We’ve gone visual.

After months of making an audio podcast, we’ve finally made the jump to video — and it turns out the camera is both a brilliant upgrade and a fairly ruthless truth-teller. Suddenly lighting matters. The room matters. And all those little editing tricks that are invisible in audio become considerably more obvious when there are two faces on screen.

In this episode, we talk through the transition from audio to video, including cameras, lighting, editing in DaVinci Resolve, navigating jump cuts, and the surprisingly complicated business of deciding what should actually happen when the camera is switched on. We’re still stubbornly unscripted, although we’re beginning to wonder whether that is actually helping us.

We also talk about the practicalities of the move: where you can watch us on YouTube and Spotify, what happens for our audio-only listeners, and why we’re attempting to grow beyond our currently rather modest YouTube audience. James explains the change in workflow from Audacity to DaVinci Resolve, including why video makes jump cuts considerably more painful and why we’re experimenting with built-in breaks, on-screen slates, images and short sound cues.

Then there’s the usual business of arguing about what the show actually is.

The register goes, because the camera exposes the lie. The postcard survives, because apparently props are powerful. We discuss short-form clips for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube Shorts, including the joys of trying to make a horizontal podcast work in a vertical world.

We also investigate a poster that appears to have booked The Beatles, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones, squeeze in an entirely unnecessary Cardiff City tangent, and receive fan mail from someone who uses our voices as a sleep aid.

And, naturally, we end up wondering what exactly a VOD is.

We’re still secondary school teachers, and we’re still making it up as we go along. We’ve just decided to turn the cameras on while we do it.

So if you’re listening or watching, do some of the heavy lifting for once: tell us what VOD actually means.

Get in touch: bandjcdb@gmail.com
Website: benandjamescoulddobetter.com

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