What have you been doing during quarantine?! Here's what I have been up to with my two cousins, Meghan and Madi. Take a look into our daily quarantine life in Florida! Including palm trees, lots of swimming, golf carts and more!
12 Days of Quarantine is hands down, the most involved video I have ever made. As most of you know, I am stuck away from home and quarantining in Florida. I came to Florida in March to work for Carnival Cruise Lines, playing in one of their rock bands. I know, I know…horrible timing! Anyway, I will spare you all of the details, the bottom line is I cannot return home to Japan. I am very fortunate I have family that I can stay with during this time, I am super grateful.
With all of this free time and my cousins Madi and Meghan home from school, their mom (my cousin Dana) asked me to teach the girls some music and maybe make a video with them. Of course, I said, “YES”! When we came up with the idea to make this video, I never would have imagined it would grow into what it became. But hey, go big or go home, and I can’t go home so…. haha!
We started by watching other YouTube videos and coming up with ideas for the kind of video we wanted to make or maybe what song we wanted to do. Of course, we knew we wanted it to be about quarantine life, as this is what is on the forefront of everyone’s mind these days. This is the life we are living. We decided on 12 Days of Christmas as our song, then brainstormed all the ideas based off of the activities in the girls’ everyday quarantine lives. They did most of the work coming up with all of the words and I just guided the process.
To be honest, when we started this little project, I had no intention of putting it on my YouTube channel or posting it on my social media accounts. I have a trombone channel, I play trombone, I figured no one would want to see me and my cousins singing a Christmas song!
We originally recorded the singing to 12 Days of Quarantine with a backing track. I had found some online but I didn’t really like any of them. Then, I had the idea to make the “backing track” a trombone quartet! Everything escalated from there… as I found a way to included trombones in this project, I knew it would be good material for my YouTube channel.
So of course, I went through my normal process. Arrange a trombone piece, record all the parts, mix them together, film videos of me playing trombone…
For all the other videos of the girls, we filmed over a few days time. We had a blast coming up with all the different shots we wanted to get. We all agreed it would look really cool to have a “scene” for each of the 12 days. My favorite was “5 golf cart rides” where I played trombone sitting in the back of the golf cart as Meghan and Madi sang! While we were filming, I already knew this was going to be a lot of work to edit!!! But I think it was well worth it, I am really happy with how they video turned out.
I also say this was the most involved video I have ever done because In 12 Days of Quarantine I did so many things for the first time. This was my first time including vocals in a piece. So that meant it was also my first time recording and mixing vocals. As to be expected, the trombone parts were way too loud during the beginning stages of mixing! As a trombone player, you best believe that’s what I wanted to hear! Don’t worry, I eventually caved and bumped up the vocals for the final product.
This was also the first time I included so many split screens in one shot! On the last time through the form I displayed the same number of shots as the number of days, 12, 11, 10, etc. This section definitely took the most time to edit! Editing this video was great practice for my Final Cut X skills. I definitely learned some new tricks along the way.
The final element to this super complicated project was being sponsored by Thoroughbred Golf Carts. They are a custom golf cart business in Englewood, FL. They also have great deals on rentals and do repairs as well! Thoroughbred Golf Carts made the golf cart that we drove around (and played trombone in) in the video. Thank you, for letting us drive your golf cart around and do crazy things!
If you live in the Englewood/Venice/Boca Grande area, or know anyone who does, please check them out. They also ship all over the United States. This is great time to support local and family owned businesses!
Website: http://www.tgcarts.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tgcarts/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thoroughbredgolfcarts/
