{"id":217,"date":"2020-10-28T12:37:14","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T12:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=217"},"modified":"2026-02-17T11:03:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T18:03:03","slug":"2020-10-28-where-did-i-go-102820","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/?p=217","title":{"rendered":"Where did I go? 10\/28\/20"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I usually update this blog when I have something interesting to share, typically photography or videography related. I don\u2019t exactly have that today. <\/p>\n

Over the last month I haven\u2019t gone out to find wildlife, I haven\u2019t touched my canon cameras much. But there has been stuff going on, just been directing effort towards a new project. Which I teased as not being ready in the last post. <\/p>\n

I had an idea, which stemmed from two different thoughts. The first being after I made the editing PC I\u2019ve talked about previously. I saw a lot of memes about spending a lot on the best GPU, the best Processor or RAM. But then skimping out when it comes to a less sexy part, the power supply. Arguable the most important component. Can\u2019t power anything without that. <\/p>\n

So that kind of constant is true for almost anything. You can always go all out in other areas and skimp on something critical. I\u2019m imagining spending thousands on the top of the line DSLR and then using a kit lens. Not the best example as I\u2019m sure the images would still look pretty good. But you get the idea.<\/p>\n

So the other half of this came when my sister sent me a food video back last month. And I started to watch it, and immediately got bored and turned it off. The whole first part was just about the different chefs and their \u201ccooking levels.\u201d It was a popular video for sure, but I couldn\u2019t be bothered to keep going. I don\u2019t care about the reality show type of videos. I just wanted to see the food being cooked.<\/p>\n

Ding, light bulb.<\/p>\n

A cooking show with the highest possible production value* except for the food.<\/p>\n

* Do have to mention this is meant as highest possible that is available to me. I don\u2019t have a multi million dollar budget like a network studio*<\/p>\n

I have a camera that will shoot 4k. I have some lights, what else do I need?<\/p>\n

Well back about a month ago I shot a proof of concept. Box of mac and cheese. Nice 4k 50 fps smooth footage with slow motion of 120fps played back at 50. Because that\u2019s the best my camera can do. And it\u2019s not bad, it\u2019s silly. That\u2019s kind of the point. Watching the video makes me laugh at the effort going in for such low tier ingredients. <\/p>\n

So I edited it together, between the shoot and that process was about 20 hours. And if nothing else I figured I need the experience to get back into wildlife video making. <\/p>\n

Showed it to my friends and family and the feedback was more positive than I was expecting. I was doubting if it was just too silly and over the top to really be enjoyable. I liked it and was hoping. But that sealed it, almost everyone I showed it to loved it.<\/p>\n

I \u201cgreen lit\u201d it for a first season. Which just means I said okay this is a good idea let\u2019s make more of these. I wrote plans for a bunch of videos. Taking ideas from the suggestions coming in from my feedback group. The basis of bottom tier cheap food most certainly appeals to all of us, who I think technically all fall below the poverty line. Just guessing I don\u2019t know metrics on their finances.<\/p>\n

But when you combine the bottom tier food with over the top production value? Also a ridiculous naming scheme. I mean \u201cDurum wheat tubular pasta Maccheroni with diary based Caseus\u201d was the most over the top way I could find to describe Mac and Cheese. Thank you Wikipedia for Latin and scientific terms.<\/p>\n

Now, the other reason this appealed to me was it gave me something to do. Currently I can\u2019t drive my new car, as I still have yet to receive the plates for it. Apparently with Covid everything is backed up, makes sense. And they \u201csay\u201d that law enforcement is being cool with expired temporary tags. But you know what is 100% guaranteed to not have me stopped or hassled? Just not driving that car anywhere. <\/p>\n

These videos are something I can make from home, in my basement. With minimal stuff. Well, or so I thought. I did spend a bit to try and build some tables, which as it turns out are super wobbly even with everything I did to support them. So unfortunately the first season of episodes have that, hopefully it\u2019s not too noticeable. Drives me crazy though.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I\u2019ve been up to for the past few weeks. I planned out a first season of foods to make and started shooting. Went a bit too hard the first week and have been scaling it back each weekend sense. It\u2019s now falling into a nice flow where I just shoot and edit one video each weekend. And I\u2019m about 4 up on a weekly release so theoretically I\u2019ll always have one ready to come out. Can\u2019t lie, I think this has a chance of picking up steam. The internet as a whole likes to latch on to the weird. And this is pretty weird. I mean who spends over four thousand dollars on a filming setup so he can make peanut butter and jelly, or a grilled cheese? Hopefully this guy who has a new YouTube channel and Patreon for this series. It\u2019s hard to not overly judge myself as I\u2019m extremely critical. The best I can hope for is someone out there will see it and have the same reaction I did when Andrew Rea posted that first Binging With Babish to reddit. I saw potential and subscribed immediately.
I do want to make it clear that what I\u2019m doing is nowhere near as clever as he did when he first started. And I don\u2019t hope for anywhere near the same level of viewership that guy is getting. Even 1% would be thrilling. Let\u2019s be real, if a single person saw what I\u2019m doing and thought it was worth it to subscribe and give money towards that idea, that would be exciting.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve definitely had some experience in creating content that never goes anywhere. Always had fun with it though and kept that to be the goal. Expecting success is just setting yourself up for failure. It\u2019s such luck with this stuff on the internet. When I upload the video today who knows how many other videos are being uploaded, probably thousands at the exact same time. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if a small portion of them even had to do with mac and cheese.<\/p>\n

But to end on a positive note, more wildlife at some point soon. Lots more cooking videos, if that interests you I\u2019ll put the links at the end to where you can check those out. I do want to kind of separate these out, which is why I made a different channel for it. Qwoft should be personal and wildlife, that\u2019s a whole different animal from over the top cooking videos. People can pick what they find interesting and choose to follow. No reason to muddle it up.<\/p>\n

Patreon<\/a><\/p>\n

Youtube<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I usually update this blog when I have something interesting to share, typically photography or videography related. I don\u2019t exactly have that today. Over the last month I haven\u2019t gone out to find wildlife, I haven\u2019t touched my canon cameras much. But there has been stuff going on, just been directing effort towards a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-old-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1786,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions\/1786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelbward.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}