Talking with @JamesJaniabout content creation

0:00there you go exclusive behind the scenes exclusive drop a Danny Hatcher exclusive drop man good job it's Expo researcher yeah I'll uh I'll clip that you know right it's approved the Johnny approval since I started working with James to help with the research behind his most recent documentary we had lots of conversations about video documentaries and video essay channels in general and how the research Works behind the scenes so we decided to record one and this is an edited version of a three-hour conversation that we had it seems like every single time I enter a new project I always underestimate how long something is going to take me I like I

0:35keep thinking I keep once I'm done with the project I get optimistic and I'm like okay no this next one it's going to be much quicker because this thing is going to be different this thing's going to be different and to some degrees that that does end up happening um to be the case but a lot of times I still underestimate like just how much is required to get done because what will happen is I'll finish this video and it'll feel like amazing and I'll be so happy about it and then in my head I'm like I completely forget the struggle and like that that feeling of knowing

1:03how much it actually takes to do especially because this is going to be like I think the longest video on the channel I will complete I'll forget about it and then I'll just go into the next project thinking no no we can get this done inside of a month and that's not the case um so yeah I'm trying to be very mindful of exactly what takes a lot of time what can be done going forward some of it is just like core editing like you know finding the clips putting it in but the other stuff is just like really small things that come into play whether it's

1:26like this animation needs to be changed it needs to be slowed down a little so we've got to reach out back to the animator and speak to them about that um you know this little thing here we need to change like some of the you know establishing shots at this point because they just don't look quite right this music choice and then they just start to stack up and Stack Up and stack up and then on top of that you realize I've got to get the thumbnail done I've got to get the title finished up um I've also got to do like the market stuff for this and you know you're

1:52looking at like the 22nd which was initially my deadline and I'm like bro I don't think I'm gonna be able to I don't think I'm gonna be able to hear that I've sort of worked out a better path to completion for this video which is going through each chapter working out exactly what needs to be done and then going through like a pass of all right let's just go and fix all the Clips in this first pass now let's just add in all the all corrections to the animations then let's just change any what music choices need to be changed and then just rinse and repeat that for

2:17every chapter going forward how many people have you got or had working Onyx obviously I helped with research there were some people even before I think you came on board uh that I had doing like some like smaller research tasks here and there for like various parts of the video I think a lot of them the work now on at this point is just editing like so a lot of the people have got on board mostly it's Motion Graphics people I think we've had about five uh Motion Graphics editors for this video with the crypto video I think it will you know the most recent one at this point in

2:46time I think at some point I had like 10 uh Motion Graphics editors and then that slowly but that was a process of just finding the right Motion Graphics amongst that crowd because it was the first time I was working with all of them um and then so some of the ones that I worked with during that project I decided to bring on for this one so it was it was less people yeah we've even had people working freelance on uh like some of the asset hunting for the video which is something I haven't done before but again in my head it was just like because in the last video I've never I'd

3:13never outsourced the Motion Graphics elements of the video I'd never done that before and when I did it works well um you know I found like really talented people in that and it also saved time and it was all good around I was like okay let's try Outsourcing some of the other bits of the process you know to see if if we can get a similar effect and so I did the same thing with the asset hunting it's it's tough if you give someone like a project to find assets for when either they're not as involved in the project as you've been so it's like harder for them to quite

3:41know exactly what you're looking for as certain areas of the video and how it's going to connect in the edit and so there's like moments where a couple of the assets that came through I'm like this probably isn't going to work in the edit um or this might but it's just not quite right for this section so yeah that was sort of uh mixed results I think um for for the asset hunting work but yeah some asset Hunters I think I had about five asset Hunters at some point and then I did bring on also I think two editors helping with the rough cut at various

4:07points yeah it's been a very much uh a testing of like let's bring someone in let's see how it goes you know if it moves us forward at least a little bit then that's progress but I think I've hit the point now where it's like there's no way I can get this video out by bringing someone else on board or you know I technically can but I don't think it's going to be a project I'm particularly like happy with because I've been there from start to finish I think it has to be me now coming in and doing the finer changes to the edit I'm curious yeah when you've when you're

4:33Outsourcing information whether it is the assets or the editing how does that impact the the final edit or the rough cut or the actual storytelling so obviously we worked on the script and the research and you had various narratives you were going to spin how does offsourcing or Outsourcing some of that impact your ability to like tell the story you want to tell yeah man it's a good question I I feel like it's so tough and it's something that I'm still trying to figure out because the videos are so heavy on the storytelling element to get that uh and ideally what I'd like is for someone to watch the video and

5:06feel like really immersed in the story and feel like you know everything is just it's just going so well together the music and the visuals etc etc the problem is that that is easy to do when it was kind of me doing a lot of it because I'm completely connected to everything that is going on when I start to bring new people in especially when they're not here for the like the start to the Finish like I mentioned with the asset hunting it creates something of a disconnect where I like you know I've got a particular vision in mind for how this one you know this section of the

5:33video is going to go and I'd like try and now bring in either a rough cut editor or an asset Hunter for that section and what they give back to me because they don't quite they don't know they haven't been with me from the start to finish they maybe don't like and and they arguably even there's an element of this where they're not even given the chance to quite engage as much with the work because they've been brought on in a short notice it leaves us in a situation where yeah either they bring in something that isn't quite right for the vision or something that is just is

6:00completely different because there's like a disconnect between them and the actual project itself so it's definitely been tough uh like figuring out how to keep the storytelling going is is really tough when I'm bringing other people in obviously like one of the most obvious things to do is to be sure to give good briefs to people that you do bring on board you know let them know here's what the project is about here's exactly what we're going for in this moment and I think that that definitely works um so I had a rough cut editor that I had brought in for this this project and I

6:27think we were doing well together the only issue became that I was realizing that in order to get us to a finished point where we're happy with the rough cut we'd have to go back and forth on notes quite a bit which is standard process for editor but I think that then the issue became that I've got like the deadline in my mind in terms of when I need to get this thing done and it came to the point where I'm looking at that and I'm thinking I'm just not even going to be able to have like the time like we can do this I can work with like the

6:51rough cut editor and get our rough cut finish but it would just take too long to get it to that point it'll be past the deadline um and so it was sort of a case of I just need to be in the edit myself and get it finished up you started making videos obviously by yourself and you've made a few and then exploded with relatively few in comparison to other channels now you're Outsourcing the editing what was the decisions like why why Outsource the editing it sounds like you've got some conflicts some issues some some teething problems why yeah yeah yeah um there is like I think you know

7:25theoretically there is a world where you know I do everything myself as I've done in the past and you know one video comes out every six seven months right like you know that technically could be a reality um if that was something that I was aiming towards I think that would work fine um but I think there are like several issues with this one being I think the end goal or not even the end God just where I'm aiming to take all of this is to a point where the rate at which that are those that uploads of like seven months 10 like that just can't like I

