The Good Advice You Just Didn't Take

I get a lot of questions on Quora about YouTube, namely the annoying ones about how to get more subscribers (and/or how much money will I make off this very small subscriber statistic). As much as I'm annoyed by these questions, I think they're still valid as it's often easy to overlook what exactly attracts you to a YouTube channel in the first place. One of the best litmus tests I ever heard came from the now-infamous Nostalgia Critic, Doug Walker, "What are YOU looking for?" This advice is hardly exclusive to the Shouting and Remembering Guy, but it's the most direct take on it and gives the best jumping off point for moving forward with your own YouTube endeavors. While many of these Quora questions are just thinly-disguised spam, every now and again someone is looking for legitimate feedback on why their fledgling channel is struggling to leave the nest. I took one of these on at great, unapologetic length, as is often my way on these things. In my defense, however harsh, blunt, tactless, condescending, or even outright mean you think I come across as, the entertainment consuming audience as a whole is far, far worse. Think about it, they don't have to give you feedback. They can give you the silent treatment and walk out the door at any time to leave you wondering what you did wrong. Now tell me who's harsh and mean and all that jazz. I'm not asking for a parade or a medal, only that you trust the purity of my intentions when I tell someone bad at what they do that they're bad at what they do. 

The question in... well, question, read:

Why is my YouTube video getting low views and very low subscribers? What am I doing wrong?

This was followed by a link to a YouTube channel with maybe about 30 or so subscribers and a handful of views and dis/likes on some videos. What follows is my answer, near as makes no difference to verbatim: 

Shortest, simplest answer: because whenever you’re not being boring, you’re being annoying.

Still reading? Good, that means you’re either a glutton for punishment or legitimately willing to gracefully accept criticism. Either way, we’ll get into what I mean by annoying and boring. I’ll be focusing on your Ghost Rider/Mad Titan video primarily; a little bit goes a long way.

Visuals. There’s nothing wrong with using a slide program to make your videos. It’s actually very efficient… if you know how to do it right. There is a problem with using a slide program to make your videos when you do it poorly. Firstly and most obviously, don’t show us that it’s a slideshow. Trim the part of the video that shows the slide program before you go full screen.

I don’t show my iMovie timeline at the start of every video, and even the most budget-conscious smartphone can trim the starts and ends of video clips (so we don’t have to see you reach to and from the phone to start and stop recording). You want your videos to look like polished, finished products, not tech demos for “tech” that gives cave paintings a run for their money in terms of antiquity and obsolescence in the telecommunications field. Second, let’s talk aesthetics:

What am I looking at, highlighter on typing paper? Why don’t you just use Comic Sans and have done with it? I mean, you’re already talking about comic books, why hold back now? A plain white background? Watch almost any movie ever and tell me if the end credits are black text on a white background or white text on a black background. The eye, being lazy, is drawn to white space, so by framing your comic panels with nothing but bright white space, you’re actually distracting from what you want to be the focus. White absorbs colors, and I can promise you your panels will look more colorful and striking against black (why do you think some sites and devices have “night modes”?).

The sound. Good grief, the sound. Did you build your microphone yourself in the dark, with your eyes closed, wearing oven mitts, and with little to no understanding of how a microphone works? How many tin cans went into its construction? Are you using wet strings instead of wires? Now, before you go telling me about what you can or can’t afford, how you’re just a poor boy from a poor family and that I should spare you your life from this monstrosity known as open market capitalism, take a moment to look at the walls of your room, and then look in your closet.

My point is unless your microphone is welded onto your 1998 Compaq Presario’s CRT monitor, you need to take that recording operation into your closet and use the clothes on hangers as baffles.

Baffled? Compare the hanging clothes to "professional-grade" sound dampening acoustic foam. See the similarities? 

Closet too small and/or packed with crap? Have only the clothes on your back to be baffles? Two words: Blanket fort. I’m not even joking. You’d be surprised how well towels work for sound dampening. 

Now comes the hardest part to change: you. I can talk your ear off about acoustics and mixing, blind you with details on lighting and editing, and even direct you through scripting and writing, but I can’t make you a more charismatic, engaging, and insightful person. You’ve got to do that on your own. Let’s start with delivery: I counted about a dozen “ums” and “uhs” in a span of about 30 seconds in your video, your video that you yourself wrote on a subject you yourself decided to elaborate on.

