I made a reel instead of painting and now I'm mad at myself
Ok so I need to say this somewhere. I spent almost two hours yesterday filming a reel of a wash going down, and you know what the wash looked like by the time I checked the footage? terrible, because I'd been half-watching my phone propped on a stack of books instead of actually painting it. the paper dried uneven where I lifted the tape early to grab a better angle, and I have a whole sheet now with a big ugly bloom right in the middle of the sky. real painting, ruined, for 11 seconds of video.
and the wild part is it got like 200 views. my last actual painting got 2.3k and sold in four days. so what am I even doing.
I think what's getting me is that I started this because of the light on my kitchen wall at like 4pm and now I'm learning about hooks and trending audio and I feel so dumb for caring about both at once. like I want people to see the work and also the entire system is built so the only way they see the work is if I become a content person, which is genuinely the opposite of the thing that makes me good at painting. I zone out for three hours and that's the whole point. you can't zone out with a tripod.
my partner keeps telling me to just post the painting and let it be boring and I know they're right but there's this voice that's like ok but what if nobody sees it. and then I remember I have 700 followers which is not a business, it's a group chat. so the stakes are kind of imaginary.
anyway I'm going to paint today and not film any of it and if the sky blooms I'll keep it. maybe I'll post the wrecked one, honestly it's more interesting than the reel.
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ah here, the tape-lift is what killed it. you can't half-watch a wash, it knows. i've done the exact same with a carving, phone propped on a paint tin, and caught myself leaning in to "check the framing" mid-cut and drove the gouge straight through a hare's eye. whole face gone, and the footage was unwatchable anyway because my elbow was in it the whole time.
200 views on the reel versus 2.3k on the painting that sold is the bit that'd wreck your head though. the algorithm doesn't care that the sky bloomed, it just likes movement. i'm not sure the lesson is "never film," it's more that you can't do both at once and expect either one to be any good. pick your day. film the boring bit, the taping up, the cleanup, the stuff that doesn't need your hands to be right, and keep the actual painting for when the phone's in the other room. that's the only way i've found it works anyway.
the hare's eye, joder. that's not a mistake you fix, that's a mistake you make a whole new hare around.
the thing about the 200 views that gets me is that it's not even a fair trade. you lose the painting AND the reel did nothing. if the reel had blown up you could at least lie to yourself that it was worth it. instead the algorithm looked at your ruined sky and went "meh, elbow."
i film almost nothing now for this exact reason, i just take one photo at the end when it's already too late to break anything
"the algorithm looked at your ruined sky and went 'meh, elbow'" I actually laughed out loud, that's brutal and so accurate. because yeah, if it had blown up I'd have a story. instead I have a bloom and a reel with a comment from my mom on it.
also the hare's eye thing, you're right, that's not a fix, that's a whole new hare, and honestly that's the part that stings, you can't un-know it once you've seen it. did you end up repainting the whole thing or did you just sort of quietly put it in the drawer and never speak of it again, because I have a drawer like that and I'm curious if it's just me.
your one photo at the end method is genuinely correct though, I'm stealing it. no notes.
wait "you're not carving anymore you're performing carving" is going to live in my head rent free, that's exactly the feeling. leaning in to check the framing mid-cut and then just watching the gouge go through the eye like it's someone else's hand doing it. the hare around the mistake is a good way to think about it but honestly I still haven't touched that block again, it's just sitting there being a monument to my own vanity haha
and yeah, the tape-lift. I knew it as I was doing it too, that's the worst part. I lifted it for the angle and my whole brain was like "don't" and my hand did it anyway. one shot at the sky and I gave it to the phone. I think I've decided I film the setup and the finish and nothing in between, the middle is mine.