7:56can't continue like that if I'm trying to reach um sort of a goal where you know in short I'm trying to build something more of like a production company where we're able to produce really like high quality stuff on a regular basis and build up like a solid community and audience of people that love what we do and then also to just improve even on the research and like we'll probably get into it later but even on the research end um I would love to do more original investigations um you know you sort of see like a coffee coffee Zillow type investigation where it's completely raw original

8:26investigation into something that's either ongoing or has been going on uh more happened in the past I'd love to like steer into that direction and also bring in you know what I do know well I think you know the storytelling and production side of things to do any of that I can't do on my own right it's just not possible and it's also look it's tough like it's really stressful because because what happened with the videos right is I began making them with movie clips and so I think I was getting like my first seven videos I think I pumped them out sort of one every two

8:53weeks on average super quick or comparatively to what I do now and it was using these movie clips not really much animation maybe a little bit of text motion graphic stuff right but that was relatively easy to do on my own and even then it was it was still quite tough like you'd be surprised at how hard it is like fine right movie clips that like fit what you're trying to say um I was surprised when I was trying to do it like in this way but look that was fine I could manage that in in sort of the time I was giving myself what started happening is the production was

9:21starting to amp up right like suddenly I was you know I dived into After Effects uh and I was like yo there's so many other cool things now I can do with this and you know forget them like I never really wanted to stick to the movie clips I wanted to move into like sort of our own either animations or our own like b-roll and so the production side amping up but the amount of people working on the videos didn't it was still just me for the most part and so what happened is obviously the production time to get videos out took much longer the problem is right so we

9:49ended up in this situation where the production is so high but it's only me and then there's also this end goal bigger vision of where I'm trying to reach and um none of this can really work if I don't bring more people in right no you're not going to see many movies or you know documentaries on Netflix you know you look at the credit sections on any of those pieces and you're there for like two minutes see your name scroll by so it's it's just it doesn't it's not feasible what I'm trying to do to do on my own is not feasible at the same time

10:15I want to do it in a way in which I I'm able to be the most effective with ideally a smaller team I'm not trying to go into like for some of these videos I'm not trying to get into a team of like 16 17 people you know ideally a smaller team being the most efficient with what we've got but getting out still high quality but you know arguably all of those things are somewhat contradictory where you know you want to get high quality but you also want a small team and you want it most efficient like some of this stuff just might not work together or it's going to

10:39take a lot of trial and error to to sort of be able to get to that point that's why I realize a lot as well but especially with like the last two videos in this one um there's just going to be a lot of trial and error within all of this yeah you mentioned After Effects obviously when you're bringing people in do they have to be using the same tools and while we're on tools like what what's in your toolkit obviously it can't just be a video editor and when we were working together we uh I introduced you to a couple you may have thrown them

11:05out now but what are you working with now yeah we'll start with video editing tools as a good starting point so I use the Adobe suite of products so Premiere Pro is normally where I do most of like the core of the edit After Effects will be some of the motion graphic stuff maybe use Photoshop or illustrator as a supplement for like if I need to just change out like an asset or if I need to either create an asset or change the way it looks those that will be you know Photoshop or illustrator when I brought in editors it would be a case of thinking okay they'll have to use the

11:33same thing because otherwise well initially I would use Adobe sort of dynamic link um thing which essentially what that means is someone who's creating something in offer effects can have it linked to a Premiere Pro project and it can update in real time and that was how I initially imagined it would go working with editors I later realized that that's most people do not do that really all you have to do is take the sections or this is how I do I take sections of the video that I know are going to have Motion Graphics I export that out to whoever is dealing with it they create

12:01their animation using still for the most part has been after effects and I normally prefer that because it's easier to communicate using After Effects language even though there's not going to be major variants I don't imagine with other Motion Graphics software it's still just easier and then yeah I give that export to them they create the emotion Graphics they explore it as just a standard you know like an mp4 file and then I just drag and drop that into the sequence pretty straightforward technically I don't have to be working in this with the same software as some of the editors I work with ideally if it's a full-time editor it would be in

12:30the same software especially when it comes to the core of the edit which is you know inside of Premiere Pro that's a situation where I might have to jump into the edit myself to actually either make changes whether it's just really subtle stuff that's not worth like hashing out in notes or if it can be more complicated stuff I don't know how to use at this current point in time DaVinci Resolve when I'm solving a situation yeah I know I know apparently everyone's sort of switching over but uh at this at this current time I just don't know how to use it and I'm not even in a position where I'm like okay

12:58now time to dive into a new like software so ideally like I need to have I think with someone who's working on the core edit with me especially like the rough cut editors it kind of has to be Premiere Pro otherwise I could just I'm going to jump into a different software or not know how to do anything there then of course the sort of second big thing is notion which you know we we've always spoken um quite a lot about uh notion has been a big one for me in terms of for for a whole bunch of things even on like my own personal managing of

13:24things whether it's like a book list or to-do list or yeah or really any any kind of information that I have in my head that I want to be stored somewhere you know normally before notion it would be like I'd think of something I'd be like oh I need to remember that so I'll like right on like a sticky note and just slap it next to my desk and then next thing you know either that gets misplaced or like there's a bunch of sticky notes and it's just it's completely disorganized notion was sort of like all right there's one place I can stick all of this information in for

13:48the video specifically you know I've you've seen it as well like I have like a central sort of project page and in each project like for this um current video that I've been working on your see the project page and you'll have a list of like here's like where the storyboard are here's where the script is and it's easy to use like you can store information there really easily and then you can also share it with other people that don't even need to have notion as well which has been really helpful for even like creative briefs you can make a nice creative brief send that out to

14:16somebody who needs to see it they don't even need notion it's all there uh and I think for the most part those have been the main tools that I've been using obviously until you've introduced me to a few and that uh I think switched up the game Morgan was the big one I think that you introduced me to right from the start where I was like this is amazing right this like changes because I think I use Google Calendar right for a lot of stuff but um part of the irritation there was I would have to first the Google Calendar just isn't I don't know it's not nice to look at I don't like

14:42the visual like look of Google Calendar and also that it's unless I'm mistaken like the only way I could like bring up Google Calendar on my computer was literally going to Google Calendars like website right and just having it there as a tab and then constantly having to click to it the first thing that you showed me with Morgan where I was like you didn't even tell me much about it but the first thing I saw I was like yo this is immediately better was just like the uh the old C like shortcut to just bring up the Morgan calendar at every point so you could just see okay here's

15:07what I got coming next that means instantly I was like oh like that would just improve so much about the way which I'm I'm working with this the other part of this was also the fact that Morgan is not like it's not like its own calendar thing it's like you're connecting a Google Calendar to Morgan so it's not like I have to suddenly switch everything up um it's like I've got my Google Calendar now it's just like I have an app that can it can supplement the way in which I'm just using it so there was that like and then also the fact that Morgan has like its to-do list

15:32stuff um that you can do right there inside of it at the same time um it had the scheduling as well which was nice I don't know if that's on the free version of it I was like looking at it and I was like look it's cheaper for me to just get Morgan's premium thing than also having a subscription to um like calendly and yeah and all like to do to do it so yeah it was just it was it combined a bunch of stuff which was really helpful all into one place so Morgan was a huge one where it's like now I use that for my go-to when it

