Day 3: "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri

Here we are at Day 3. Yesterday was a little disheartening, what with the editing fiasco. You'll be glad to know that Amazon is making a killing, preying on my insecurities. Immediately after uploading last night's video, I spent ~$50 on video editing software. It's cheaper than buying a Mac so I can have iMovie though, right?! And this is why I work full time and sing on the side, otherwise I'd have no money with which to buy a laptop to record on, a mic, mic stand, video editing software, etc. Today, for good measure, I bought a music stand, floor protectors for the music stand, and a keyboard bench...just because. Maybe I'm getting a little spend-happy. Oops!

On another note, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my de facto publicist, Jen Murray, for all of her help so far. Unfortunately she works on commission and we're about -$200 right now, with no prayer for future income. (Sorry Jen! haha) She has so many great ideas and I hope I can incorporate most of them! In fact, the inspiration for today's song came from a site she sent me, http://wearehunted.com/. Very cool!

One idea was to make sure I have my name/the name of the blog in the videos themselves. Thanks to YouTube annotations...done!

So let's talk about today's adventure: "Jar of Hearts" by Christina Perri. Love love love that song. So today I set up my laptop, set up the mic, all with more ease than before, because hey, it's Day 3! Tell me why then I didn't check to confirm my recording input before starting...I recorded the whole song using the mic from my computer while I had my good mic right in front of my face. But not about to emote a second time, I decided this would be a good time to just re-record the vocals. I didn't feel like getting crazy and recording just vocals and mixing that with a karaoke mp3 and then putting that over the video, so I figured I'd record the vocals and background track together. And honestly, for what I'm using it for, the sound quality is just fine. My only notes on the sound are: I put the mic input too high (because it was recording really softly, as you'll hear), and so I maxed out the input in a few places, but it's not too terrible. Also, I hit a bad note. oops. not re-recording. not worth it.

So I have audio and video (with bad audio). I mute one audio and lay the other one over the other. Easy enough right? Nah, same as yesterday. But at least today I was expecting it, so it wasn't as bad. I line it up, I save it, it's a little off. Oh well. What was more disturbing was the decline in quality and change in contrast as I go from using my camera software, exporting that to a Windows Media file, saving that as a Movie Maker project, and exporting it as a Windows Media File. I go from looking like a person to a super high-contrast black and white cartoon. Ah well, it fits with the mood of the song I guess.

In any case, I'm *much* happier with my final product today than I was yesterday!!! And a happy Kaitlyn is a good thing. Thanks for watching!