Making fresh pesto sauce with basil from balcony garden 🌿

This is not a recipe video. It is just a vlog of myself making pesto and pasta for lunch. It's been a while since my last video, and I thought I should post something again. And yes, I have a YouTube channel which I keep quite a low profile. I started making home videos for fun during the COVID19 lockdown when we were stuck at home for months. It all began when I discovered the concept of '“silent vlogs” or “slow living” aesthetics on YouTube, and I got hooked by how calming it is. I was inspired to make my very own visual log of how it felt like going through a global pandemic.

When I began, I just used my phone to capture the videos, and then I started using my mirrorless camera for better image quality. I would transfer all the video files to my smartphone and use a simple video editing app to make these short films. Today was the first time I used Premier Pro (PP) to post-process the video. That’s also because I made a mistake shooting these in 4K format, which cannot be accepted by my smartphone. Surprisingly, I quite like editing on PP, and it has challenged me to rethink how I edit, try a different approach and, quite importantly, produce a film that is longer than a minute.

I also realised that when I uploaded a video on Instagram, the quality and colour of the film drastically deteriorated. At least on YouTube, you know that you can expect the same result as you have uploaded. Moving forward, I have decided to focus more on uploading on YouTube and have Instagram hosting my photos - as this app was originally designed for that purpose. Let’s see how long I can keep this up.