15:57comes to calendar scheduling to-do list off even just sort of you know getting my day out on a piece of well in this case on on Morgan uh like even just planning out okay this is how I'm gonna do this that's how I'm gonna do this and so on and so forth I've used Morgan for that um that was like a big big switch up and then obviously I know the one that you're a big fan of obsidian uh that was another one that we we were using for our research pretty much I think I started with notion and then we moved on to obsidian and I guess this is

16:23a whole other sub conversation here but uh yeah obsidian has been was really interesting and I think I liked obsidian for how quick it was in terms of literal like speed and ability to use and how you could just sort of drag things over to other tabs it was very intuitive it was nice I think my struggles with obsidian came when it when it became about like working with other people and then also I think the big one for me that we've always had a funny back and forth on was about like how it looks like I I've always like a big on the you know visually does it look nice and

16:51you're like well it doesn't matter right it's just like does it work um I'm just I don't know I've just never been a massive fan of obsidian in terms of like vision usually I just can't it can never quite do what I think notion does for me and just in some areas of customization and arguably you know you have obsidian plugins and stuff which you introduced me um to that from the get-go which was really cool and there's a lot of really interesting stuff there but I think it it became a case where I was looking at it and wondering you know I I started to get a bit worried about

17:16the learning curve of it and then if I brought other people on board how is that going to be am I going to have to do a whole onboarding process here of trying to teach them how obsidian works I'm gonna have to learn about that and it just became the case I was like look notion is quicker to use for everything else like you know and potentially with research as well I'm still undecided on whether it's like notion or obsidian for research and I guess since I'm in the editing phase of this current project I've parked that question to the side but I think in personal use like my own

17:41use when it comes to just learning or studying different things obsidian is amazing um the ability to have it all in one place to also be able to like draw the connections between a bunch of different subjects uh I I really like that I really like obsidian for the personal stuff I think when it came to group researching yeah I'm still just undecided oh and then another big thing thing as a terror that was another one that you introduced me to I hadn't really even heard of like ref other reference management software I guess is what you call it right I hadn't even heard of it uh until like you introduced

18:09me to zotera and I was like oh wow this is a whole form of software I'd always wanted in my head somewhere I could like store all the references and and different bits parts of the research that I'd found or uncovered online and normally what I did is use like a notion database to do this but it's just really long to do that in an ocean database especially when you're going through so many articles bro like I don't have time to just constantly like as soon as I find an article going into a notion database and start a new like uh line and start to ride this out it just it

18:35was too much and then you showed me zotero which was really cool where it's just like click of the button in a Chrome extension it's all there inside of your zotero you have your files organized you can also share it with people um it was great it really fixed like that issue with people and sort of going back to obsidian the cool thing that I did like was the link that you could have between zotero and obsidian um I thought that was really really cool but again I just don't know sort of Measuring Up the pros and cons I don't know if it maybe I outweeds the cons

18:59it's a fairly small Tech stack you basically yeah well I mean yeah probably four maybe five apps well I mean I used to yeah I guess yeah I guess I used DaVinci with da Vinci instead of Premiere but yeah yeah cool stack well I I feel like well I mean you I mean let me know what you think what I feel like the less the better right like the more you can kind of get inside of one and it does is what it does you know the better it is rather than having like super complicated systems where this thing goes into this app on my phone and then it goes into

19:29this it's like it's too much um and yeah my brain is already it's already it's already like trying to figure out a video at the moment and it's not it's just not in the right state to also worry about all the different types of tools I can use when it comes to storytelling like actually storytelling what does it what does it mean because this is something we went backwards and forwards on obviously you didn't it didn't feel right and it's very hard to explain what the the feeling of a right story is so you are you looking at like character arcs or three-act structures is there any

20:01writing storytelling ideas right around that or is it just I'm a right see if it feels right and right again and go from that yeah yeah it's a good question I think because storytelling has become a bit more of a it's kind of a buzzword in general but especially in the YouTube space now it's being talked about a lot more and I guess there isn't a solid definition of what does that even mean um and I think there's like general concepts or ideas like three-act structure or you know the inciting incident or like there's these little elements or character these elements of what we think makes a story but I guess

20:29there's no idea of like but what is a story I don't really have you know this is sort of a definition that I think helps for me you know other people have different ideas of it and I'm certainly no like Authority on the subject I wouldn't say but for me the way in which I see storytelling is is generally taking a person from point A to point B and in the middle things happen and that is the story and the things that happen is what makes up the story whether it's the characters that you meet along the way the goals desires motivations of the characters from point A you know

20:58normally there is a change that's normally what um I think it was Hayden Hillier Smith right that says story has changed you know that's an element of it a lot of stories are about change you know there is a change in that point to point B there can be characters there are different arcs in the point A to point B normally the typical structure of stories is you know you start here at Point a where the character has one particular motivational goal or desire and they have a world that they've always known and then something known as the inciting incident happens which suddenly changes their worldview and it

21:26switches up and then now new questions are formed in their mind and they're entering a whole new world that they haven't experienced before and perhaps their motivations and their desires change at that point and then for the rest of sort of that Journey or they're exploring that world they suddenly uncover either this big villain or the enemy that they have to sort of battle and usually that enemy encapsulates the opposite of what they are or what they need to be and in defeating that enemy they then therefore fulfill their Arc of either changing as a person realizing the thing that they needed to realize and then you ultimately end at point B

21:57where you know something has happened but I guess do you want to dive into any anything specifically there or oh yeah definitely for sure for sure when for example let's just take a a chapter you're looking at the chapter you're reading it through it makes sense logically it makes sense it follows a story from A to B but something's not quite right it doesn't feel right yeah what what processes do you go through what the secrets of Storytelling as it were that you go through to make it feel like a better story yeah yeah I'll throw a disclaimer obviously I don't know you know all of every element of this I'm

22:30still very much like figuring out I'm actively learning normally I think when it doesn't feel right so I think we did encounter this when we were doing like the script for this this uh current project it became a case where if something doesn't feel right it's normally because you're if you're too zoomed into one chapter a chapter can like look well but if you're you know when you zoom out you start to realize if you again look at the point A to point B you know you're looking at just this specific part of that point A to point B you zoom out and you realize actually this doesn't feel right because

22:55here we have this very huge moment for some of the characters in this uh in this story and it's like a massive game-changing part but it's happening over here whereas it really should be happening here we've got like this big thing happening over here and then there's just not much going on until we eventually hit the end normally that would I guess be considered like a pacing issue something has gone wrong where when you read that chapter in particular on its own it looks good but then you bring in the context of everything else and how it relates to where we currently are in the story and

23:25who the characters are and have they gone through the change or at what point has this change happening it doesn't start to fit sometimes you have to do a drastic change right especially if it's like you've got the Middle Point kind of happening near the start something in that case it was rare but I think when you've got a situation like that there has to be some sort of big dramatic change I think um either a shortening of the entire story so that all of the stuff that happens later gets reduced so that that middle bit is now actually happening in the in the middle of the story I'm

