Learning DaVinci Resolve in 24 Hours While Running an Marathon: Part 2.

So that almost went horribly wrong.

The running was not the problem. Out of sheer laziness, I started an hour later than planned. A couple of times before dawn there was a bit of inertia with getting myself out of the door. There were a couple of minor aches here and some chafing. Overall, nothing unexpected for the weather and distance, and nothing major to stop me running the following days. But at no point once I started running a loop did I ever stop enjoying being out there.

The issues came more with finding the time to learn DaVinci Resolve. Currenly I’m trying to make sure I read, meditate, and spend time connecting with people each day. I wasn’t making an exception for this challenge, so that immediately wiped out 3 of my 24 slots. I then had to answer some questions at work, taking out another 2 hours. Cooking and food took another 2 loops away. I lost almost a third of my time without trying. Another couple of loops were more or less wasted on YouTube watching DaVinci tutotials. Really this was procrastination and I would probably have been better off jumping in and getting my hands dirty from the start.

The last 3 hours were wasted; I got nothing done. After finishing loop 24, I showered and went to bed, rather than continuing with the editing, losing me yet another hour. I also wasted a couple of hours trying to film myself with a tripod, talking to a static camera. I didn’t use a single piece of that footage; it was awkward. It’s a useful discovery that the footage that works best is me talking and running. I know I’ll need to at least do some voiceover bits, so a task for future me is to improve at that. Once I’m happy with adding in some talking bits, perhaps I’ll return to the studio style and give that another try.

All in all, I guess I had less than 9 or 10 45-minute blocks in which to learn DaVinci and edit the video. It wasn’t enough. I didn’t get the video edited within the 25-hour window I set myself, nor did I publish it the same day. In the end, I reckon it took me 30 hours overall, with the remaining 6-7 hours coming on Saturday.

If I’d given myself some footage to edit, and a proper plan ahead of time, I think I’d have succeeded in my challenge. Planning, filming, editing and publishing in one day was too much. This gives me confidence that trying to find some people to support me in Japan is the right answer, but if it isn’t, I’ll still find a way to cobble something together anyway. I’m also confident that if I’d set myself the challenge of making a short video on a specific topic, rather than trying to capture and edit the day as it unfolded, I’d have finished the challenge. But where’s the fun in that? I’m happy with how it turned out.

The final lesson from this challenge was the impact the lack of sleep had. I finished my run and was in bed by 10.30, but up again at 13.00 for a meeting, had another meeting at 15.30, and then had a meeting for The Box Gathering at 01:00, finally going to bed properly at 02:30. This threw my sleep patterns into the air, and messed up my work schedule so that even now, I’m still playing catch-up. Hopefully this week I’ll get my to-do list back under control because currently it’s a mess and I’m behind with everything. But on the flip side, at least I made a video that I’m quite happy with.

And if you want to see how it turned out, here it is: