MMXX!: The Movie

While I was printing my MMXX! cards last night, I was also filming what I was doing, using my iPhone and a tripod.

I’m not an accomplished filmmaker, and know very little of camera angles and visual storytelling; what I tried to do was to tell the story of how the idea came to life, and how the typesetting and printing process works from beginning to end; I hope I succeeded, at least a little. I learned a lot editing this in iMovie: the mind is capable of filling in so many gaps that it’s possible to trim big stretches of what I might have otherwise thought as invaluable action; watching the video again now, I see I could have done even more of this.

Thanks to Olle for the filmmaking inspiration; he has started a YouTube channel for his tool-cleaning videos, and his efforts made me remember that I carry around a powerful video camera in my pocket.

The music is from Scott Buckley, an Australian composer who’s generously released much of his music with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License; I used his Solecism, Snowfall, and Wanderlust tracks.

I’ve uploaded the movie to YouTube (with captions), YouDescribe (with audio description); you can also download it here (without captions or audio description) or watch it below (it’s licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License).

I decided it wasn’t just to release the video without captions or audio description, so, with the help of my friend Cheryl, I figured out how to add these; I welcome feedback on these particularly, as they are a freshman outing, and I want to get better at it. The audio description suffers, I think, from the relative volume of the music and the description, but I couldn’t find a way to adjust this in YouDescribe.

I had a lot of fun doing this. 

Comments

Frank Meeuwsen's picture
Frank Meeuwsen on November 28, 2020 - 06:12 Permalink

I never actually saw your printing press itself. Now I did and now I need to learn this craft with such an amazing machine. The movement and mechanical details of such a press is just wonderful. As is the end result!

Vivian's picture
Vivian on November 28, 2020 - 08:58 Permalink

It was interesting to see how the printing press works. Thanks.

Paul Capewell's picture
Paul Capewell on November 30, 2020 - 11:23 Permalink

Peter, this was just so enjoyable! I enjoyed following your steps, and seeing your space. And then just watching each individual step in the process (one which I knew wasn't 'simple' by any means, but is methodical and logical. And the wonderful machine itself. Thanks a lot for putting this together, and I'm glad it was an enjoyable process for you as well.