23:49trying to remember because with this current video we had this concept of this sort of back and forth with the time a lot of the easiest ways to tell the story is to do a chronology logically and there's nothing necessarily wrong with it and from what I'd seen of other people's work it was like that's that's the way the story is told but I don't know I wanted to try something a bit more challenging also because I just felt like the meat of this story happens so much towards the end of it and then once it happens you know FTX literally collapsed inside of a week it just feels too sudden and too

24:17quick and I wanted to do something that was a little bit more interesting to try it and I don't know if it necessarily will work or sort of we'll see but I wanted to do a Time skip where we go we constantly go uh fluctuate from the present to the past the president being kind of 2022 Super Bowl onwards and the past being pretty much anywhere that is like further back from that point I found it was helpful when I was doing the story to have that dynamic because what it started to do was create this almost like this other ongoing uh story or question or mystery

24:48in the audience's head when they were looking at this future version of Simon freed and FTX and the Empire that he built looking at how incredible it is and I'm wondering like how did we get to this point and so you constantly go back into the past and you find like a piece of the puzzle that makes sense right so initially you hear about sound magnet Freed's generosity and he was dedicated to giving his wealth away and you're wondering oh like where did that come from and then you suddenly go to the past and you start to hear about effective altruism and you're introduced to that concept and you see how that was

25:16an idea that became a very big part of his life then you piece it together and you go ah I see so that's how it impacted his future I thought that Dynamic of going back and forth and seeing how these little pieces of the past make what eventually became the story that we see you know even in the prologue of the video I literally say like I wanted to piece together the the puzzle of what made this collapse how did it come to be part of that story I think that naturally goes with that narrative is going into the past finding a piece of the puzzle and then going

25:44back to the present uh and so it becomes this case and I think we even have like the animations to sort of supplement it when we go into the past we find you know whatever it is that we're uncovering by the end of it we find a new piece of the puzzle that we're like okay now it's starting to make sense okay I get it this past element makes sense with this future element I think it just worked well with that whole metaphor of like finding the puzzle pieces when it comes to like the story and not feeling right it's usually because you have to view it in in the

26:08context with everything else or if you you know when you look at the story I think an important question is what are the stakes in it like why is it important for me to know this or um why is it important for for us to find this these particular elements of this character like yeah why does why should we care when when it comes to a story obviously we spoke about this probably one of the first things we spoke about when it comes to making a YouTube video is you look for a hook you look for like a hook for what is it going to be how do

26:34you how do you create those hooks because I've been working with a couple of other people uh trying to help them understand the idea of a hook for me in Academia are hooks drastically different from YouTube uh so they're looking at doing academic videos but how do you hook in an audience to a topic that goes well beyond their understanding how would you approach creating a hook for anything yeah yeah it's a good question I think so it stops for the hooks for me are always like huge it's almost the first thing I'll ever think of a video for a video before I even decide to do

27:07the project is I need to have like a good hook in mind whether that's literally imagining visually what that might look like or it's even just like a sentence you know for the Mega Church's video it's like you've got these preachers that are amassing massive amounts of wealth and they're preaching this idea of a Prosperity Gospel which is all about their you know their congregation donating money to them that is a hook line is like oh I'm bought in right like I want to find out more about this world or it might just be that I have looks like with the crypto video I think that initial hook for the video

27:37um I always had in mind right from the beginning that um you know I think that the line sort of begins with you know what you're looking at is either the the greatest technology in the world or one of the rest Ponzi schemes something like that right it was like this dichotomy of these two almost completely contradictory ideas and I think right from the initial start of this video I knew that that was how I wanted to go in with the hook because yeah that was like something that just excited me and it's hard I think part of the element of knowing a good hook is that is the does

28:04it actually excite you um can you sort of boil down what your video is going to be into a sentence that makes you want to go oh yeah like this is something that I would really love to watch and dig into but yeah other elements of this is sometimes when you you piece together like when you have an idea of what the the rest of the story is going to be like and this is kind of where preliminary research goes into into sort of play when you have an idea of what the rest of the story could be like or what it might look like or areas that

28:28you could explore that would be interesting when you have that in mind you can sometimes then form an idea of what would be a good hook to tease out these ideas or to make it seem more interesting um you know the mega churches when I was looking into you know you realize oh there's this whole other aspect of like miracle healing as a subject there's the whole placebo effect there's um you know there's the whole stuff around the Prosperity Gospel and what exactly it is and how it works and all of the clips of the preachers asking when you have that in context then you can go back to the hook and you can be

28:58like there's a lot of these areas that I want to sort of tease out from the beginning um you know throwing in a clip of a Preacher like bragging for asking their congregation to donate so they can buy a private jet it's something that you figure out and you find that in the preliminary research you're like that's really good as a as a hook you know that interview you know again just with the mega churches video that interview with Kenneth Copeland by Inside Edition was such like a really good moment that was initially how I actually got introduced to this whole concept that's like a brilliant moment where it's like that in

29:28and of itself hooks me enough so I'm gonna like bring that now into my into my hook of the video so yeah that taking the elements of future bits of the story and understanding how you can tease that out in the initial bits of the video because you know they're things that you know will get somebody interested or asking questions that's like a big one is how do how do I get someone to like actually be curious or interested in what I'm about to say um is a really really big component of it for the crypto video I think uh it's something that I will commonly use is to

29:55find areas of things that people can relate to even if the subject isn't something that they would be interested in initially so with the crypto video that's a subject that you know you're looking at something that's very yeah it's tough like it's tough to get someone who you imagine is the average person that doesn't care um to be bought into the story so initially how I led that hook of the video was well let's not necessarily talk about crypto or the technicalities of it let's just look at what are the opinions or what are the what is it that the average person sees that would hook

30:25them into this world and that's when you start to dive into first this polarizing question of a bunch of people saying this is great technology on the other side you have a bunch of people saying the whole thing's a scam that's a great hook question where it's like oh what is this thing but then you throw in the aspect of celebrities getting on board and celebrities buying like putting a huge chunk of money into all of this and you mix that in now with the question of this because either this amazing technology or this is a scam and you start to go like what is going on right

30:51that's sort of that was an issue with the crypto review that was the big question I'm trying to to push to people is like to get them to want to actually care and ask like what is actually happening what is this thing it does your hook get give someone put someone in a position where they're now asking questions and wanting to find out more and if you get someone in that situation you know like it's it's go time right then you've got them bought into the rest of the story when it comes to the the tech involved and like you mentioned your increase in production the tech

31:19involved Etc is there a point at which you go okay you have to have X camera X my everything has to be set up obviously in this conversation your camera is moving up and down so sometimes it's going to cut in and out for sure this is going to be different from a produced highly produced video yeah I imagine imagine me just Midway through a video hold on and then back to it I imagine you get a nice or a dip in your audience potentially yeah yeah yeah yeah Christ yeah I would um yeah this is this is focused on the content of the conversation not the full

