• Home
  • About

MuddyPoodles

~ Montana, Hiking, Dogs, Writing, and More

MuddyPoodles

Category Archives: Videos

2020

04 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by SaraS in Videos

≈ Leave a comment

In 2014, I discovered an app called 1 Second Everyday. You would record a 1-second-long snippet of video each day, and then “mash” all those seconds into a video. I decide to do a video of the year. That first one recorded Renee’s recovery from brain surgery and our later move from Missoula to the Seattle area for my new job. I managed to keep this little project secret and published it for my friends in early 2015.

I created the videos again for each year. 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. And now 2020, the 7th iteration of the video. And, not surprisingly, one of the more difficult ones to put together and share.

The hardest part of these videos is always choosing the music to go with the year. I think of the songs as a soundtrack for the whole year, and the videos are too long to use just a single song. I need at least two songs, and they need to mesh smoothly. The first few years I could generally pick songs that were fairly happy, songs that suggested the passage of time. In 2017, the year Renee started working at Metro, I stumbled across a song called “Bus Stop” that was perfect.

But this year. 2020. I mean, you know, 2020. I started the year as I always do, adding possible songs to a list as I hear them, always on the lookout for something that might work.

Then 2020 showed its true face and I wondered — how could I ever find the right soundtrack for this year? How could I find music that would both tell the truth of this terrible year, while at the same time, somehow fit with all these video snippets of us and our pets, bouncing around our house, walking the quiet streets in our neighborhood?

The reality of 2020 doesn’t seem that obvious to me in the final video. The big, global events we’ve been talking about all year pop up here and there, but can you really see what was happening with COVID-19 and social unrest and the presidential election in these brief snippets?

There are a few clips when friends visited back in February, back when having out-of-town houseguests was a thing. A shot of Benaroya Hall in Seattle where we saw Brandi Carlile, also in February, back when a crowd of people didn’t seem dangerous. The shots of Puget Sound and downtown Seattle abruptly end on March 2. Then it is all house, backyard, walks, pets. A few scenes of the news on our kitchen TV to give some context to what’s happening in the world. Later, out in the forest or at the ocean, camping, safely away from other humans. The election that dominated the news and is still (unfortunately) in the news is visible in a few snippets — our yard sign, ballots, election returns on the TV.

On the purely personal 2020 front, maybe you’d have to be observant to see that our beloved dog Abby disappears from the videos after July 15. And those shots in the mountains in late July — do you see that our other poodle Myka isn’t with us? She was having glaucoma pressure spikes in her eye, so we couldn’t risk taking her away from medical care. You have to look fast to see the aftermath of her eye surgery in August. Mostly, watch for her absence, as she had to stay with Michele at Northwest Animal Eye Specialists for two weeks while we waited for her pressures to finally stabilize.

I love doing these videos, but I do realize they show such a tiny bit of my life, and an even tinier bit of the big events happening in the world.

Most years, I start making test videos in November to experiment with different songs from my list to see what might work. This year, in November, I was months behind on picking out my seconds for each day. I had been diligent about taking video and photos on most days (I always miss a few), but had not been sufficiently motivated to comb through them and choose the best second each day. I had what felt like a massive backlog of clips to parse. The list of possible songs was overwhelming. I put off making any attempts to try out songs.

The version I finally came up with is below. I wasn’t sure at first if this one really worked. It didn’t come together as easily as most years. I’m still not sure if I got it right, but I’m not sure it is really possible to get 2020 exactly right with 1 second of video each day.

And just because 2020 was such a year, I wanted to also share my playlist of songs I considered for the video this year.

1SE 2020 Ideas Playlist

For reference, links to the past videos:

  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014

My 2016 in Six Minutes

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by SaraS in Memories, Videos

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

video

For the third year in a row, I’ve made a “One Second Every Day” video. The concept is simple (and easy to do with an app on my phone) — record video or take photos every day of the year. For each day, select a single second of video (or pick a still photo). Then, “mash” them all together into a continuous video. The 1SE app handles all of this part. I add the music separately using iMovie.

Here is my video for 2016:

Music

Other than remembering to record video every day, choosing the music is the hardest part about creating these. I always feel like I’m picking a soundtrack for the year.

This year was especially difficult. We lost Xena, our 18-year old Siamese cat, back in January. Then we lost Cricket, our rat terrier mix, in October. Finally, the presidential election was in November, with a result that I did not expect and am not at all happy about.

October and November is when I usually start playing around with the seconds I’ve saved so far and experimenting with songs that might work with the video. So my initial song candidates were quite a bit less positive and sadder than the two I did finally choose. I had to remind myself that the year was bigger than our losses.

Renee actually helped find the second song — “Sing On,” by Jewel. I felt it fit well because it is optimistic, while at the same time suggesting that some things might be a struggle.

Past Years

The first year I did this, I was sort of sneaky and did not tell Renee about it. I started about a week into 2014, so the early parts of that video showed some of her brain surgery recovery. That video also reflected huge life changes for us — a new job, moving, a new house, adjusting to commuting by bus, and so on.

Last year I did another video, but just posted it to YouTube and Facebook without doing a blog post. That year seemed uneventful compared to 2014.

Here are those past videos:

2015:

2014

2017

I am hoping that my 2017 in Six Minutes video will document a good year for us. Renee should be finishing school and getting into more interesting work at her new job. I’ll continue doing work I enjoy in my current job. We have plans to visit Glacier National Park this summer with friends. We will keep making progress with the formerly-feral kitten Canyon — maybe she’ll even be willing to get in a lap someday! The dogs and cats (and us!) will (hopefully) stay healthy.

But when I started this project back in 2014, I had no idea I would be documenting a move to a new house in a new state with a completely different sort of job. When I started recording last January first (the shot of Canyon checking out the bedroom dresser), I didn’t know we’d be saying good bye to both Xena and Cricket by the end of the year.

Which is just another way of acknowledging that no one knows what the future — and specifically 2017 — will look like.

RSS Feed RSS - Posts

RSS Feed RSS - Comments

Recent Posts

  • 2020
  • A Letter to the President, Signed by Three Million
  • Thirty-One Books
  • My 2016 in Six Minutes
  • Voting

Categories

Backyard Books Cats Computers Cooking Dogs Food Blogging GLBT iMovie life Medical Memories NaNoWriMo News Outdoors Photography Photo of the Day Politics Rants Remodeling Television Trips Uncategorized Videos Weather Writing

Tags

Apple backpacking Bicycling bicycling with dogs blue screen of death brain surgery Building Projects bunion camping cat condo Chile Peppers crutches dachshund danger cat diversity dogs playing doors election errors Foot Surgery game shows Gardening haircuts hiking holidays insulation labrador retriever learning lesbian Mac Mac computer marriage marriage equality pets Pizza Plants Ponds Poodles Pool power outage pride rat terriers reading rivers roofing shopping sky Snow snowboarding storms summer Trees troubleshooting utah vet bills video voting WalkyDog wiener dogs wildlife windows Winter Women's March

Archives

Calendar

January 2021
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Jan    

Sites I Like

  • Humane Society of Western Montana
  • NaNoWriMo
  • The customer is not always right

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy