Revisions for The Art of Kiltmaking

[pdcorlis]

Color me green with envy...

[mkmound]

Color me green with envy...

Second that.

[AtagahiKC]

Barb, I was thinking...dangerous as that always is, that you should do a video on DVD to supplement the new edition of your book.

I'm pretty much a visual learner when it comes to learning new skills. I have to see it, try it and then I can remember it.

I suspect that there are others who have fundamental questions on how to do something that would be easily shown in video where it is hard to understand it in writing, no matter how clearly you explain it.

I was thinking along the lines of a visual glossary of terms and skills. Such as how to baste pleats, or how to hold the kilt in your lap, pull it tightly to sew the fell, how to properly press and hang the kilt, etc.

One reason that I suggest a visual glossary format is so that you could just record small scenes as you have time, rather than try to do an entire kiltmaking video all at once.

You can record the video on a camcorder and port it to a Mac for editing the clips. Apple makes it pretty easy to edit the clips and make an entire segment in iMovie.

When you have all of your segments done, you could use iDVD to create the DVD menus and index of terms/hyperlinks, then format the master DVD file. Getting it burned onto DVDs and packaged can be handled by a company for you.

By controlling the segments and master file assembly yourself (or within your family), you can easily update the segments and add to them for new editions whenever you want. It would keep the production cost down, as well.

Just an idea.

[Barb T]

Hi A...KC,

The problem with doing any video production is that it's really really hard to do this well and not have it amateurish. I know that I can produce a good book that I am proud of, but I also know that I don't have the skill or experience to do a kiltmaking video at a level that I would be happy with. And hiring a professional is a frightfully expensive proposition.

Having said that, Matt and I are now having discussions about what to do with various kinds of supplements and additions to the book, including the box pleating stuff - see the thread at http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=29006 for an explanation of this. Note: please, please, please don't hijack this thread to make comments on the situation!! I'd like to keep this thread open, and I'll ask Colin to shut it down if people don't respect that.

As I said to Matt, the more I'm thinking about it, the more I'm really liking the idea of a free pdf (or pdfs!!) that we could post on his site and keep updating. Someone would only buy one copy of the book (either 1st or 2nd edition), and we could even tailor the pdfs so that you could download one that would work with edition one and another that would have the right pages numbers for edition two, if there are any differences.

Anyway, back to the original idea of this thread. There's always a possibility of doing some short video clips that we could post to Matt's site that could be exactly that - clips - that could be easily made and not worked into a professional video production. So, we'll be thinking about that. In the meantime, my first order of business is to get the 2nd printing out the door.

As usual, things typically work out for the best if you give them a chance. And, truly, I've learned that you make so little money selling a small run book anyway that, in the long run, if I count all the time I've spent dealing with the business, shipping books, and paying taxes, I probably should have just done a free pdf in the first place! Live and learn.

Thanks for your ideas and your patience!

Barb

[AtagahiKC]

Thanks for considering it, Barb. Clips will do nicely, if you are able.