Lighting was an issue for me, and being in virtual lockdown in the heart of rural France, 31 miles/50 km from shops where I could browse lighting options was going to take too much of my preparation time.
Behind the scenes we had to not only test audio, lighting and streaming, we had to check camera position, organise our set up with tripods or other equipment.
Blowing the best floodlighting option we had when connecting to the mains was bad enough, blowing the second because we brought it in from outside, where it was sub zero (-2℃/28.4℉) into the warm (22℃/71.6℉), even though we thought we'd left it long enough to warm up before turning it on, the special bulb blew and the only spare was the wrong size, was a disaster.
We changed every lightbulb in the house to get the best lighting for my presentations, used standard lamps, additional bedside lamps, LED lamps and torches to try to fill shadows.
And then there was the subject matter. I know I no longer follow the book exactly so I had to refresh my knowledge of the book.
And prepare things to enable you to see on screen what I was doing.
And to prepare variations.
And to test visibility of my pencil/pen lines...
And prepare cue cards to make sure I didn't forget things. That didn't work so well at first but I worked out better ways to set up my cue cards.
I had a lot of fun. I had my camera shy "glamorous assistant" help me out.
I shamelessly stole Kristen's pipe cleaner boob and made my own version using spiral wires and underwires.
When Kristen was showing steps 19 and 20 I had a lightbulb idea of how to show what we are doing in those steps... so at 23:00 I started adding tape to my display bust and drawing lines with my sharpie...
And then, two days before my final, planned presentation, Jennifer had a lightbulb idea of how the demi cup draft might be improved. So I had to test and see if it worked *before* presenting it.
One to one teaching is tiring, but I can get a feel for the pace. Questions can be answered in real time. During a LIVE feed, the LIVE is a good 10 seconds behind real time and it's not only distracting to see what you were doing 10 seconds ago, questions from 10 seconds ago are harder to answer on the fly.
Kristen and I overlapped some of the material presenting in our own, very different, styles. We presented some different material. We were a double act separated by time zones and geography, each of us feeding from the other.
Am I exhausted?
Yes.
I turned off my alarm and slept until after 10:00 this morning.
Would I do it again? Absolutely...
Already thinking about Slopers and February. 😁
The videos will be available on www.Porcelynne.com some time within the week and Bare Essentials Books are on sale between now and midnight UTC Thursday 21 January 2021.
A huge thank you to everyone that made this a success.