31:58package of a story if that makes sense would you agree yes yes uh I would yeah it depends on like your style right like someone can if your video is you going out you know in the field asking questions and interviewing people having those moments where it's like like let's correct the camera you know let's have mistakes and and slip UPS um you like a regular conversation that works right take like a Louis through you know that's what you're getting with his documentaries is very much like I've got a camera guy let's just go in into this bizarre world and figure out what's going on my videos at the moment

32:33although I'd love to explore this going out in the field aspect of things and I definitely am going to try to in the future at the moment the videos are very much like we've got a script set up we know um what we're gonna say we've got an idea of particular visuals in mind um any interviews that I would have done you know it's already done and we've got them out of the way um so we know exactly where this story is is going you know from the moment the camera is turned on pretty much yeah you have an idea of I'm gonna need this camera for this moment we're gonna have

32:59to set up the normally for me it's very simple I've got one camera usually it's my backdrop um you know you can't see it but it's what I'm looking at in front of me and that's it and I know interspersed between me talking will be a bunch of clips and music and we'll sort of get that all in during the post-production um so it's it's kind of set up in very systematic in that way but depending on you know if you are a creator that goes out very like spontaneous in the moment interviewing people it becomes a little bit of a different game there's no script there you sort of have to now

33:26piece together bits from footage that you found and that's under that's a whole other like way of making a video that is different from the way in which I do it I don't know if that's what you were gonna oh yeah definitely well yeah because obviously there are they've got the vloggers and the vloggers they have an idea in mind and that it doesn't always work out like that yeah yeah treyhound's a perfect example yeah like I think it's interesting because I do want to explore I think I'm very much someone who's like Hands-On like I need the script there I need to know exactly what's going to be said and I need to

33:53piece together all these little moments and I have this exact idea of the visuals in mind and this can be great but it's it's sometimes not great I think when you know you want to be a bit more you want to bring other people into the team because being that so specific and that Hands-On when I'm also trying to research other subjects and I'm also trying to do a whole bunch of other stuff related to running the channel or making the videos it is like you it's really difficult and so you know part of me does want to explore not necessarily having to be here so Hands-On having

34:24those moments whereas either the story is developed during the interview or during the research and or you know stories are developed during the research but the research itself is very much going out interviewing people and finding the story through those moments I think that that would be a little bit less I don't need to feel as Hands-On if we're doing that as as I am at the moment um but I could be wrong um the interesting thing is that yeah a lot of these videos and the way in which people make them um they're so different in their processes uh and that can just you know

34:53one small change of most of my videos are about interviewing people can change everything that comes after the fact do you mind talking about your experience of burnout or trying to leave that one no yeah I'm more than happy to it was sort of I was coming into it's funny it was like I was in a position where I knew that I couldn't keep making the videos on my own there's like way too much involved in the production for what I want to do and I need to kind of bring people on board and I remember I brought in like an assistant and an editor and

35:18you know we were trying to I think our goal was sort of one video a month and I think there's a mix of things that sort of led to the burnout you know one of these things being that I think I've always been a very uh it's a mix of like perfectionism and having like self-criticism a lot of these things are big especially in the work that I do is so I think it's very attached I mean it's literally attached to who I am right it's under my name but I think I also got very emotionally attached to the work that I create so to the point

35:43where you know if the work starts to feel stressful that will then have like an impact just on me in general and my like everyday life it will start to feel quite stressful and if I don't get enjoyment from the videos I'm making that will then have a like impact on terms of how like I'm enjoying just everyday life like it's not even just about the work at that point and so what started to happen was I think I was in the process of Outsourcing and naturally when you start to bring other people on board especially because I had no experience doing this and I tried to

36:09Outsource it all of it from the go like the editing I gave completely to the new editor without like much of I didn't have many crave briefs like there wasn't many notes back and forth and it was all under a short time period I decided to notice that the videos weren't quite quite right for what I was going for in the past which is gonna happen especially when I I went like that intense into the Outsourcing right from the jump I don't even do that now so when I noticed like sort of that that change in in sort of the feel of the videos and it not being quite right and

36:36not being like quite where I wanted it to be that started to have an impact on how much I enjoyed making the videos and the actual result and you know I think a typical aspect of burnout is no longer feeling the same sense of enjoyment that you have from what you're doing that reward isn't there but like the stress is still there the amount of work is still there like even when I outsourced it still felt like I was I was doing a lot of work you know as part of when you are burning out you you're not as productive you know as you normally are

37:00and you end up with this weird thing where you are trying to work but you're not getting much done and so not much is actually being coming on the output but a lot of the input is staying the same and then you might mix in the fact that now you're not getting much of a reward as well uh and you mix in the fact that there's like a lot of perfectionism and self-criticism that is going on all within this and a lot of that by the way I wasn't even aware of like the self-criticism stuff and the perfectionism stuff these were parts of me that just wasn't that aware of that

37:25existed or I didn't quite know to what capacity they were until eventually it led to this situation where you know funnily enough it was there was Mega Church's video release a very early version of it that I was trying to work on where I was sort of looking at the script and staring at these blank pages and realizing like I I can't do this like I'm I'm actually just way too overwhelmed and this wasn't even just like a you know it wasn't like a creative block it was a fundamentally different thing that was you know normally with burn how it's going to be mixed in with like very cynical thoughts

37:54about what you're doing work-wise and just your life as a whole um like a very unpleasant place to be in and I remember sort of this thingy there was this just one day where I think it sort of really hit its like Tipping Point for me and I was like yeah I was realizing I can't like I'm I genuinely just I cannot do this I need to like stop um and I remembered sort of saying to myself that tomorrow I'll wake up it'll be fine I just needed to take a step back and I remember like the next day I sort of woke up and it was like

38:18everything had sort of plummeted down in terms of just motivation not even not motivation to like make videos or or or like finish this mega churches video whatever it was motivation to even just like get up out of bed like it was a fundamental lack of willingness to want to do anything or even I don't even I don't know if I would describe as lack of motivation more of it's just like an apathy towards it it's like what's the point which for me was really was like a really scary place to be in because I'm normally someone who's very I've always been like okay here's like the new goal

38:50or the new ambition that I'm working towards or I've got this big problem like a lot of a lot of what I've done has been around like a big goal that I have even before you know YouTube it was doing acting and that was the big thing and I'd always be like I want to be an actor and I'm doing something acting related and it's that's what excites me when you hit a point when it's so opposite to how you've lived a pretty like fundamental part of your life has been that aspect of what are we excited about and suddenly it's like well what's the point yeah man that

39:15like that that's like a really that was a scary position to be and at that point I realized like there's something that's I think is fundamentally not right and I can keep trying to push myself or try to ignore it but what's going to end up happening is whatever consequences happens from me acknowledging this it's going to be far worse if I don't so yeah I sort of I noticed something was wrong I then I spoke to my assistant and my editor and I said I finally I think admitted to them that something wasn't right one of the big I guess misconceptions that I had when I started

39:44hiring people for the first time and this is again this is where the perfectionism and self-rism criticism comes into it I felt like I had to be like I had to be the perfect kind of manager or boss I had to be the one with the answers all the time so whenever I was sitting there struggling not quite understanding what's wrong I didn't voice this or you know bring the team together to say hey guys like I'm starting to feel this thing what can we do or how can we sort of work around this it was like no I can't I've got a but put that and let myself deal with it

