State of the Union, ish

It's probably about time I collected my thoughts on The YouTube Channel And That.

Or possibly not, because those thoughts are largely:

Aaaaaarrrgh!
(Aaaargh!)
Aaargh?

I'm reaching this point where the increments in technical production quality are becoming less stark from video to video, and so I'm starting to see on a level playing field what works and what doesn't.

Which is that the beautifully crafted mini-epics which take weeks to plan, record and edit are being absolutely crushed by the videos where I'm going, "bum, I haven't put anything out for a month and everything in progress is in editing hell, what stupid nonsense can I put together that basically requires one afternoon to play a game and yammer about it a bit".

I know what's going on, but I'm not sure if I want to admit to myself what's going on.

When I'm less worried about making one of those lasting storefront videos, the ones I expect to be still attracting people to the channel a year from now, I allow more of my personality in. The endlessly distracted person who loves absurdism, wasting time on utterly irrelevant historical information and making references to obscure 1960s psychedelia about three people in the known universe will get. That one.

This is hard to accept as a thing which makes those videos work, because my entire living memory is of being told to keep this personality hidden and try to be Not Weird. The idea that there was always an alternative, to lean into it and find a way to present it in an entertaining fashion... that's sort of scary.

On top of that, I feel the guilt of Not Doing What I Have Done. My regular criticism of myself is that the videos come across as too preachy, too info-dumpy and a little bit like the output of someone who wants to beat education into people more than he wants to entertain them. But I also fear moving too far from that model will upset people who were there for specifically that, even though I know this is a stupid fear and almost all the positive feedback has centred around the combination of dry wit and cultural references while around 80% knowing what I'm talking about.

Like I said, aaaaaargh.

Some of this has been 2024 being a tricky year for videos; I've only put out two so far the entire year, and that high/low production approach I wanted has been made difficult by my recording area ending up full of odds and ends due to ongoing house refurbishments which seem to be in a perpetual cycle of picking up an additional four-week delay the day before they're due to finally get started.

That said, in trying to get the Sherlock video done without risking a phone being snatched out of my hand on a busy London street, I have discovered that I love working with the DJI Pocket camera. Stupidly I discovered this after I'd written a script which constrained me to a few locations with a specific thing to say in each, but it feels like there's something here which can shake up the, "I do a bunch of fun and spontaneous things while researching, then I put them in a script, and then it feels a bit forced so I take it back out again" problem I'm having.

Something I can keep on my desk while I'm doing research or a pre-video playthrough of a game I haven't touched in two decades, with the aim of picking it up and recording there and then rather than trying to remember a particular tone of voice, cadence or particular gameplay moment when I read a script several days later.

I don't know if any of this will be a good idea, or if what I'm writing here is the starting point for a concerningly quiet period from which I emerge months later going, "well, absolutely none of that worked, so anyway we're back to refining the model of researching, scripting, recording a script and then trying to make a shot list which doesn't have 120 different pieces of B-roll".

But, y'know, that's the point of these posts. Working through my thoughts and the channel's growth trying to figure out what worked, what didn't, and what's worth trying next.