A Bit More Vietnamese: Don't Expect the Action Shots Anytime Soon

A true story...

Back in the day, Sib4 and her new husband went to Hawaii for their honeymoon. They borrowed someone's video camera to take along and record the G-rated events. 

When they got back they held an event to show their video of Hawaii. Included was about twenty minutes of the Hawaiian coast that was, by their own admission, some extremely boring video. After about thirty seconds of ocean and coastline, you're good. When we asked why they chose to film twenty minutes of the exact same scenery, Sib4 explained that "from the boat it all looked so different."

Now bear in mind, this was a while ago.* The camera could've been Super8, but might've even been VHS. So now let's jump forward twenty some years. We're no longer talking cameras with magnetic tapes lasting an hour and batteries half that long. This is the age of the GoPro, a digital camera smaller than a pack of cards with memory cards that will store hours of raw video and batteries that last just as long.

All of this is to say that I have no idea how much video Sib2 took in Vietnam, but just for the day we spent riding from Saigon to the Mekong and back I've got 325 minutes -- that's about 5.5 hours -- of raw video. And by raw video, I mean indiscriminate shots taken with the GoPro mounted to the top of a helmet as we cruise down the highway. There's some interesting stuff -- including, for all you NASCAR fans, footage of my wipeout -- but a lot of it reminds me quite a bit of Sib4's honeymoon video.** 

So the question is, how do you turn 325 minutes of footage into the two or three minute video that someone might be willing to watch? Sure, there's lots of software that makes video editing easy, but I have yet to find the algorithm that can pull the interesting bits out of a ton of raw footage. And bear in mind we're talking a 99%(!) discard rate to get to a three minute movie. As far as I can tell, the only way to distinguish the 1% that should be kept from the 99% that shouldn't is to watch it all. Repeatedly. 

So there are two conclusions I've drawn from this: 

First, it'll be awhile before I have Vietnam videos I can share. For just the Saigon bit, if we assume a 50% reduction to the footage for each pass through what's there, it will take just under eleven hours to get to a three minute movie. Add in the necessary eye resting time, and it's probably more like twenty or thirty. But what choice do we have? We've got the footage; it would be a shame not to use it; and some of the footage Sib2 captured really is quite lovely.

Second, I've decided they should give the Oscar to every single film editor out there just as a reward for their willingness to do the job. I suppose it might be somewhat more interesting with movie stars and explosions rather than lots and lots and lot and lots and lots of highway and scooters, but it's still got to be a drag. I started in on Saigon and only made it through about ten minutes before my eyes went all fuzzy and started watering.

* Their eldest just turned eighteen, so we're talking at least 20+ years.
** Oddly enough, the only thing I remember about that video is the boring twenty minutes of coastline. I couldn't I identify a single other shot from the tape -- and I'm sure there were many -- but I remember that coastline.