I’m at the end of Day Three of the Comms retreat at work, and we’re doing a lot of talking about human-centered stories focusing on people working at the very tip of our spear: the men and women who are making change on the ground through initiatives and programs we’ve founded. Traditionally, we’ve sent people into the field to collect stories: a researcher, local handler, photographer or videography team. Back In The Day this would have been me; I was lucky enough to go to a number of foreign countries to capture footage and interview people, then come home and cut it together into a video.

But that’s expensive, and we’re facing shrinking budgets (while our overall financial health improves, go figure) and fickle audiences who expect different things these days. Vertical self-shot TikTok-style videos get the eyeballs while more polished videos don’t resonate with larger audiences. There are exceptions, and this is a generalization, but with YouTube and Instagram offering vertical reels and LinkedIn close behind, I have to accept that my cinematic way of doing things isn’t the best way anymore.

One of my colleagues, an ex-BBC journalist, showed me an inexpensive camera rig he’s been working with lately: a DJI action camera in a GoPro-style form factor with a ton of slick features I wasn’t aware of. He and I brainstormed the idea of setting up shooting packages for our country offices where we’d put together a camera and sound rig with instructions in a box and ship them to some of the places we want to highlight, and have people on the ground shoot content for us.

I was already looking at upgrading my GoPro rigs (now eight years old) for something easier to set up and use, and the DJI camera features a front and back touchscreen, automatic horizontal/vertical axis sensing, stabilization, and a host of other features (plus a swappable battery, something the GoPro Sessions don’t). I pulled the trigger and bought last year’s model from Amazon to do some testing with my YouTube project, and I’ll see if I can get a rig together that I can recommend for my colleagues in the field.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks polishing my YouTube channel up to see what kind of traction I could get, and I’m actually quite impressed with the results of nothing but organic traffic so far. When I set up the account 15 years ago I posted a timelapse video of putting polyurethane on the office floor, which somehow generated 11,000 views over time. I dumped random videos there from time to time but never really took it seriously until I posted the Hudson recovery video last year, which racked up another 11,000 views in five months.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve spent a lot of hours watching or listening to about thirty channels on YT, mostly “Will it run?”-themed. From what I’ve seen a lot of the top posters in this category have 500K+ followers, allowing them to monetize the channel and buy their own racetracks or move to larger properties and build giant garage workshops. I’m nowhere at that level, but testing out the algorithm and learning how to produce the videos has been fun so far.

I’ve been working mainly with a couple of older GoPro Session cubes, Dad’s 12-year-old Canon Vixia camcorder, and my iPhone to capture footage. The GoPros are great for set-and-forget timelapse shots, which I’ve been leveraging heavily, and the iPhone is great for handheld interstitial shots with narration. I have a Hero Session 5 with built-in stabilization and a Hero Session which  doesn’t, so I use the 5 along with my phone for any handheld work. The Vixia is definitely showing its age. Its sensor is old so it’s very contrasty, and the footage is grainy compared to the modern cameras. However, it makes for a good tripod-mounted talk-into-camera unit, and with a $10 DC-in cord and a $10 XLR to 1/4″ headphone cable, I can use an old shotgun mic from work to improve its built-in sound quality.

I think the working model for filming moving forward is going to be something like:

• The Vixia is set up on a tripod for into-camera shots, where I’m explaining something I’ve found or setting the stage
• The GoPro Session 5 is a hand-held/maybe head-mounted unit for showing what I’m actually working on
• The GoPro Session is set up as a dedicated tripod-mounted timelapse unit
• My iPhone is used for supplemental handheld shots—usually when I’m taking a break and giving updates.

For editing I’m using my old friend Final Cut Pro but I’m finding that even with an M2 chip in my MacBook Air it’s still laggy at times. I should have sprung for 16GB of RAM in hindsight, but for now it’s getting the job done, and like everything else I’ve ever done, I’ll keep working on a shoestring budget and making it work.

As I assemble each video, what I’m finding is that I have to spend a lot more time planning shots out to get better coverage, and also to narrate what I’m doing in the moment without repeating myself. The pros make it look a lot easier than it actually is. Usually when I’m working on the trucks I’m hustling flat out so that I can make the absolute most of the day, and any footage I pick up is a bonus. I don’t want to slow progress down but I do need to carefully consider what I’m doing, think ahead about how I can set up new shots, and fluidly move between tasks so that it’s not as jumpy. I’m also considering some kind of head or chest GoPro mount to easily capture what I’m working on up close instead of depending on tripod-mounted static shots.

I followed some basic instructions for how to set up a channel and for how to post each video with the right information—adding the right titles, descriptions, keywords, and leveraging the built-in tools to cross-promote other videos in the channel. From what my analytics show, I’m getting a fair bit of views from my embedded posts on The Binder Planet, but there are a lot more folks finding it through organic search on YouTube.

As a basic exercise it’s been really good to practice shooting and editing skills, and develop a workflow for collecting and editing all the footage (there’s so much footage from each one of these) as well as the ins and outs of building a social media channel, which is helpful for work.

I’m one of those guys who has a stack of boxes in the basement that were used to package electronics. Phones, laptops, tablets, watches—I’ve got every one of them down there in a stack. When the thing is unboxed, I collect all of the manuals and wrappers and tuck it away neatly to collect dust downstairs. It feels strange to throw them out after spending all that money, and many of them are objets d’art in their own right.

I’ve also got several bags of decommissioned camera gear: mostly old Nikon D series stuff that hasn’t seen daylight in years. It’s all so old now that I can’t get much money for it; the camera bodies (a D90 and D50) are ancient technology  and the glass is mostly entry-level stuff. I don’t know why I’m holding on to it, but I also don’t know what to do with most of it. I donated a lot of my Dad’s ancient gear and I’ve sold what I could on Craigslist, but there’s still a bunch of it kicking around.

With that in mind, after nine years in the Fuji ecosystem I decided it was time to sell off my gear, as I wasn’t really using it anymore. I had been shooting with an X-T10, which is the cheaper version of the pro X-T1 from 2015, and while I enjoyed my time with it we never really, uh, clicked. Looking back I realize I spent way too much time trying to adjust to how Fuji was doing things instead of finding a camera setup that worked the way I liked, and choices like placing a giant ISO dial on the top and other important settings buried in the menu systems never made much sense to me. Their lenses were beautiful (if sometimes too slow) and I have nine years of beautiful photos to show for it, but it’s time to say goodbye while the gear is still worth something.

So I went to the basement and dusted off all of the Fuji boxes I’d carefully kept, repackaged four lenses and the camera body, as well as extra accessories I’d picked up along the way, and packed them neatly into a larger box for a reseller to appraise and exchange for cash. I felt bad leaving the package sitting behind the counter at the FedEx store, after taking that rig with me almost everywhere for nine years, but it also feels good to relieve myself of stuff and work on a little personal growth.

When I got home I set up another quote for two of the Nikon lenses and a flash unit: they offered a little over $100. I think I’ll take them up on it, just to get the shit out of here.