Pi (3.14) day is a favorite. This year I decided to go savory rather than sweet. Wine and a hot kitchen makes for a sweaty boy. I wasn't thrilled with the footage for the video, so this seemed like a good opportunity to try and learn hack my way through an edit using DaVinci Resolve. Free is a great price, comparted to Adobe's subscription plans.
Recipe
I can't take credit for this one. This was pulled from Sam the Cooking Guy's channel. I couldn't seem to find this specific recipe, but thanks to youtube comments we were good to go. I would ABSOLUTELY make this again, it wasn't that hard, and was delicious. We both went back for thirds.
The Filling
- Chopped up cooked bacon (cook and let rest reserving some fat)
- 2-3 Carrots finely chopped.
- ½ yellow onion finely chopped. (1 full onion used)
- 2 cloves of garlic. (Lol only 2, I went with 5. Mo garglic mo bettah)
- pound of ground lamb.
- 2 tablespoons of flour.
- Salt & pepper. (Like a really excessive amount)
- ½ cup of red wine.
- ½ cup of beef broth.
- Few dashes of Worcestershire sauce.
- Squirt of tomato paste.
- Pinch of Thyme. (Spend the time de-stemming)
- Pinch of Rosemary. (See above)
- 1 giant handful of spinach leaves (oops I forgot but it was still good, could maybe toss in frozen peas too)
Mash potatoes
- Yukon Gold potatoes evenly sliced. 4 to 5 large
- ¼ cup of butter.
- ¾ cup of whipping cream. (Some more butter/cream would have worked, a la Thomas Kellers mashed potatoes video)
- Salt & pepper.
- Large dash of smoked paprika. (Like a VERY LARGE TONS OF IT dash)
- 5 to 6 cloves of roasted garlic (roasted in oven approximately 30 minutes).
- Parmesan cheese. Finely grated. (Dont be shy here. Probably did 1/2 cup)
Make the Roasted Garlic
- Preheat to 400.
- Peel most of skin off.
- Cut top
- Add a little olive oil, salt, pepper
- Wrap in aluminum foil.
- Oven for 40-45 min
Make the Mashed Potatoes
- Boil potatoes until tender. 20min? Google knows how long.
- Melt butter in a separate pan with whipping cream. DO THIS ON LOW.
- Mash potatoes (or if you’re a fancy pants put them through a potato ricer) in a separate pot.
- Slowly add the melted butter/whipped cream mixture in stages stirring constantly.
- Add some salt and pepper.
- Add paprika, roasted garlic (without the skin).
- Mix/mash well.
- Add some (A LOT OF) Parmesan cheese and mix.
Make the Filling
- Dice up and cook bacon.
- Pour most of the bacon fat into a small bowl for later reserving some in the pan.
- Dice up onion/carrot.
- Cook onions and carrots on pan for 3 to 4 minutes until softened.
- Add a couple of cloves of garlic (pressed through a garlic press) with a little bit of oil added.
- After 2 minutes add the ground lamb and cook (pink is gone) stirring to mix with the onions, carrots and garlic.
- Add flour and mix it through.
- Add red wine and beef broth and stir for a few minutes.
- Add Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, salt & pepper, Thyme, Rosemary and mix.
- Add spinach (RYAN DO THIS). Stir and cook until wilted down and absorbed in.
- Keep simmering until thickened.
Pie Time
- Remove from heat.
- Add mashed potatoes with the bacon and smooth over the top making sure to cover all the filling.
- Bake in a 400 F oven 30 min.
- Broil for 5-7 so you get that delicious browning on top.
- Let it cool a bit. It'll stay hot, don't burn your mouth like me.
The Video
I wasn't excited to pull this one together. We shot the footage, and then when I first looked through the clips, I just didn't like it very much. Something about it didn't feel right. I think it was mostly my demeanor. Oh....and WTF why is there SO much to sort through?!?!
In the course of a week, I saw a number of creators I follow online post about switching to DaVinci Resolve. I'd long ignored it, thinking I'd already invested a lot in the Adobe ecosystem. Then I saw Resolve is actually free (what?!). And it has a cool feature for cutting through a ton of clips. An idea was born - use the shepherd's pie footage to play with Resolve on a project I don't care for.
The Goals:
- Learn the workflow. How does what I know how to do in Premiere (not much) compare?
- Replicate some of the things I've done in previous videos: speed ramping, audio ramps, some minor transitions, overlay text, keyframe text, layer videos, some minor masking, stabilization, color correction (that's what they're know for), skin tone coloring. Figure out what the deal is with Nodes.
- Ship it. Not a trial demo. This goes up on YouTube.
So how'd it go?
Suddenly I had a new energy for this project. I was SLOW. I thought I'd be faster given that I have a decent workflow in Premiere. I didn't realize how much I'd be searching, googling, poking around, etc. I'd wager it took me 3x long as if I'd just used premiere.
But I was excited about this one. Nodes are cool, and I think actually appeal to my computer engineering background.
I had some struggles:
- insert a clip between two other ones was massively difficult for me. This should be the easiest thing to do.
- video tracks were expanding up and down and all over at times.
- the clip with 4 videos in one plays back SUPER laggy, as does the sped up clips. This must be a setting somewhere, my machine is certainly capable. Maybe I need to use nodes instead of layers (TODO: try that)
- Woah, year's of lightroom / lumetri have me really trained to do color correction and grading a specific way. I struggled here, and eventually just gave up. Skin tones were extra hard.
- retiming curves have a max/min setting that would default nowhere near what I wanted. I fought that for a long time.
Parting thoughts
I'm thrilled with what I came up with. I kind of like the video now, though it's far from my best. I need to give it time to think about why I don't like it as much as others, beyond that I'm a sweaty mess in it. I even managed some very introductory VFX!
I'm think I'm switching to Resolve. I need to learn more about color correcting in it, and want to dabble with Fusion a bit. I'll probably buy the full version. I like paying for software I use and enjoy. Younger Ryan would be shocked.
