One of the consequences of working from home during the coronavirus lockdown has been the installation of a spanking new black glass dry erase board in my home office (aka the spare bedroom).
As someone who can’t think without a dry erase board, it was only a matter of time before I cracked and put one in. And just to be different, I thought why not go for a fancy glass one, and a bunch of fluorescent gel pens to boot.
The board’s been a Godsend (I can now think again!) … but it also got me wondering what it would be like to create Risk Bites videos on, as a change from my usual (real) office-bound whiteboard, or the iPad stand-in. So this week, I set out to give it a Risk Bites test-drive, with a new video on the risks and ethics of facial recognition technologies:
I’m actually pretty impressed with the results — not the artistic flair of course, which is as clunky as ever — but the crispness and the definition of the graphics, and the opportunity to inject a bit of color.
The big challenge, of course, was always going to be handling the reflections that were unavoidable. Fortunately, by tweaking the exposure and using a fast lens, the room reflection is tastefully blurred in the final video.
What I didn’t anticipate though was the problem of dry erase marker dust – every single little speck of it is highlighted on the black mirror-finish of the board! Most embarrassing is dust-scuff at the start of the video, which I didn’t even notice until it was finished. I left it in anyway as a reminder of what not to do next time!
But at the end of the day, I must confess that I do like this medium for crisp, simple video graphics that still retain the charm of an enthusiastic YouTube creator who still hasn’t progressed beyond crude stick figures!
So you may be seeing more Black Glass Risk Bites!
