Posted by sarahZedig on Sep 17, 2026
it's episode 3, in which i witness The Wizard of Speed and Time! and with that, we've reached the end of the "pilot" of Let's Talk About Stuff. what do you think so far? i'm having a great time!
the color correction is all over the place in this one. i've been secretly testing different codecs with these episodes to see how small i can get the raw camera files before losing too much shadow detail. what i didn't realize for ep3 was changing the codec changed a bunch of other settings i'd dialed in, so the footage came out looking funky. the credits look that way because i mixed color temperatures and i thought it'd be a funny meta joke to prove the college lighting professor i complained about in a previous episode 100% correct. i did my best, but color correction has never been my strong suit.
anyway, i want to say a couple things about the response to the show so far. if you look at the viewcounts of the first two episodes, by objective external metrics they haven't done very well. by *my* subjective internal metrics, however, they've done SO much better than i expected them to. and it's excited me so much to see comments of folks sharing stories about films they loved and work they've been inspired to do.
i built this show for the long game. i expected low views and low engagement, that this would functionally be a career reset and i'd be back to playing the old "lay the groundwork to get lucky someday" routine. and in a sense that's true, i would certainly like to expand my audience. but the audience that already exists, who've stuck around with me for however long, y'all showed up. if there was any doubt left in my mind that this was the right choice, it's gone now. so thanks for that. i really needed a win.
what have i learned? well, i'm starting to get a more intimate understanding of my working rhythms. i need a day off after a recording session before i can start editing. not entirely sure why, maybe it's like setting concrete? trying to go at it too early feels wrong somehow. i'm also learning how to use Resolve's audio tools (historically i did all my leveling in adobe audition), so there is probably a huge variance in how these things sound. there was also the issue of film audio. i don't know why i didn't account for this in prepro, i never had *any* intention of importing the source film to the project, so in the first three episodes it was a bit of work to save the film audio from my main mic. starting in episode 4, i set up a second mic below my TV to solve that problem.
the nice thing so far has been that i largely enjoy the editing process. editing became a bit of an albatross for me as a video essayist. what i'm realizing is that i do like the assembly process, trimming down a 2+ hour watch session into a 50 minute rough, then refining that rough down to a 30-ish minute final. the hard part was always what came after, adding graphics and visual gags and cutaways. with LTAS, i've given myself permission to forego that step entirely, and it's made editing so much more tolerable.
every time i've finished an LTAS episode has come as a pleasant surprise. in truth, thanks to a predictable series of Events and Circumstances i've actually been *WAY* behind where i wanted to be by now. i'd hoped to have at least recorded up to episode six, and twice already i didn't record the post-video crowdfund section until the night before release, including today's. there was a night a few days ago i was *convinced* i'd need a week delay between the end of the pilot and the start of season 1. then the next day i got to work, and within a couple hours i was back where i needed to be. how does that happen? that never happens.
i don't want to make a habit of kicking cans down the road, but in a way this was a vital test of the core function of LTAS: to be a low-stress, low-effort practice in persistence film studies. there was never any universe where i'd be 100% proactively on top of the schedule from start to finish. if this was ever gonna last the way i wanted it to last, it needed to *complement* the cyclical troughs in my motivation, instead of just making them worse. from where this goat is sitting, i'm feeling pretty confident LTAS is doing exactly that.
so, the future! i'm looking at using peertube to host longer/uncensored versions of these videos, both as a way to maintain access parity between crowdfund platforms, and as a test of peertube itself. obviously, if/when that day comes i'd deliver unto you a quick start guide for those whose spines quiver at the mention of "fediverse," or who otherwise just want to be told how to use a new technology by someone who knows how to use it. as soon as i know how to use it myself, i'll let you know. but i think it would be cool to try out some non-corporate alternatives to youtube. if ever there was a time to take a swing, it's now.
like i say at the end of this one, i intend to open up submissions for movies you think i should watch. the last thing i want this show to be is a boutique bluray review, where all i ever focus on is whatever happens to have gone to market. if i did *that*, we'd never see another Wizard of Speed and Time on LTAS again. it's extremely important to me that the films we watch span far and wide, across decades and countries and budgets, so that we never lose sight of film as a universal human medium that cannot help but surprise us. to that end, do y'all have any suggestions for anonymous submission platforms? the last time i tried to do something like this, i was greatly annoyed to find that many services charge a fee if you get above a certain number of responses. whatever method i end up using, i want to make sure it sticks around and isn't an unnecessary privacy nightmare.
in the meantime, i'm just keeping a list by hand. any suggestions you make in the comments here or on the video itself will go on that list. the earliest i'll get to any of these will be season 2, so there's still plenty of time to come up with some options.
and that's that! thank you so much for watching. this is easily my favorite episode of LTAS so far, and it's even better because the film itself is also on youtube! you can find the link to it in the video description, as well as to its director's amazing early 2000s website. enjoy!!!