Off the record, can I ask how much money you spent on/for the journey? How much was the tuk-tuk? Just curious.
Maybe for future episodes you could be on-camera setting up what we're about to see. There isn't much of a narrative, so I think it would be great to have you on camera as a host. You can keep everything quick to match the editing for the first episode, have you on for 5 or 10 seconds and then start working in the b-roll and continue talking periodically for voiceover in order to give anecdotal context to whatever scene.
In this episode, I want to know more about you-- who are you, how did you end up in China, how was this adventure born, who is your travel companion, how did you meet, why did she agree on trying to cross a massive country in a tuk-tuk... so many questions! I also really want to know more about the temple.
You could have a voiceover talking about your first impression, what you did while you were there, how you felt, why you decided to stop there.
Again, I'm not knocking anything you did, I think it's awesome. I would only like to see it fleshed out more, and that's a point in itself-- you made me want more.
No worries about the comments and suggestions. It's the first one and is basically just a preview, because reasons. Shit, I guess I'll explain lol. Had a first episode (mostly) done that was about 5 minutes long. Had more on Wutaishan and some other stuff, more dialog mainly...but editing wasn't quite finished and neither were the subtitles, but I had a bit of a deadline. In the photo thread I mentioned I had a meeting with a company in Beijing that wants to help promote the trip, they asked me to get them a completed "episode" before the meeting and so we made some concessions to get it ready. I had sent them the non-completed longer version prior to that and they liked it though. So yeah this ended up being what we got done in time, and I think it works relatively well for an intro teaser to the longer journey.
Another issue is my good friend who is doing the vast majority of the editing (for free, in his spare time) and is in the USA doesn't speak a word of Chinese. So we gotta tell him what time stamps are important for conversation and stuff, plus our time difference, plus just life.. makes getting more in depth fleshed out stuff covered. But that will definitely be coming for sure. Another issue is the first week or so we had boatloads of problems, stress with the car, batteries that didn't get charged, plus our inexperience with filmmaking in general, inexperience interviewing people, at that time unsure of the best way to do it as well, for example, should we translate what they said into English and explain to the camera or should we just use Chinese and add subtitles later. So yeah first week or two maybe even our inexperience really showed and we had a bit of a learning curve, I think as we go we got a lot better. I hope that bears itself out in our later episodes.
I have a bunch of my backstory and some of the reasons for the journey on my website (crossingchina.com), but we could definitely add some of that to episodes in the future, I think it's a good idea for people to know us both too and relate to us better. We also had a "preview" of the trip before we set off that explains who we are and our goals, but it's unedited just one take banter back and forth between me and Jasmine. It's not that great, but I'm sure some of it can be salvaged and integrated somewhere. It's up on youtube along with a few other random mostly unedited vids that we just threw up there while we were traveling.
The tuktuk aka sanlunche was 4500 RMB, about 500 bucks or so I guess, maybe a bit more. We sold it when it was barely running and 300 km later for 1500 RMB so we took a loss there lol. The entire trip for both of us cost me about 10,000 RMB, maybe a bit more. I paid for nearly everything, which was one of the ways I convinced Jasmine to quit her job and travel and assist me. Chinese people are pretty tough to get to do an adventurous thing like this, there is lots of pressure from family to work work work. Train and bus travel out here is cheap and we stayed at the cheapest hotels possible/slept outside at times, and/or on overnight trains. Once you leave the major cities hotels can be found for 60-100 per night, and guest houses even cheaper. We paid 25 rmb for 3 nights at one place, ended up leaving after the second night, but yeah it's cheap as you leave higher tier cities.
Overall I really liked it, nicely done.
The audio wasn't that bad and you took care of it by having subtitles, so that worked out. My only criticism was that I would love to see the areas fleshed out more. It would be cool to see more direct interaction with the people of China, little interviews. In hindsight, the episode could be two or three times longer where you talk to the Chinese beekeeper about the life he chose, or talk to people at the temple. You can get so many interesting profiles/vignettes on a foreign destination video!
Also, you took so many fucking great photos, and you're seen taking photos in the video, why not insert some of them in the appropriate places?
Lastly, I'm sure I'm not the only person with a terrible grasp on Chinese geography, but maybe for each section you could pull up a translucent Indiana Jones-ish map showing where you are in relation to where you started. The map wouldn't necessarily have to be full screen, but maybe in a corner of the screen?
Either way, loved the video. I wish it were a bit longer but if you don't have the footage to support it then there's not a whole lot you can do. It felt more like an extended trailer, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It just didn't feel "meaty".
One of the problems we faced with the beekeeper, and tons of other people we chatted with, is that they are super suspicious. They'll chat with you about basic stuff, but anything deeper than basically "where are you from?" they will start to ask if you are a foreign spy or some other stupid stuff like that. Or they'll just shut down and say they are busy. We got a few really interesting interviews though, and like I said before we need to edit them (which is a pain with our current set up with main editor not speaking Chinese)... also they are further on down the road so, we'll see how we go there.
I like your suggestion to splice in some photos, especially when you've got me on camera shooting the photos, like of the beekeeper.
I'll talk with my friend about putting up some maps, I'm sure it's no problem considering he did one briefly in that video already, just make it more focused on exactly where we are would be cool. Chinese Geography is tough, language issues don't help for most people.
Thanks so much for the suggestions and will definitely be trying to integrate them as best as we can. Hope to make each video more like 5-7 minutes and focus on one or two places per episode. That's what we've talked about anyway, so we will see.
