Making lesson videos

I am to understand that you can earn online credit by making a lesson video or some such thing?

Im by no means magnificent, but me and my friends have a few trademark tricks that i haven't seen anyone do yet besides us.

Were i to post them here, what are the criteria and all that? Im eager to become active in this community and start garnering advice.

And im not even in it for the money end so much, id post what i know for free. But theres a set of cathedrals im eyeing, drooling greedily... so if i were to find a way to earn em i wouldnt complain.

So yeah, general advice on instructive video making?

I have a decent-ish camera, but ill have to find someone smarter than the damn thing to operate it. It seems to have become self aware, and thusly frightens me.

Thanks guys!

-Darken

Break it down into steps to teach it... treat the camera as a student that you only have a few minutes to teach to... thats about it. Make sure your hands are clearly visable, talk through the steps or put up cues on the screen... make sure your environment is well lit enough...


Check out other tutorials to see what you like... it usually helps to give a bit of a rundown on WHY it works, explaining it using vocabulary that the community understands as well as making it clear enough without having those words in there.

Oh and try to be sure that you give a comprehensive cover of it... make sure its not already covered somewhere under a different name.

Greatly appreciated mate.

Ive found alot of online poi lessons to be visually dazzling, but difficult to follow due to low quality, thick accents, or overly complicated lights. -.-

Ill do my best to stick to your advice.

Thanks for the reply,

-Darken

Also, clear background really helps for more complicated stuff.

And, if any tangles or something like that are involved, I have found socks to be much better than tails or chains.

Otherwise, see what you like about other tutorials.

Alright, now i gotta wonder. I did a spot of filming today, with typical cheesy-ass glowsticks.

It seemed as though i could either get a shot in high light which clearly illuminated my hands, but it took away from the prettiness of the moves themself. (dulled the glowstick trails)

Then i tried in darkness, and the trails were far prettier, but it was harder to see the technical aspect of the moves.

Is there a decent balance that comes with better equipment, or should i just film in 2 segments, one lighted one dark?

Forgive the overly enthusiastic replies, im SOOOO into poi lately. I quit doing all the raver drugs but kept the lights.

2 different segments... and yeah, use something that you can easily see what you're doing, socks tend to work best for everything. Show the trails only if needed.

The glowstick trails, as with any other "effects" are counterproductive to making a good tutorial. What we're looking for is a clear narrative accompanied by video where it's easy to see "what's really going on" in order to actually learn the move or pattern.

One problem with a glowstring rig is....glowsticking is usually pretty fast. With heavier poi, you can spin them more slowly and give us watchers just that much more time to see hands and arms doing their thing.

Music is pretty much useless, if not downright annoying, we want words instead...after all, we're watching your tutorial for educational, not entertainment purposes.

What's that one DVD I saw.... You could do something similar to that. Umm...

The guy had two different colored gloves on, and he may have had two different colored sock poi, I forget. Doing that though was a good way for anyone to keep track of, "OH! Left hand THERE and right over THERE!". You know... *shrug* At that point you can explain it in less words too, as it's extremely visual.

*shrug*

You can always do soming like this.
First do the trick when its really pretty..or whatever you want to call the beautifulness of the trick. Then go in (maybe with some sock poi) and teach the trick. then just replay the pretty trick over again.

Sorry if thats to much editing for you... i'm really into film so i edit all the time. But hopefully that helps you

You guys have all given me a bunch of perspective, and i very much appreciate it.

Yeah, see, im a real stuck-in-my-ways glowsticker.

I began on glowsticks, and its the only weight ive ever been comfortable with. Heavy poi confuses and enrages my hands.

Rather than complicated traditonal moves, i tend to rely on bouncing the stick about very quickly for optimum pretty.

Im beginning to see that just cause this sh*t gets me laid at raves, i dont think ill get much respect for it.:)

Poi artists these days are leaning towards heavier and heavier poi, and im still on the 'glowstick' bandwagon.

I gotta catch up.

Depends on which way you wanna go with it... there is www.glowsticking.com/ out there if you want to continue with that style, theres a wealth of information out there.

