Adventures in Video

So I’ve done two videos from my spiffy basement studio so far. The first one was yesterday.  The second one was today.  I think we’ll be doing them weekly at first. If they get popular we may do more. If they don’t get popular I suppose we’ll burn the tapes and pretend it all never happened, like “Fletch Lives,” “After M*A*S*H” and “The New WKRP.”

Ever hear yourself on a tape recorder and think you sound awful?  Multiply that by a gabillion for video.  People are telling me that they’re coming out OK, especially for a hopeless newbie like me, but I’m not so sure.  I have a face and a voice that lend themselves to the written word.

This is not evidence that I lack self-confidence. Quite the contrary, actually. I have no problems being pasty and bald, for example. But when you’re bald you don’t spend all that much time looking in the mirror, and as a result you start to think you’re thinner, more handsome and less pasty than you really are. And my inner monologue voice sounds a lot like Cary Grant and that just somehow doesn’t make it to tape. Having an overly healthy self-image challenged in such a head-on way is a rather sobering experience.

But I suppose I’ll press on with it. I’ll admit, I was more comfortable today than I was yesterday. I’ll likely feel even better about it next week and the week after that.  By mid-summer I’ll be yelling at production assistants and shunning my unfamous friends like a genuine TV star.

Craig Calcaterra

Craig is the author of the daily baseball (and other things) newsletter, Cup of Coffee. He writes about other things at Craigcalcaterra.com. He lives in New Albany, Ohio with his wife, two kids, and many cats.

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