There is a lot to do for Patreon creators. When setting up the Kaleidoscope page, I have to explain the project in detail as well as come up with fun and relevant rewards for patrons. Not last, and surely not least is the ‘pitch video’. I scripted out a minute and a half talk about the tin tacks of the project, and the myriad reasons you should send me some of your hard-earned cash in exchange for great tunes with mindbending music theory. We shot it against a green screen in our video studio (which doubles as a living room). Couch, chair, and coffee-table get moved to the kitchen so we can set up the 10′ wide green muslin cloth and 3 light setup. Shooting against a green screen allows us to key out the green later and add whatever we want to the background. In this case, my fiancée Maureen has created an awesome 3D environment for me to stand in front of. Here are two screengrabs. The raw footage of me in our living room [ahem- ‘video studio’], and finally, the fully rendered frame.
As far as audio goes, the microphone on the camera picks up too much of the room noise, making for a boomy and amateurish audio track, so I went pro and borrowed a lavalier mic from Tim Koelling (which he usually clips to his mad saxophone), and a Zoom digital audio recorder from Zach Smolinski to capture the dialogue. It cut down the room noise substantially and allowed me to go back and add some ambient reverb of my own. I also sweetened the high-end a bit to give the audio a little more life.