IT’S YOUR SCRIPT! IT’S YOUR WORDS! IT’S YOUR SUBJECT OF CHOICE! WHY DO YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO SAY WHEN YOU’VE ALREADY WRITTEN IT, REVISED IT, REREAD IT, REWROTE IT, AND ALL OTHER MANNER OF REVIEWED IT? IT’S WRITE IN FRONT OF YOU… RIGHT… right in front of you.

Your script is right in front of you, isn’t it? Better question, you did write a script, didn’t you? Bear in mind, by script, I’m talking about something as minimal as bullet points, an itemized list of talking points to help keep you on track and from going off on unnecessary tangents. Hell, draw a picture if it helps you.

See how I can use black text on a plain white background if there’s more to the composition than black text on a plain white background?

I said I would only talk about your Ghost Rider vs. Thanos video, but I checked your “iPhone screen recording” that was your earlier Thanos video, and you’ve got many of the same problems with opening that video as you do with Ghost Rider:

“okayimuhmakingthisvideonowpleasermemebertolikesharesubscribecommentumtoyourumfamilyumanduhfriendspleasewatchmyvideos…”

If you’re in that much of a hurry to get through your own videos, what’s to stop someone from taking it a step further and not watching them at all? If you’re just going to read some Wiki pages while fumbling through some screenshots, why should anyone stick around for that instead of looking up the information themselves? If the presentation is boring, the quality of the content doesn’t matter.

If you care more about your metrics than your content, you’re doing it wrong.

That's the end of the answer proper. It was followed up by a comment from the aspiring YouTuber thanking me for the feedback and providing me a link to a new video (on a new channel of his) to ask if this improved on the previous videos. 

The sound was even worse. (turn your volume down before clicking the link). 

I asked, along with why a new channel would be necessary, if he was being annoying and irritating on purpose. The comment has since been deleted. 

I can't help you if you're going to make the same mistakes over and over again. 

Kion Mi Faras?

I had an idea for a Twitter project a few days ago, going off what I'd written about previously about people publishing fiction as tweets. It's almost done as far as the initial phase goes: the plot is finalized and there's really only one sentence (tweet) keeping the text from being finalized. I'd then thought to have a cover image, basically a tweet with an illustration. I'd pondered the idea of mixing images with the text, but it seemed to throw off the structure, hence downsizing it to a cover. This is where things started going a bit sour. 

This has not been a great few months for me, going back to the early weeks of September. It hasn't been any one particular thing, or even a culmination of small moments of unpleasantness gathering up. At least, it doesn't seem like either of those. It's something more deep-seated, less the goings-on around me and more how I find myself reacting to it. It's hard to follow, I admit (and you're only reading about it). The only way I can really describe it is that it's like how I felt in those months after I graduated college. I'd come home from work, eat dinner, watch some videos or play some games, do a little housework, maybe call some people, and then I'd get in my car and go to the library near where I lived to check my messages and do some browsing. It wasn't that I couldn't afford internet at home; it was something more Calvinistic, making it a small hassle I had to get out of the house for. Anyway, I'd get done updating a journal or answering e-mails or browsing, get my jacket on, and go back to my car. 
What would happen then is that I would be sitting there, in my car, on a quiet street at night, keys still in my pocket, and feeling like I was going to break down sobbing any minute. It was all there, the lump in the back of the throat, the tears welling up in the eyes, the icky feeling in the pit of the stomach, every breath feeling like it was going to be the one to let out the first whimper, and this colossal feeling of sadness. 
It never really went all the way, and that was always the part I found most frustrating. It was like these feelings were rising to the surface, and all I had to do was let them out, give them the floor to say what they wanted to say. I didn't want to avoid it or suppress it or avert it. On the contrary, I wanted to have a good cry. It sounds masochistic, but I wanted to have that moment of dejection. I wanted to let myself feel like a total failure and hit that rockiest of rock bottoms because then at least I could have somewhere to go. I'd take those moments to feel that way, so I could pick myself up and say, "Okay, had that moment. Let's carry on." Sure, it may come back, but I'll take visits over a stay, so to speak. 
I could have gone on listing the events that may have been causing those feelings to build, but at the time and even looking back, there's this kind of disconnect in the causality. 
Another, more obvious manifestation of these fits of, let's just say it, depression would happen when I would draw in one of my sketchbooks. Every so many pages, I'd find myself writing this almost manic, self-defeating note, practically screaming, "Why do I bother?" and, "I'm never getting anywhere with this!" and especially, "I'm not improving." Like I said, though, I'd have that moment, and then carry on. I'd still draw, I'd still work on art projects, that was never going to change. 

