I’ll be completely honest, I couldn’t be bothered to shoot the vlog today. I’m slightly under the weather (you know, in the ‘man’ sense of the word where we can’t cope with even the slightest bit of ill health) and there’s some vet-related stuff going on which I won’t go into, but which is making me feel a bit... bleurgh.
However, I decided to brush myself off, pick up my little action cam, and once again tell the story of my day. I’m glad I did.
The reason is simple: I’m loving this vlog malarky, and each episode is sort of a mini-therapy session. Thankfully, people seem to enjoy watching it, too. And, let’s be honest, this isn’t exactly working down the coal mines, is it?
We’ve shot, edited, and published 19 vlogs so far this year, and have a real rhythm going with the process. It’s a two-man job; I wander around and film stuff and Niall edits it all together. Nothing (to my knowledge - Niall might tell you differently) is left on the cutting room floor, either; the footage is just laid out in a timeline in order of shooting, with the fat trimmed from either end.
As video production goes, it’s about as simple as it gets.
The numbers we’re commanding aren’t huge at all, but they’re incredibly encouraging. Equally, when it comes to view counts, it’s important to visualise that many people in a room. For instance, 432 people have watched the last vlog, at the time of writing.
Four-hundred-and-thirty-two people. Imagine a room with that many people in it watching you throw stuff into the boot of your car. It is mind-boggling.
We’re receiving some lovely comments, too. People enjoy the no-frills, atmospheric nature of these vlogs (I intentionally capture as much of the world surrounding me as possible, whether I’m walking through London, tapping away on the keyboard, or being driven through the streets of Shenzhen). It calms people, gives them an insight into what happens behind the scenes, and, hopefully, provides inspiration for their content creation journey.
I watch other content creators who make videos like this and I find them just as fascinating. It’s the sort of stuff I watch after a long day, and it genuinely chills me out, too. It’s the rawness of it, the complete lack of any kind of performance, and the beautifully mundane reality of people’s lives. We are all, after all, pretty boring - but that’s what’s so interesting.
I’ve learned a lot since starting the vlog. The key thing is that one shouldn’t agonise too much over production values on YouTube unless the content demands it. That doesn’t mean I’m going to resort to filming Mark Ellis Reviews videos on an action cam, but it does mean that I can be a little less obsessed with making them perfect. The latter isn’t what viewers want - they just want to be entertained, and if that can be achieved by just being yourself and avoiding too much scripted, polished stuff, then I’m all for it.
I apologise quite a lot in the vlog. Sorry, that bit was boring. Oops, you probably didn’t care about that. Oh, why did I bother showing you that? Who cares? Etcetera.
As it turns out, quite a lot of people care. So, if you’re one of those people and you’ve been consistently watching me waffle on about my day and showing you how I get from Point A to Point B, thank you - we have no intention of stopping. The vlog is here to stay.
Oh, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, just click here!