New Project: Dungeon Barkeep.

Hello Aether,

It's been a minute, so let's break down a couple things. I was laid off in the middle of August from the job I'd held for almost five years. This is, of course, terrifying. That said, of the things that have happened to people so far just in this year, I consider myself fortunate. I will find another income stream. I am resilient, skilled and privileged to know that I can survive this.

So, when the going gets tough; the tough get going. I'm taking this opportunity to stretch some muscles and build strength. I mean that mentally, of course. Sweating and I have an adverse relationship. This brings me to the main point of this update and something which I intend to make many updates on for the future: The skills I'm gaining and how I'm gaining them. 

Livestreaming:

This week was live stream #1 for a fun/growth project that I'm calling "Dungeon Barkeep". I gave myself a simple, structured format that should be pretty helpful for keeping the pieces moving and giving me plenty of things to talk about. That's the easy part for me. The hard part comes from the tech and making it do what I want. 

For week one I kept it simple. I used my phone and only it's native capabilities to stream straight to Facebook. I'm using a Pixel 2xl. If you'd like to see and hear the results, please see below. 

Obviously, this is okay for some applications but for a professional looking live stream, it's not going to cut the mustard. I knew this would be the case. I've done one live stream like this before with similar results. All the same, we're doing something like science here. So, having a baseline was important to me. 

There are a couple major limitations to doing a live stream with even the amazing tool of a modern smartphone. 

  1. The microphone is directional so the audio can lose you if you move to far to one side. This means facing the camera is even more essential than it might otherwise be. 

  2. The best part of live streaming is the comments. This necessitates using the least robust tools on the device to make the video unless you have a second person. This was filmed using the selfie camera and whatever microphone is on the front of the device. 

    1. If you review the footage, you'll see that the resolution is not super great and this is largely because the much better camera is sidelined for this purpose. 

Some technique I had reinforced for me: 

  • Something I already knew was that I like t have the clearest outline at the beginning of the piece. That way, you start strong. I turned on that camera and the intro I had planned fled from me, as I should have known it would. I got cocky. So, learning point #1: don't get cocky. 

  • Have everything on hand at the beginning. This should be obvious but in the bustle of the day, I did not end up moving every ingredient into easy reach for the piece. This meant leaving the frame for longer than I should have. Therefore, learning point #2: Have what you need right next to you.

What am I going to try next? 

I'm testing some new gear which I bought for the live comedy show I produce. We already have an amazing audio setup and I wanted to make sure that the people at home would be able to hear all of that awesomeness. At the same time, we are going to be limited to something like a phone as the basis for our live stream video and posting through to the home viewers. In consultation with our amazing technician TJ at Sweetwater, I settled on the iRig Stream from IK Multimedia. I'm going to use this to hook up a Zoom H6 to the phone. Hopefully this will simulate the situation I will be dealing with once I have a live show to stream again. Once I'm comfortable with that situation, I'll move past phone based streaming to something a bit more robust. 

I am going to try this setup streaming directly to YouTube. I'm a little concerned I will lose some viewership by not just being right in front of folks on their social media streams but in the end, YouTube has a larger reach (I think) outside of my immediate circle and eventually I hope that I can expand the circle of people who take in my media. My Facebook connections have been great and supportive during this process and I think they will bear with me for a week or two while I am exclusive to one format or another. Once the phone only testing is done, I'll be able to stream to multiple locations simultaneously much more easily. I am also trying an app that may let me post to two at once from the phone. We'll see if that gets incorporated into next weeks stream. 

Finally, I am taking a class in SEO from HubSpot. It's only a beginning and I know there is a lot more SEO than a free class will give me but if I am going to make it out there in the internet, it is becoming very clear that I'm going to need this skill.

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