Remixing in Camstasia

The last round of work with Camtasia begin with an emergent focus. I had already begun developing the Web presentation framework here and had sketched out most of the ideas and reflections related to the project. I had revised the script. The new audio takes would emerge from these materials. A rough take with the new script revealed issues of timing, resulting in some more fine-tuning of the script, yielding yet another audio take, and so on.

Another layer of performance, however, emerged. As I was working on screencasts for an unrelated project, I started experimenting with callouts and decided that I could push what I was doing in “Watch the Bubble” by changing the folded-note shape that I had used in the initial screencast. Somewhat like the difficult-to-trace realization that the project should be called “Watch the Bubble,” an idea formed suggesting that I should put the credo statements themselves in bubbles. The idea was a flashy enough insight that I tweeted it so as not to forget. I find here emergence in its most active performative mode. A result that changes the flow and acts on the direction of the project.

I then spent half a day making bubbles in Photoshop. I took up the suggestion that these elements operate as their own meaning layer, in conversation with the vocal narration. What would the bubbles say? When would they pop up in the video? I switched into performancemegence using Photoshop, downloading brush sets and using their shaping influence to compose new callouts. This performance in turn acted on the subsequent work in Camtasia as I imported the new bubbles into the project and layered them into the timeline.

I decided to create a postable version of the November 2010 mix of the video. I recorded several takes of audio, capturing one that was solid enough. Camtasia allows some audio adjustments, but Audacity allows many more, so I exported the captured audio track and then opened it in Audacity. I ran the noise reduction filter and then normalized the audio. Then I brought the file back into Camtasia and exported the November 2010 print of the video.