up... and I'm not as proud of it as I was of the first one.
While I'm not as proud of the episode as a whole, I'm very grateful for all the things I learned doing it. The “So-Called Experts” piece could have been a lot better. Unfortunately, Dave was only in town for a short amount of time and we were only able to secure about an hour to tape the piece. Afterward, I pieced it together and I think I did a pretty good job with what I had. It could have been much better if we either had more time to record it and block things out better or if we had planned the segment better beforehand.
The NetworkManager piece is a revelation. I think I'm a lot better of a host when I just relax and talk about the material rather than doing it word-for-word from a script (which I did on episode 1). It helps a lot if I know the material well too.
The “Living Free” piece also marks the first time in Solitary World's short history that stuff wasn't shot against a greenscreen background. We went to McDonalds! Unfortunately, we had technical problems with the audio recording there and we weren't able to use the dialogue recorded. Instead, I prepared voice-over for the video and it worked out fine.
Speaking of audio, I purchased a low-end Audio-Technica ATR35s lavalier microphone system to get better voice recording. It worked pretty well, but it's not without its issues. It generated all sorts of problems when we were onsite at McDonalds, I think because the plug wasn't all the way into the camera. There is some electronic noise from the mic but it was tolerable- especially since we're mixing in some music with just about everything.