40:09and then I gotta come to them with the answers I'm going to pretend like everything is fine even though I'm not getting as much work as I want to get done I'm the one that's holding up the deadline do you know what I mean so it's a really bad place to be in so finally I sort of had to admit to them that yeah like there's there's something going on some kind of struggle uh give me sort of like two weeks off to just sort of figure out and and you know like they um they were really understanding um I I was lucky to be working with

40:33really like great people and I'm still in contact with both my assistant and editor from then and uh again over the course those two weeks I went to speak to other YouTubers or just people who who you know have worked a lot and have experienced burnout and it was a realization that yet I think that's fundamentally where I I think I'm burnt out from this and I think by the end of the two weeks I realized that I need to take a longer uh extended break from what I'm doing because yeah I just need to shift a lot of things around um also sorry another element to this

41:03the channel blew up during covert and so a lot of the work was me inside of my room literally this exact room working non-stop from Monday to Sunday not seeing friends as much you know partly because of lockdowns but also because it suddenly became the type of life I was used to by the time you know lockdowns were lifted and people could go out it was still I was so used to just the work being the thing that I wasn't doing that as much yeah that yeah so that was like another component so when I did burn out it was a realization that look like there's a generally there's like a few

41:34elements if you I think you're experiencing a burnout you kind of have to look at the core basics of I think what makes someone I guess healthy both mentally and physically and that's going to be you know are you eating right are you you getting some exercise are you getting like some level of socialization in there are you sleeping well these are like the sort of core basic components of you know what can fundamentally bring you to just the Baseline of how I guess people should feel just like normal you've got like motivation to do things a lot of those things were out of whack right the socialization wasn't there at

42:04all um sleeping wasn't that great um you know the work itself you know wasn't feeling as great either so there's just so many components here that just were completely off and so a big part of the recovery from burnout was realizing I need to start bringing them into place so socialization started seeing friends a bit more start traveling a bit more for you know physical stuff as well I started like going to the gym again which is something I did before the the channel and covid and it was great to be back and that was also with friends so it sort of mixed in both socialization and

42:32physical exercise together and honestly naturally within like I think four months on top of that as well I went to go like I think one of the first things I did was realizing like okay like I need like professional like help with figuring out what's going on so I went like to go and get a therapist it was like the very first thing that I did when I was realizing something was wrong that was really really helpful that's where a lot of the realizations around my perfectionism my perfectionism and self-criticism was starting to come in place and sort of realizing those things were there and starting to work on that

42:59and a lot of like my self-talk and starting to work on that plus like the gym socialization I think within you know four or five months I was like brought back to a point where I was like I'm ready to jump back into it and I was excited again and it was just the default me and even four or five months is like a huge chunk of time um you know you sort of look at that but that's there was a realization that I think is for me was realizing like that's what a burnout can do it can put you out of like commission for a very

43:25long time and so you know if you start to feel it happening or coming along I think the the big lesson is to to work on it then and there even if it means putting other things on delay because the alternative is you have a much longer period of delay you know who knows how long it can take you to to get back to where you used to be yeah working long hours socialization or being in play it's working or feeling is rewarding anymore losing like that that overall passion you know you mix all of these variables in together and yeah you had an easy recipe for Burnout very very

43:53sideways question here well less of a question more of a statement I feel like the the creative world the Creator industry don't necessarily Overlook but I don't think there is enough of a light on the behind the scenes of the Creator obviously where in the world we know the editing podcast we know Colin and Samir we know what's going on or maybe me more than you because I watch YouTube more than you that's for sure yeah yeah but we sort of know the conversations that happen and when you see all the commenters saying it's just a video you're sitting there like no it's not it's like in your case it's seven months

44:28of my life yeah yeah right right right yeah it's it's a really good yeah you don't uh it was so I remember having this realization when I first started as well uh when I first started making videos and you start to notice how many of the elements go into it like what it takes to actually make it like it's not just in some cases it can just be you know turn on a camera record bang out but you know in in some of those videos exactly you've got to figure it out man like but even that is not like I say that but it's not actually as easy like

44:57even that element it was realizing that every component of like making the video has its struggles and difficulties it's like with even like flipping on the camera and just talking to I remember like in my first video dude I was more nervous for like making my first video than I've ever been like in any acting audition in the past right like the moment the camera was on it was like well I I still have the videos of this um because it's just really funny to watch uh it's just me going like dude why is this so difficult I can't do that it's just so weird it feels weird and

45:23that's and that's just one component then you've got to like go into the edit right and that's like that's another thing learning how to edit and it's not just learning how to edit if you're trying to make it on YouTube or to build an audience you want to do good video so it's not now about learning how to do a good video oh so now there's a whole subject of Storytelling that's coming into place um and uh and then yeah then after that you've got like thumbnails and how do I want to package the video and then the title ideas and there's so many components to what it actually takes to

45:47make a video there was a really good I don't know who said it it's probably a bunch of people um but there's like a phrase of like the enjoyment like people will watch a video and get a sense of excitement and enjoyment but that's not necessarily what it's like to make the video and I'm not saying that you know making the videos is very rewarding I have a huge sense of reward and gratefulness at various points in in the like making a video and especially when we get to the end and we have a finished thing out but during that process as well there is a

46:15lot of stress um there's a lot of hard work and yeah to the outside to someone else it's like yo you're just making a video and it's like all you do full time like what's going on but yeah like on in my world it's like that is taking up you know six months of my life of just thinking about this project and working through it and trying to make a good story and then you know the end product looks amazing and wow it's so great but the process to get there is just it's it yeah it can it can take a lot out of you some of the things that come to mind

46:41when I think about Creator stories is obviously we're on Zoom at the moment and zoom for whatever reason loves to have funny moments with microphones so I know after this it'll be like why does it sound like that didn't sound like that my head sir or why does my mic sound like that it wasn't that far away right right and they're the sorts of things that we now think about when I'm recording my videos obviously I'm recording on software do I put my face on there and if I do how big is it where is it when do I put it on there and yeah if I move the mouse I'm like it's the

47:10mouse covered by my face in the recording yeah so do I have to record my camera or is it in stream Labs like and nobody does decisions it's so true yeah even yeah going back as well like even with a like lighting or something I never really thought of and then I'm suddenly like oh the sun's not out okay I can't really record this right now or like now like there's no I haven't got any natural lights I'm gonna have to turn on the light in my room and this looks terrible now so I'm gonna have to delay because all this and the audio as well you don't really think about oh wow

47:36the way in which I'm moving like my face is actually changing the way I'm sounding so I'm gonna need to make sure to remember to stay in this position but I'm also trying to like deliver lines properly to the cat it's just uh yeah it's crazy there's so many elements to it that you don't realize exist until you actually get into it um and it's like no surprise is that a lot of people in like the sort of creative space encounter burnout like it's very common out of any creator that you watch there's probably a chunk of them that are already experiencing or undergoing some level of burnout at the moment like

