CES Parody: Worst Coverage on New Gadgets

Views of any of my videos appears inversely related to a) how much time I put into them, and b) how much I like them. This parody of CES (consumer electronics show in Las Vegas) took longer than expected, but I don’t like it. So maybe the forces will counteract.

Interested in the “making of” process? Here’s “blow by blow” (below video). My goal was to capture the clueless field reporter, and the absurdity of the latest gadgets. I also hoped to zing a few of the egos (especially Ballmer, my favorite target).

• Last night I was speaking with my friend Joe, and telling him I thought a video about CES gadgets would be fun. He suggested I spoof the fact that the flying car still hasn’t arrived, and I thanked him and hung up immediately.
• Took the script in a different direction based on the lame television coverage CES gets, where reporters don’t really seem able to articulate what an electronic gadget does (without stumbling all over words). Took about 10 minutes to research some trends and gossip about gadgets we might see this year via Google News. Then another 10 minutes to write (loved the Microsoft mystery zeen and airlife words that were floating around social media). Also couldn’t resist femto, which is a word I still can’t define.
• Printed out my portion of the script as a field reporter, and darted across the street to Marriott to make it look like I’m at an event. Mostly done in one take, and maybe 10 minutes of tape. Unfortunately there were people around so my voice was quieter than it should be… and the lighting was terrible.
• Got home with plans to either recruit my wife as the desk interviewer (or do it myself). Since she was shopping, I recruited our new babysitter. She has good articulation and gives nice thumbnail, so it made sense. We recorded her part in about 15 minutes.
• Then the hard part. Editing with iMovie 6 (too overwhelmed to learn a new program). Very messy and multiple iterations. I probably logged 4-5 hours screwing around with iMovie then Final Cut to add the supers. Lots of audio problems, and I canned a lot of the script… which required stitching together sentences that were recorded separately.
• Finally, I posted the video with loads of tags… we’ll see if it captivates the interest of any tech bloggers or websites (TechCrunch, Engadget).

Tags used: CES hottest airlife zeen hammer tablet newest gadgets news best popular consumer electronics show 2010 nokia HP femto netbooks dtv lady gaga obama girl ebooks lifestyle mobile steve ballmer apple t-mobile parody spoof nalts balmer droid google mac newton 2.0 3.0 apps aps itouch iphone 3s waterproof bluetooth blueray

Maybe if I invested a bit more time writing and shoot — and streamlined my editing — I’d have better stuff.