Wishes and Work

Hi!

The first episode of Wishlist is coming together and I was able to see a rough cut of it yesterday. It’s sooooo amazing.

I mean, it’s not The Greatest Show In The World or anything like that, but it is fun to see something turn out better than you had hoped. Between Sophie’s camera work and Shawna’s editing I am stunned at how this is turning out.

Christi of Grinkie Photography is luminous and charming and her magnetism is captured on the screen. She’s so fun to work with and I am happy the video shows that.

The early days of creating anything are a lot of things. One aspect is learning, and that includes learning what you don’t know. You need to be flexible and let things evolve organically… but always remembering the goal of the project itself. If a project, such as Wishlist, is dependent on collaboration, it’s important that everyone involved is listening and considering suggestions and ideas from others.

Creative projects also require the decision of what you are modeling the project on (if anything) and what aspects of that you want to adhere to. For example, a lot of episodes in series similar to this stick to a certain format, such as how long an episode is. This is/was something that I thought about but also something I didn’t really think was that important for Wishlist. Wishlist is going to have limited appeal. I know this. I don’t think most people are really interested in the activities that Wishlist will feature.

However, I believe (and hope) that the intended audience (girls like us) will love Wishlist.

If a casual viewer or someone who is outside the intended audience sees that a video is a certain length, that may decide whether or not they watch it. That’s fair and expected. The question was if we should edit the video to a length that is more in line with successful/high viewership videos or if we should, well, let an episode have some breathing room.

I think if a video is done properly (engaging content, snappy editing, high quality camerawork, and production), people are more willing to watch something. I’ve clicked on some videos and stop watching immediately if the host is obnoxious and their obnoxiousness is part of their whole shtick.

Right now the first episode is hovering around 45 minutes. And yes, that’s long and longer than I expected, but I think it’s warranted. There’s a lot that we wanted to cover in this episode and there’s a lot of fun parts and the video sticks to the idea that an episode needs to be engaging. Fortunately Christi’s charm is all over the video.

Wishlist will evolve over time as we learn from the creation of it but also as we listen to the feedback from YOU, the intended audience.

I do want to share a quick clip of the opening credits (albeit without sound effects). I wrote a little about the creation of it but I think we have something that we love. This little clip was edited by Sophie and the final version will have music composed by Shawna.

Loooooooooove this. Like so many other parts of Wishlist, it’s such a thrill to see something REAL that was envisioned. My imagination tends to run wild to the point that nothing can realistically come close to what I am thinking but I am blessed to have friends and collaborators as talented and lovely as Sophie and Shawna.

Love, Hannah