48:05I really wouldn't be surprised if that's the case yeah when it comes to the the storytelling what I found recently because I'm telling stories obviously through Academia and the animation Channel which I've got going animation is a whole other ball game uh yeah what I found myself doing inside the storytelling is I want to say this thing but I can't just say it straight up because I know when I think about audience retention they'll get bored or they won't understand or for some other reason or how do I illustrate this on camera so that I don't like lose what it is they're going on confuse people so I

48:39I find myself asking a question when I'm telling a story one does this match the story but two does my target audience whoever that is understand what it is that I'm talking about right you've got a a broader audience when thinking so my video UK education system I'm looking at an older audience typically some of your videos could be consumed by younger audiences or much older audiences how do you how do you even try to manage those sorts of things yeah man it's a really good question I think and it's tough it it really is um normally like that's that's kind of where story can help if you're able to

49:21if you're able to make someone care about the technical parts of it like to actually make them want to now figure out okay I actually want to know like how does it work if you can get someone to that point then it's great then you can start to go into like just explaining something technically and that is a whole other subject in like how do you break something complicated down into a way that's like more digestible and that also can be difficult because you know there are people who are very like they're in the know and they will look at the video and they'll think this is too simple I mean

49:46we always had like you know we've had funny conversations about this it's like yeah like you you look at it and you realize you're someone that knows all about it and you see the simplification of it and you get annoyed by it but then you know and then you but then we just you know the shoes on the other foot and you're realizing okay I have to break this down in a really simple way otherwise like if I get to technical I'm gonna lose people but that aside if you can get someone at least to the point where they care about the technical stuff then that's a really good point

50:08place to be in in fact I'm I'm even purposefully phrasing it in a way in which it isn't actually accurate to what's happening right so I would phrase it as celebrities being paying a ton of money for these pictures of apes you know technically it's not a picture of it like it's an nft but I haven't introduced the concept of an nft I'm presenting it in a way in which the average person would have encountered all of this information and that would have been interesting to them and then we sort of enter this part in the crypto video especially I think it's um the real pivotal moment or I guess the

50:36inciting incident of that is is where we encounter this interview is it yeah Jimmy Fallon Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton in there um little talk show where you know they start to bring out these pictures of apes and talking about oh you know we bought these apes and it's a community and it's you know everyone sort of it it just has this weird vibe of like something is so off about this and it just looks wrong and weird and that's the pivotal moment where hopefully what I'm I'm hoping for at that point is we get the audience to kind of go all right like what what is this right what are

51:02these pictures amazing and then we aren't like start to dive in a bit more into understanding oh there is a whole bigger backbone to everything that we're talking about here and that at that point you're hoping that the audience is now sufficiently they've been they've been fed enough and teased enough information where they're like now I'm invested and I want to find out what the hell is all of this it is definitely tough and it's easier for I think I've got an easier way of doing it because like the whole point of my videos is they're supposed to be like a documentary of story so I'm I'm allowed

51:27to kind of go in with all the fluff at the start of everyone's talking about nfts but if you're like doing an explainer video you know arguably if you would explain the video you've already got the audience that are interested in it but even if it's not and it's like your videos aren't even meant to be like that documentary so you've got this annoying thing where you kind of need somebody to be invested into like understanding what it is um or wanting to have the answers to it before you know but you're gonna have to do a bit of like Preamble or Preparation in order to do that but you want to make

51:53that like the Preamble interesting and not lose interest so there is a lot of components of this are difficult but yeah normally what I find is to be able to explain technical information to someone and not lose their interest is to make them interested in wanting to find out the um technical information or an interesting question to ask is always why what are the stakes to finding out that technical information why is it important that you do you know in the crypto video it's about finding out well I've got a bunch of these celebrities that I recognize I got a bunch of people that I know in my real life that have

52:19spoken about cryptocurrencies but there's a potential that this whole thing uh some people are suggesting could be a giant Ponzi scheme okay now I want to find out what even is this thing so I can come to the conclusion myself there you go that's a really good buy and the stakes there are quite they're quite raw and they're quite real enough for you to now want to there's like a real purpose behind wanting to find out the information or even another way so I just throwing a last point you know if you think about like in your own life like whenever you've been actually interested in a subject and have gone

52:44and done the research for it normally that's because there is some level of personal involvement or curiosity around the subject and so the important thing is you know you almost reverse engineer that and you've asked yourself how do I get my audience now to have that level of curiosity how do I build out that interest and that sort of using the the stuff we were talking about before yeah because obviously we spoke about when when you were talking about your burnout earlier I was thinking about the story that we had like me telling you my story yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yes and yeah that's oh that's such a good example I

53:14remember that as well because when you were telling me about your own personal story The burnout it was like it was so good because we um because I mean we've already talked about like um ecological Dynamic ecological Dynamic the ecological approach in general yeah we were always talking about the ecological oppression I think for me I've always been interested because I like learning new things and so I was initially invested from the start um but we were always talking about like how do you make that concept or that idea interesting to people that either don't have an interest in it even though it could really be helpful for them

53:43um and then when you explained your story of like burning out and then how you know you use you use the ecological approach to get through that and sort of the interesting that was a moment where I was like yo if you threw that into a video and you started with that story immediately it's like you're invested into now wanting to know what what that change was and so you know you hear about ecological damage and you're like okay great like I want to learn what is this thing rather than just throwing ecological Dynamics as a header and being like this is what it is it's

54:07sometimes kind of obvious but I think I think the effect of it is really underestimated if you look at like even some of the most effective marketing even from people that you know how I like to call it the figure stuff where it's somewhat unethical their most effective pieces of marketing are sometimes those story components of saying I was this person and then I became this because what that does is it literally gets the person to become invested in in the process of how that change happened like what is it that you did to to to change um and so yeah even like some of the

54:37most effective pieces of marketing do this like method of first getting you invested in the question of what is it before showing that that thing to you when it comes to I guess the the end as it were of the story we discussed this previous like behind the scenes of your channel I don't know whether you want to mention it but building a community building an ongoing conversation about videos right yeah once a video's out that's it it's out but some of the stuff you talk about is in the news so it develops and there's like there's another stage there's another step and doing a prequel on a video is it's not

55:07as easy in your world because you're not a news channel so yeah how how do you approach either prequels or ongoing conversation about the topics you explain this yeah this is this has been a big one for me because um a lot of the videos I do as well are in in the crypto video as an example you know there's a there's a pretty strong I guess suggestion or implication baked in there which is sort of saying yeah the whole sort of space is kind of you know it's kind of full of it that's a big there's going to be a lot of opinions around that right obviously and the

55:39problem is with a video like that I don't have anywhere where I can kind of keep the conversation going you know what I find interesting and part of what I try to do the videos is arrive to some level of Truth like trying to find a a very solid grounded in reality conversation or understanding of a subject it's very hard to do that with just documentary one video out there part of the irritation for me is that I don't have a place to continue that conversation at least not on the main Channel and so I think one of the things I want to develop out and start building

