The road to being able to make a music video several minutes long. What each shot cost, and what it taught me.
Destination Getting to a music video several minutes long, made entirely at home: my own song, my own characters, one story that holds from start to finish. I still don't know how.
| Report | Date | Title | What changed | Video | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 · The job I couldn't do July | |||||
| 00 | 16.07.2026 | The video I wouldn't edit by hand | I know how to edit; what I wanted was not to edit by hand from my phone, and that tool didn't exist: everything starts there | — | Closed |
| Stage 2 · Getting ten good seconds 5-12 August | |||||
| 01 | 05.08.2026 | The only clip that came out right came from one sentence | A real photo and one Spanish sentence beat 200 words of English | View | Closed |
| 02 | 09.08.2026 | I gave it a video and a thousand words; what it needed was photos | The failure wasn't how I asked, it was what I fed it: a video isn't material, photos are | View | Pending |
| 03 | 10.08.2026 | Twenty-five takes, not one usable | Forbidding a thing puts it in the shot; a longer prompt makes it worse | View | Draft |
| 04 | 11.08.2026 | You don't lock a camera by writing | The last frame beats any written framing instruction | View | Draft |
| 05 | 11.08.2026 | The day I retired my own tool | Read the house rules before automating inside the house | View | Draft |
| 06 | 12.08.2026 | Both ends | Hand over the first and last frame, ask only for the movement | View | Draft |
| 07 | 12.08.2026 | What a thirty-second video really costs | You pay for the roll, not the result: move spend from video to stills | View | Pending |
| Stage 3 · Making one piece fit the next August, in progress | |||||
| 08 | 07.08.2026 | My daughter's song came out a mess | Ten generated pieces don't make one work: that's why I'm still on ten-second clips | — | Pending |
| 09 | 18.08.2026 | Three shots in one go | One clip can hold three shots: between them, continuity comes free | View | Closed |
| 10 | 18.08.2026 | Continuity: making the next piece the same place | The next piece starts from the last frame of the one before, and the script leaves half a second of silence at each end | View | Closed |
| 15 | 30.08.2026 | The tablecloth drawings came to life | The channel no longer animates only toys: a photo of my kids' drawings on a paper tablecloth is a story too | View | Pending |
| 16 | 05.09.2026 | I asked a closed mouth to roar | I used to write what I wanted to happen in the shot; now I start with the toy, write down what it cannot do, and hand out the action with that list in front of me | — | Pending |
| Stage 4 · Getting it out there 12-18 August | |||||
| 11 | 12.08.2026 | I'm building on borrowed ground | Branded characters grow faster and aren't mine; clay drops both the brand and the label | View | Pending |
| 12 | 13.08.2026 | Half of the platform is switched off on my channel | Made for kids kills subs, comments and links: only format is left | View | Pending |
| 13 | 18.08.2026 | The good video isn't the one people see | Vertical gets 4× the views: publishing is a different trade from generating | View | Pending |
| Stage 5 · The music video still ahead | |||||
| 14 | — | My daughter's music video | The destination: several minutes, my own song, my own characters, one story | — | Pending |
The log next door covers twenty years. This is this month: I tried to get six phone videos stitched into a gift without editing them by hand, the tool I wanted didn't exist, and I built a children's video channel as a school. Making ten generated pieces look like one still beats me, which is why I'm still on ten-second clips. Each entry is one step, and it only exists if something changed the way I work. What failed stays written down — that's half the value.