Mixed Use Magic | Urban Planning and Christmas Movies

Since it's that season...
The first time I saw Breckenridge in the winter, I felt like I was in a Hallmark Movie. I had rarely seen places like that in real life, only in movies or shows like Gilmore Girls. These movie towns actually follow the principles of Jane Jacobs quite well, so I wish there would be more places like this in the US, not just vacation towns or ski towns. But ever since then, I really notice the towns in these Christmas movies, and I try to figure out where they are.
If you live in a town like this, where? 😀

[@TristouMTL]

I'm from Canada, particularly Quebec where there are a great many small towns or older neighbourhoods that deck their main streets with postcard-perfect holiday cheer worthy of the best Christmas movies, complete with real snow, not fake. But I spent this last Christmas in Florida, oh my. However, we did visit Tarpon Springs, and what a relief to finally see sidewalks and ordinary houses and even shop-lined streets after so much sprawl. Alas, what keeps that town alive is tourism, so there are few shops that the locals use -- instead, they drive to the strip malls just a bit to the east. The same is true for some of the particularly charming towns here, and Old Québec is like a resort town, hardly used by locals. Old Montréal fares better, but it still has few services for its residents. However, they are both beautiful, summer or winter, so there's that.

[@cfc8juveacm21]

These are really great videos. Please keep it up, looking forward to the next one!

[@georgel19841]

Merry Christmas, to you,too!.........you have a beautiful voice.great video,original.

[@jezzarisky]

I grew up near an older style downtown, and it's definitely interesting seeing it from it's decline to the last couple of decades where there have been some more deliberate attention to preserving it or incorporating buildings more in line with the rest of down town(to mixed results)

[@bentoney9682]

I think a lot of people cant visulize how one could live in a non car dependant town even if they have been to Disney world or Europe. As a kid i certainly didn't see it as feesable.

[@Trohnald]

One of the things I noticed in your videos is that it feels like your voice is too quiet compared to the music, but also compared to most other videos. Check to see if your average dB is too low or lower than average. Love the videos! great writing and amazing topic selection. There arent enough women in the urbanism space. See if you can get feedback from other people about how to improve the videos. I can see this channel taking off! Keep up the good work!

[@Trohnald]

Yeah the music is too loud, like for example at 2:03. Also there should probably be a gap between when voiceover ends and the speaker changes to someone in B roll (2:21). I see what you were doing at 2:33 with dialogue fading in and out so that the viewer can understand the emotions felt, but maybe you could use subtitles instead? It feels cluttered. It often feels like there are too many cuts being made, and that they dont align with what is being said. I think other video-essayists tend to mostly cut footage in alignment with the divisions of sentences, paragraphs or gaps in speech, i dont know because typically i dont pay attention to cuts. 2:42 and 2:48 were two places i saw this but there were some other examples earlier in the video too.

[@Trohnald]

There might be something going on with your framerate too, it looks like some of the B roll clips arent in 30fps, and might be 24fps, because when I hit the 1/60th frame step buttons (" , " and " . ") it doesnt always change frame every two hits which i think means that the source might not be the same . I think generally youre supposed to keep all your footage the same framerate because people subconsciously notice it. I havent had any formal education though so like take everything i say with a grain of salt

[@optimicities]

Thanks for these comments! You are right there are definitely some sound issues and I should probably get better video editing software and skills...