So I'm in the nascent stages of putting my lectures into video podcast format and it's a bit overwhelming. I don't necessarily mean the technological stuff; more like the looking at yourself in a mirror stuff. As we all know the medium of a classroom lecture is the live body talking at the lectern. Regardless of the coolness of PowerPoint slides, a lecture without an interesting/entertaining/commanding lecturer is lame. I feel confident in my lecturing abilities, and wanted to transfer that to a more permananet format (like video) so students could return to it to review and so forth. The answer would seem to be turn the camera on and go, yes?

Not so much. Turns out (and uh duh) the medium of the podcast isn't my live body--it's the film itself. I keep looking at this footage and saying not, "Oh good point captured on video," but rather, "Whoa this is a boring piece of film." At this point, the urge to learn documentary filmmaking NOW gets really strong.

The question I'm stuck with is, how deep should I get myself in, here? I know the point-the-camera-at-the-lectern stuff is the stuff of a million institutional podcasts, but does that mean I should have the bar that low? On the other hand, do I ask students to wait until I get ten minutes of video *just right* before they get their study aids?

Then I realize: I'm not pointing the camera at the lectern. I'm pointing at myself, seated, and talking into it like I would talk to a student during office hours. I've watched zillions of hours of people's video blogs shot this way and not been bored. Maybe I should approach this from that aesthetic--just talk into the camera and edit in the occasional slide and be done with it?

It also occured to me I could have done all this musing on camera and put it up. I really need to get more comfortable doing that, but does anyone even respond to posts made with the help of YouTube? I still think LJ is much more about writing than  video.

I suppose I'm thinking out loud here. Thanks for listening.