Project Erica: Part 17 - How Much Did She Cost?

A few weeks ago I set about recording the final video in the Project Erica series, on the subject of budget versus actual cost. Out to Erica I went and spoke at length to the camera, stopping, swearing at my inability to string together a sentence and starting again any number of times. Once I’d managed to get to the end of what I wanted to say, I watched some of it back and decided I could do a better job of it, so I started over again.

I edited the resultant footage into a video, but I wasn’t at all happy with the camera angle and the whole thing was longer than I wanted it to be, plus on the second recording I’d omitted some key points that I wanted to include. Again, I thought I could do better, so I worked on an improved way of mounting my phone (stick the mount on the bottom of a plastic tub, stand the inverted tub on the kitchen worktop; sophisticated equipment that I work with, you know…) and took myself and Erica off to an attractive location for re-shoot number 3.

After another hour of recording a couple of dozen snippets that I hoped I could edit into something coherent, much swearing and far too much starting and stopping the camera, I was beginning to despair. Then I gave myself a mental slap, and decided to give it just one more try.

Success. Kinda. I managed to record the whole thing in one take, but at the expense of forgetting to say stuff that I’d included in earlier attempts. With one take, you might think that the editing would be easy, but unsurprisingly I’d wittered on too long, so my task then became one of choosing what nonsense to cut out. It’s definitely much harder both recording and editing footage that is entirely me talking to the camera, than footage that is a mix of ‘doing’ and ‘explaining’.

I had the final edit almost ready to go by mid-November, but then life suddenly threw some unexpected events our way, involving a lack of internet access (I’ll soon restart my ‘Random Witterings’ series and touch on some of the events that contributed). It was only thanks to snow in West Yorkshire yesterday afternoon and the resultant cancellation of a journey about 5 minutes before it was due to start that I finally got this last video uploaded.

So, if you want to know how much Erica cost to buy and to convert into a campervan, this is the video to watch. I get to the headline numbers quite early, so only those who are particularly interested in the detailed budget need watch all the way through, although there is a little bonus in the last minute or so, where I popped in an example of the sort of wittering that I have to contend with in the editing process.