A Chinese Christmas Cover- Making the Video

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. Yesterday’s blog… was really emotional. At least, it was for me while writing it. Check it out here at your own risk! But though it’s emotional, it mentions a few things about the schedule and content of my blogs.

In last month’s blog, Away In a Manger- A Chinese Christmas Cover, I asked for comments on whether or not you guys want to hear about how I ended up getting the video put together. I would love to get comments and know of your thoughts, but I also want to share this story! So here it is!

At the end of that previous blog, I mentioned that I had just started the audio recording of the Christmas song, Away In a Manger, in Chinese. It was a little difficult at first to get a good vocal balance since I’ve gotten used to singing in a Concert Hall. Sometimes I was too loud even when I had my phone, which has a recording app on it, farther away from me. Since it was winter, the noise from the heater outside my bedroom made things difficult as well!

But eventually, there was a quiet moment and I found that the right balance I needed was to just sit on my bed, hold my phone about a handwidth away from my mouth, and sing softly rather than loudly. When trying to think about what I could use for accompaniment, I decided that the soft plucking of a guitar would fit this Christmas lullaby perfectly. Thankfully, I had just finished a beginning guitar class and had learned a few plucking patterns.

After getting my audio recorded, I needed to figure out what to do for my video. I knew that my parents were going to the Visitor’s Center of the nearest Temple of our Church to sing Christmas Carols. So I tagged along thinking that a group of people singing carols would look nice in the video. I gave my phone to a Sister Missionary in the building and asked her to film it while I sang with them. But when I looked at the videos afterwards, I was disappointed with what I saw. This Sister Missionary did a decent job of taking videos, but the whole atmosphere and color of the room felt off to me.

As I walked in other parts of the building, however, I realized that there were so many Christmas decorations of The Nativity Scene set up. Of Course! I thought to myself. Away In a Manger takes place in that exact scene! So I grabbed my phone once again and took videos of every Nativity Scene I saw.

By the time I finished my last recording of the Nativity Scene, I went to my dad who was talking to a brother of one of my friends. We were having a casual conversation until my dad mentioned to him that I’m majoring in music and I have this dream to do YouTube videos. I hadn’t really mentioned that I was officially starting to make my first YouTube video, so I was surprised that my dad’s comment completely changed the focus of the conversation.

Once my friend’s brother, whose name is Kyle Adams, heard my dad say that, his face lit up and he told us that he does YouTube videos too. He excitedly gave me tips on what I can do to get views and followers. He mentioned that I needed to be consistent, and that comment made me realize that this Christmas video idea really could be a reality. But once that happened, once I uploaded my first video, I needed to keep going! I needed to keep a steady pace! I later decided that since I need to both record audio and videos, and as you now know, I would have my consistency be a video each month. But wow, this conversation that night woke me up to the reality that this was REALLY happening!

Later back at home in my room, I listened to the audio as I watched my videos to figure out where things could go in the video. Then I started filling in the gaps by doing video recordings at home. It was tricky to film myself because I didn’t have a piece of equipment that could hold my phone on top of a tripod. So I got creative and used other objects that my phone could rest on. In the scenes where I’m in front of the red curtains, my phone was safely secured on an abstract art project and on top of my Cello case. In the scene with the tiny Nativity Scene and cow that I play with, my phone was on a music stand.

Speaking of that Nativity Scene, cow, and even the picture I show right afterwards, having those objects available for me to use for the video gave me an even stronger reassurance that I needed to make this Christmas video! It was only the Christmas beforehand that I had received the picture and Nativity Scene from an unknown doorbell ditcher giving me 12 gifts for the 12 days of Christmas.

As for the cow… that’s a funny story that goes way back to when I was on my Mission in New Zealand. I was in a Church parking lot and was next to a Missionary car that was about to drive away. The Missionary who was sitting on the side of the car where I was standing had his window rolled down. Just barely before the car started to move, he reached out to me and put something in my hands saying, “Here you go!”

Surprised, I looked down at my hands to see a brown, plastic cow. I was so confused. It felt like such a random gift, and this was the first time I had even seen this Missionary before! But not long after that, I found out that as an islander he enjoys giving out gifts. I kept that cow ever since as a reminder of that fun memory. I never would have guessed that keeping that cow would come in handy when I’d use it in a YouTube video years later!

Back to the making of the video, the final struggle came to me as I started working on editing the video. Long story short, I’m really glad that I started doing YouTube videos during winter break because it took so much of my effort to figure out the technology! But once I did, I was able to focus on school work while YouTubing when the Spring Semester started.

Once I got it uploaded onto YouTube, I sent the link to everyone I knew and said, “I just uploaded my first YouTube video!!!” It was such an exciting moment. Make sure you get around to watching that video, even if it isn’t until this coming Christmas. It sure was fun to write about a Christmas song in the middle of summer though! Please remember to look at the links previously mentioned and leave a comment down bellow.

Thanks for reading to the end!