Reasons
I guess if was inevitable. But every Tom, dick and Harry has a YouTube channel. Some succeed, well a few succeed. Many start out with great intentions but don’t manage to keep it going. I know this just from my viewing habits. It is a small percentage that grow beyond critical mass. In this day and age of social media and unlimited potential, it gets harder to be heard. This leads to the question “Why would you want to set up a channel?” Well I have been giving the idea a lot of thought. There are a number of factors.
Firstly, I enjoy the editing process. I have done this on some other videos and get real enjoyment on seeing the final product. It’s an art in it’s self. The whole creative flow of editing, adding music etc can become a whole craft in itself.
Secondly, I would like to document some of my efforts in creating my stuff that I don’t feel comfortable putting out into the big wide world. That is where Patreon comes in, but that is a whole other thing. Also the algorithms don’t like inconsistency which is very much me.
Lastly, it is a record for my family if nothing else.
Thoughts
All good reasons why to start a Channel. I think that the endless gurus telling you that you need to do this that and the other to get ahead of the competition and the algorithm is also sapping ones creativity. In my view if you create, they will come. I know this is not completely true as the hundreds of hours that are uploaded to Youtube every minute makes ones own efforts seem like a particle of dust in the universe. But then it really depends one what one wants for ones creative endeavours. I personally have no intention of trying to compete with Mr Beast or Casey Niestat. As I have said previously I would be happy with 1000 true fans.
For me the creation of my work is the important thing. Obviously I would like others to like it. But I don’t seek adulation. Which is strange coming from someone who’s setting up a youtube channel. I liken the videos similar to the video I have taken on my phone. I look back occasionally and think, oh that was good, or I enjoyed that. But I do recognise that using the worlds biggest video platform could potentially have a disproportionate effect.
The need to keep churning out in order to feed the advertising monster in my view is also a pressure and drain on the creative flow. Long form video is on the whole not encouraged and with YouTube’s inclusion of Shorts. There seems to be a move towards the ever decreasing attention. But I think that the audience that is attracted to a more art based channel would more likely have the attention to watch more than the 60 seconds a shorts gives you. I could be wrong, obviously! But I do think that engaging with “your” audience is the most important thing. Conversations about the art is more important to me than another subscriber or just another clicked like, So I imagine my little space being a bit of a village hall art exhibition vibe 🙂 rather than a global sitting room with potentially thousands of people looking in.
Future
I am just dabbling with a few shorts at the moment. I like learning through playing. It’s all really to learn how to do Youtube. I am deliberate and probably foolishly not following all the advice of how to maximise the viewer engagement and constantly looking at the analytics. It’s all about organic growth baby. I am going to create some “real” videos for a project coming up in October and that will probably be the point where I decide what I am going to show to the big wide world.
As a sub note and minor distraction from the real world I really want to have a go at animating properly and this takes a long time. It will be a slow burner. But maybe a simple project like animating my character for a video intro. I am trying not to get too distracted, but you may find this is a common theme.
There is also the need to learn more about video creation. It’s not just pointing a camera at something and recording then there is the whole world of sound and lighting. Also the thing of the YouTubers studio. I think that is a sub niche in its self, with the endless updates and redesigns. Better not get started on that. A friend has very generously given me a DSLR that will more that cover anything I want to do. But that also comes with a learning curve. So I am slowly collecting some of the gadgetry in order to create the videos. It’s all going to be a bit rough and ready to start with.
If you believe the gurus you need to create 100 crappy videos before you start creating anything of quality. That I can believe. So the journey begins here.
Until the next time…