But honestly... heavier poi are the way to go... I use much heavier poi than most do, its just about relaxing a bit more than you'd have to with the light ones... Just let your arm fall in line with the poi... try doing some extensions, which is spinning your arm in a big circle so that the line between arm and poi is straight. 1 poi revolution per arm revolution. Try one hand at a time...

The weight makes so many things much easier, of course not the kinds of things that you've been doing, but it'll add a whole new dimension to what you've been playing with, perhaps with practice you'll find a weight that you can do lots of bounces AND still do all the other more poi'ey stuff that you probably can't do so easily with the sticks. (Stalls, etc)

Its funny you would say that, ive been thinking that very thing.

My moves are visually appealing, but the heavy poi does seem to add a different aspect to spinning. Ive seen moves in which gravity was a factor, and glowsticks get too much velocity to stall easily.

I did however order a set of flowpoi the otherday, i hear they are a bit heavier than sticks. Plus, once i get decent with em, i plan to buy an extra set, to do the double thing. Very pretty.

Looks like a got a whole ton of new sh*t to learn... without ridiculous amounts of wraps, im a very dry poi artist. Traditional just isnt my cup of tea... yet.

star wipes. don't forget the star wipes!

Whats a star wipe?

I believe he means the video editing technique. The old frame crawls to the edges in the shape of a star.

I really do feel you'll get a whole new world out of poi once you start using the heavier ones, even if you revert back to the lighter ones again. The flowlights on their own are still very light.

My standard poi are 3/4 of a cup of rice in each balloon, stuffed into socks. I really do recommend getting used to feeling exactly where your poi are, because especially when you start opening out your arms, you will start to lose track of where they are if they're light.

Very true.

Another thing to bear in mind is that im a skinny lil dude.

Im really not very strong and heavy poi, for lack of better words, pull me around. Theyre much harder to control.

Im ashamed to admit, but rather than even spinning full size glowsticks, i recently went through a phase where i would only spin the mini 3 inchers.

Im back to big ones in an attempt to ungimp myself.
(have been for like a month)

It wasnt even laziness that got me into them; theres a halloween store by my house that sells 15 packs of em dirt cheap in colours ive never seen glowsticks be. (teal!!!) etc etc. Plus, i could get those little f*ckers ZIPPIN around man, you could feel the wind, and the circles were very very pretty.

I want very much to do fire though, and it my experiances with my friends monkey fists, theyre quite heavy. I expect i always knew id have to advance to weighted poi to get better, but till recently i wasnt studying poi avidly, just kinda spinning recreationally.

Lol, nah, they won't pull you around, if its pulling you around, refine your movement. It doesnt take any strength to whirl em round, really. I've had very small (adult) girls using my poi and they have since stated they'd increase the weight of their own poi.

You shouldnt need to pull against the poi, the poi move in their own way without too much intervention, you need to let the poi move in their own plane adding slight alterations to their path, rather than wrenching them in the way you want them to go.

Inside a movement... match your arms to the poi, not the poi to your arms, the poi already know how they interact with one another and the space around them... its physics.

Its witchcraft.

xD

The poi are often smarter than me.

The trick i just (sorta) mastered the buzzsaw fountain... That was the very problem i was having. Im very used to pulling the sticks where i want them, swinging full speed, jerkin em around. The concept of letting the poi spin freely on their axis while moving myself out of their way was and is very difficult for me. Im trying to break out of a box i built myself through a year of very unprofessional poi.

Break it down into "poi direction, poi timing, arm direction, arm timng" as well as planes... that should give you a good start... buzzsaw fountain is traditionally poi split time, same direction, arms same time, same direction with both the poi and the arms headed in the same direction... if you move your arms the other way it ends up being antispin...

If you move your arms and poi in split time opposites you end up with something else entirely... but its really not any different apart from direction and timing.

Learn to move your arms in all the ways you can, both in front wall plane and side wall planes...

I would like very much to understand that...

But that was by far the largest jumble of technical terminology that it has ever been my fortune to be confused by.

The extent of my knowledge of poi terminology, in a nutshell:

"The lights... i spin them."
Book of Darken, passage 18

Ahhhh so much to learn.

The more videos i watch, the more daunting it is.

Some of this stuff is crazy difficult.