I'm an artist. Not a trained artist per se, but I have spent my life finding creative applications of the world immediately around me, and always trying to conjure something new from what little I've got. I still like to play in the dirt, but my muse is certainly the ever expanding frontier of new possibilities, a landscape that continues to open before us all, all thanks to developed technologies both new and forgotten.
Today I'm sharing some previews of recent discoveries, a glimpse of new possibilities, and a sense of what's approaching on the horizon.
Through my years of video editing I've stumbled upon some aesthetics and effects that I could call my own. Frustratingly, too often the render times for a single sequence only made sense as I went to sleep for the night. Every music video took weeks of dedicated work on top of my corporate gigs and it became exponentially harder to enjoy either. After six years of doing both professional freelancing and art/music projects (less and less so) I just wasn't growing in the same ways, and my artistic inspiration was seldom of any visual medium.
Buried under the static noise of work-burnout-repeat cycles was a little dream in my heart, pumping sticky new ideas into my cluttered mind. It almost felt like a vision because all that I had done in my life came together and something just clicked like never before. The best part was that it could represent new ways for other artists to connect, and almost certainly had a broad role in the future.
What's this dream? Streaming, of course. Its a culmination of art, entertainment, performances, and whatever you can think to do with your resources... like play video games apparently. The novel and absolutely fictional concept of doing a cable access show from your basement, a la Wayne's World, seemed almost too easy. The same forces that enabled my career had lowered the prices of once costly technology and professional equipment. The physical footprint and power draw alone of the analog era would still be unimaginable for the basement enthusiast. You can have a full featured recording studio at home (or bedroom) now, so why the hell couldn't I create the bare bones of a sub-level broadcast environment? To minimize cost for a multi-cam setup I figured I would go retro and expand upon the clunky shoulder rest style VHS camcorders I already had.
So pretty much every dollar that didn't go to food, rent, or back into my business was piecing together my dream. When I found the right SD video mixer I knew this was going to happen. When I had spare energy and time I dedicated it to trying to carve out a part of our cluttered basement and see what I could get connected. The first setup happened to be directly under a leak in our bathroom and I was very lucky to only lose an elderly macbook. I thought getting to test a rudimentary stream was going to take like 6 months, but every problem was more complicated or costly than I imagined. Audio continues to be a rabbit hole I can't keep out of. I now realize that the worst problem was that for every problem I solved I would routinely make the project more ambitious, dreaming bigger all the time. That alone has held things up for years already.
As you can see, I've developed this well beyond the analog era, and I'm creating visuals in realtime with 4k mirrorless cameras that would take unfathomable hours to create in post & render. My editing projects for Basement Vibes will be nothing more than hard cuts. THAT keeps me excited. I've got some more audio testing to do and then we're live!
So here I am, here we all are, and streaming is nothing new. The thing is: I still see that open frontier. For artists and musicians it is not overly saturated in the slightest. There's endless opportunities, and for bands this could be more sensible and profitable than touring or playing dive bars. The challenges will mostly be changing people's expectations. I intend to do just that.
Stay tuned...
Find & follow us on your favorite social & streaming platforms:
STREAMING:
/\ YouTube Live /\ Mixer /\ Twitch /\ dlive
SOCIALS:
/\ Creary /\ Instagram /\ Facebook /\ Twitter /\ Giphy /\
VIDEO PRODUCTS & CREATIVE SERVICES:
HOME:
https://www.basement-vibes.com/
