Our summer break is upon us, but we’re not sitting idle. We’re starting to put together long-form broadcast programming (finally) from the archived documentation. Big project! Each clip’s audio is being remixed for broadcast, and the video regraded and recut, because we have better tools now and better skills. It’s still in the early upslope phase where we’re developing a rhythm of best practices.
The conceit is that each program circles around a loose, barely-contained theme… the clips directly or tangentially about the given theme of the particular show.
Which brings us to this: We could use help cataloging the clips. WORK FROM HOME OPPORTUNITY! Well, volunteer from home. Wanna help tag our video library? Relive awesome performances, and maybe some mediocre ones! Discover moments you may have missed!
We’ve tagged a bunch of them, and there’s bunches more to do. It’s set up in online spreadsheets — you’ll need a Google account. More than one person can work on it at once, it updates in real time. (We’ve already discovered that trying to mix offline and online is an exercise in frustration, so it’s online only.)
We’ve got a list of themes (perhaps too many but possibly not enough), things like:
We’ve also got everything listed by year, in order.
There’s no rules — just a framework. It might seem daunting at first, but you’ll figure out a flow that works for you pretty quickly. You can skip around, whatever. You don’t have to listen to the whole clip, just enough to find a theme. And there’s no quota, just do what you will… a few a day or every other day, or binge like a total completionist. We’re in favor of the latter, of course. Wink.
This will be easier to do on a desktop or tablet than on a phone. Unless maybe if you have two phones. Or maybe that’s not really true. You’re part of a clever and inventive species, despite all those other people.
This is the framework:
Choose a title from the spreadsheet that isn’t tagged yet, listen to it on our YouTube channel, pick a theme from the list that fits best (even if it barely fits), and notate that theme into the spreadsheet next to the title.
At first it’ll seem slow and clunky, but once you’ve got a system down, it can take only a couple minutes per. Or less.
Thoroughness and accuracy actually aren’t super important. Obliqueness and humor are a plus. No worries, no stress.
Ideally each clip in a given performer’s set will have a different tag, but sometimes that’s just not possible. Some performers only have one thing on their mind.
The theme can be based on the title, or a line, or whatever. Sometimes more than one theme fits, and that’s fine — notate them both (or all). Or if none fit, you can add a new theme to the list. Nothing too specific… themes need to be broad enough that other clips will fit too.
Or if you want to skip tagging one because nothing obvious jumps out, that’s fine. On to the next.
Sound like something fun and/or fulfilling? Drop us an email, stage33@stage33live.com and we’ll share the spreadsheet with you (we’ll need your Google username / Google email to give you access).
We’ll give as much guidance as you want or need to get comfy and will happily answer any questions along the way.
It will be such a huge help!
Out of gratitude we’ll give a ticket to any show of your choice for every 100 clips tagged. Tag 200 for two tickets, etc. Once you’ve got the swing of things, it should take something on the order of a couple hours to do a hundred. As time-trades go it’s a pretty square deal, even if it’s nowhere even close to a living wage. If it helps, we don’t get paid anything at all. We try not to think about that too much.
Y’know what… we’ll just put the “instructions” here so you can see exactly what this is about. Much of it was already said above.
Note the tabs at the bottom of the Google spreadsheet: “HOW-TO | keywords | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | (etc).”
It’s probably easiest to have the “keywords” page of the spreadsheet open in a separate browser window so you can see both it and the spreadsheet page you’re working on at the same time — without having to flip back and forth between tabs or pages. (How you open a separate browser window depends on the browser and operating system you’re using; if you can’t figure it out, we’ll try to figure it out for you and send instructions.) Or you could go old-school and print out the keywords.
This is the YouTube channel:
youtube.com/stage33live
It’s probably easiest to have the spreadsheet and the video channel open in separate tabs — or separate browser windows if you prefer — so you can flip back and forth.
On the spreadsheet, pick a song or a set that you’d like to tag. Then go to the YouTube channel page, and near the top there’s a set of links: “Home | Videos | Shorts | Playlists | Community | (image of a magnifying glass).” Click the magnifying glass to search for the song or set. Listen and tag!
Ideally each song in a given set will have different tags, but sometimes that’s just not possible. Some performers only have one thing on their mind.
Thoroughness and accuracy actually aren’t super important, just mildly important. Obliqueness and humor are a plus. No worries, no stress. If you want to skip tagging a song because nothing obvious jumps out, that’s fine.
The theme can be based on the song title, or a line in the song, or whatever. Sometimes more than one theme fits, that’s fine — notate them both (or all). Or if none fit, you can add a new theme to the list. (Nothing too specific though… themes need to be broad enough that other songs will fit too.)
Questions? Email stage33@stage33live.com