56:06is either whether it's like a second Channel or somewhere where I could start to facilitate those conversations it can even be like a live streaming on a second Channel or something other than where the main Channel exists is like big documentary moment you have another like outside Source somewhere that allows me to have the conversation after the fact and be like okay you know why do you disagree let's go through it let's talk about it let's even do some research on this and you know you can start to continue having like the ideas or developing the ideas as you go on and so um further on and that could potentially

56:35even lead into a sequel on the like initial um video I mean a lot of the videos I've had where I've sort of had to make Corrections on on previous things it's not like I haven't done this before like even the crypto video itself was sort of a correction on my initial view of that space But it's yeah it's just it's just harder to keep the conversation going as it is with just that one documentary which has sort of led me into wanting to at some point I'm going to have like a second channel built out um and just other mediums where like you can keep those conversations uh going so

57:02does the community potentially become like part of your research like community research because ideas for videos there must be hundreds yeah yeah yeah so this is a really and this is where I think the benefit in building a community alongside doing this is going to come into places because the community becomes involved in the subjects as well and in many ways they can become a very helpful voice and trying to piece together your understanding you know let's go back in time let's imagine the crypto videos are now and I announced or start talking on the second Channel about some sort of crypto related subject so suddenly I

57:32bring up that subject and you'll have people in the community that either are into crypto themselves or not into crypto themselves they'll they'll be like voices or people that now you can start to speak to and say okay why do you think this what is there anyone you can recommend me to speak to and so on and so forth and you know ideally they have their own thoughts to bring into the mix they guide you towards people to look into and you can start to form like your own views and and get an understanding of the story just right there off the bat using your own like

57:59having your own Community to help facilitate that and I definitely want to build out the infrastructure for that yeah at the moment sort of my big big Focus has been on figuring out how to just upload more consistently quite common you'll hear from a lot of YouTube is this idea of expect your videos to sort of be bad to begin with and it's really good advice it's like don't make perfectionism a goal um go in with the idea of mind that you're probably going to make terrible videos to begin with the channel blew up after like the first seven videos right and it and it was at

58:24that point where I was like okay this is the full-time thing now but to be clear those seven videos I did in my mind never saw them like that I always thought that they were like not that great of a video but the whole frame of mind was I'll I'm gonna upload it because it'll be great you know eventually when I look back on those videos and I'm like wow look how much has changed you know the the goal um is not get a ton of well how do I make the perfect video or how do I get like a ton of one is this just how do I just

58:48slightly improve from what I did before and I think the other thing that goes hand in hand with this is like giving yourself permission to just to be you know to like not have the best lighting to not have the bet it's not that you shouldn't sometimes work towards improving that thing but it's just giving yourself permission to do that um and to and to importantly like putting it out there um is the other aspect of this that's really important easily hands down if I let the part of me that was perfectionist was self-critical that was saying these videos aren't good sort of dominate my actions I wouldn't I don't

59:17think I'd be doing YouTube like at all I don't want to like over emphasize this but I feel like doubling down on the Simplicity of being like bad can also be helpful I mean when you look at uh some of the uh what's it I think the channel name is Penguins most critical you look at the thumbnails he'd put no effort in the thumbnails but the conversation is there people are interested logbook is another example that comes to mind they're there and some people the animate in their videos the animation is when you look at it fairly simple that it communicates exactly what they need to do so it might look bad but it does

59:51exactly what it needs to do yeah yeah oh this is such a good point I was yeah I think so even to just add on to that um I've say this to quite a few people on my like patreon because I get a lot of questions around like starting a channel and normally they'll because they take inspiration from some of the stuff that I've done they'll go in with trying to make this like very heavily edited stuff and and I feel bad and I say like don't that's not how you should approach I can only I do that I can only do that because now it's like the

1:00:16full-time thing right I couldn't have done this back when I was starting and I was working other stuff the important thing to do is just to look at the things that are most important in my videos it's like the storytelling um of the video and the idea of the video those like the two highest leverage things that you can possibly look at when making or when starting out and so big production crazy animations just pull it all down a little bit it's just to make it easier for yourself you look at like the first video that blew up for me that ended up like bringing the

1:00:41channel you know getting all the other videos to blow up it was my second video um the whole the rise effect Guru video right that was recorded on an iPhone 8 plus with I think it was like a Blue Yeti Nano microphone right which was I think like 90 pounds that was the only thing I spent money on um for that video the editing wasn't that crazy not really if you compare it to any of you know the stuff that I do now the editing is nowhere near the same but it was more the story and the idea of it that was really well executed and that video sits

1:01:07at like four million views and it's like iPhone 8 plus recorded the backdrop is like not that great it doesn't look that nice like arguably the only thing I would say is like audio right just make sure you have like a decent audio that's easy to listen to Because that's the one thing people can put up with like a bad camera um but they can't put up with bad audio that's the only thing I put in like audio try and have that sorted out to some degree but everything else don't be too like perfectionist about it like focus on just the Simplicity of like what actually matters it's is this like

1:01:33an enjoyable thing to watch and then what does that actually mean it's like is there a story here is there something that's actually interesting or engaging to like sink my teeth into and yeah and and you can end up with something that actually does re-order you wouldn't expect it to but it's because you focused on like some of the Simplicity or just the core elements of what makes something good rather than going like insane on the production you know don't try and do what I've done now um because it's it's just it's yeah it's not like a small way of going about things I like that I mean my my

1:01:59animation Channel when you look at it like the animations look like a five-year-old Drew something and then just like right right put it on the video um because it is it is extremely simple but it conveys the idea well enough I see uh and it's it's funny when I look at the video I think that animation took me like half an hour to make but it's like four seconds of the video and it doesn't really look that good yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah this is yes it's a really classic thing of like spending like hours a whole day on like what's effectively going to be like five

1:02:29seconds worth of of uh of just animation or video it's true and also even like sometimes the Simplicity lets you kind of find the theme or the style or the sort of charming in your work I think internet historian is a good channel of like someone who he made like his whole theme and style like bad editing even though it technically isn't like if you look at the videos and you understand like a bit about like animating it's actually probably a bit of work that it takes to do it um but if you look at like even his older videos the whole idea of it was it was meant to be kind

1:02:57of really dumb and like looking like amateurish look to the videos where you like see stock images with the literal like watermark on them and everything like but that's like part of the charm and sometimes you can find like that core of what makes your your videos your I think Jimmy like Mr Beast he deliberately uses like lower quality cameras to make them look more real even though he's got like hundreds and hundreds of them I'm pretty sure he said that yeah not massively like 4K AK cameras he still uses like regular yeah it's just later for all the angles I I really wouldn't be surprised

1:03:32yeah because yeah yeah sort of following a line it's like if you if you go down to the core of what you're trying to do that's where you can find like the essence of what your work is because all of the animation stuff that I do it looks cool it's great but it's not like that's sort of the nice packaging around it and style it but like actually at the core of it what I'm trying to do is like tell a good story that gets you invested in XYZ um and that I think I only understood that that's kind of the core of it is through just being very simple during my

1:03:59initial videos