Now, though, I think it's starting to. I'm still producing content, but anything beyond scribbles or rough notes not only feels arduous and daunting, but actually oppressive, even painful. It feels like a bad idea, and I should never think that. 

Going back to the Twitter story project, after dismissing the alternating image posts and considering a cover prefacing the narrative, I got an idea to make an actual book of it. The story would still go live as these tweet posts (which only number five), but then they would be compiled into a PDF with each one getting its own page and serving as a caption to an illustration. The Twitter posts would be the free version while the illustrated (possibly expanded) edition would be sold on Lulu. I'd effectively eat my cake and have it too, still do this fun project for kicks and have it be part of something bigger and more serious. 

Why the Hell should I do any of that? 

Why am I creating so much work for myself that I don't even feel I can do? What will I have at the end of the day? Will it be worth the time and effort? Can I do this at all? Should I even be talking about this? All I'm doing is building it up at worst and wasting my time at best. Time doing what? I have no clue, and that's the problem all over again. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know why I'm bothering. I don't know why I'm trying. I don't know what any of this is going to mean. Is this genuinely being productive? Am I pushing myself too hard to take my work to the next level? Am I not doing enough to push myself? How do I bounce back from this? 

What am I doing? 

....

Good night, and good luck. 

A "little" PERSPECTIVE

Because sometimes blaming the victim is right on the money.

KNOWS BOTH PEACE AND PAIN

Meant as an establishing shot for the previous comic, this ended up getting not only its own piece, but a second panel. In fact, these were going to be two separate images, but they really work best as a graphic match. Very fun to make, lots of micro-managing different layers and transparencies. Got into a groove and put the whole thing together in a day, with about a previous day of off-and-on sketching ideas and concepts, most of which didn't work out.

A Twofer from DeviantART

ROKK by *NeuronPlectrum on deviantART
100 LINES by *NeuronPlectrum on deviantART

Two Forests

Schwarzwald by *NeuronPlectrum on deviantART
VIVAIO by *NeuronPlectrum on deviantART

Well, THAT happened... (Elektra: The Hand & The Devil)

I was a rather avid comic reader in the early 1990s, an era now known in comic book enthusiast circles as "The Dark Ages," a time when exaggerated anatomy, darker stories, morally ambiguous new heroes, and unwelcome overhauls to heroes of yore were the norm. In short, I wasn't seeing the medium at its best. As such, from 1995 onward, my two longboxes of polybagged publications saw no new additions and about as much time outside of my closet. In fact, it wasn't until at least the year 2006, when the special features on the DVD for the Daredevil movie introduced me to David Mack, who would become my favorite comic artist. Also, I rather liked the Daredevil movie (enough to buy up anything with Mack's name on it, from Parts of a Hole through Echo: Vision Quest). I can't say the same for Elektra, and it seemed neither could aspiring director Chris Notarile; In searching for information on Frank Miller's Xerxes, a purported prequel to 300, I came across this short film, presented in full on IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/rg/VIDEO_PLAY/LINK//video/wab/vi2180842521/

Chris Notarile, on his own time, with his own money, created (almost singlehandedly) this 11-minute short film dramatizing the death, past, and resurrection of Frank Miller's red-clad assassin.

Rather than do a full, scene-by-scene breakdown (which short films tend to lend themselves to) I want to go into detail on what is quite possibly the weakest scene in the film, which is saying quite a bit given that the film is only 11 minutes in length. After Elektra is killed by Bullseye, there is a flashback to Matt Murdock's days at Columbia University, where he meets the lovely Elektra Natchios and becomes entranced by her. After trying to get her attention by dropping some of his books near her as he walks past, Matt realizes that he's not going to have a chance unless he does something about Elektra's omnipresent bodyguard. He takes out a multi-colored hackey-sack (which, it should be pointed out, is not made of rubbery materials and is therefore not bouncy in any way) which he then ricochets off two railings before knocking the bodyguard unconscious. What follows the shot of him putting this plan into motion by hurtling the ball off-screen are three long and drawn-out shots that no small budget and no brief filming schedule can excuse. The first shot is the first ricochet, the hackey-sack bouncing off a railing. Of course, not being a rubber ball at all, it doesn't so much "bounce" off the railing as much as it hits it and then falls to the ground. The exact same thing happens in the next shot, which is meant to be the ball bouncing off another railing, but since the ball didn't bounce off the first railing (instead, falling to the ground) the subconscious mental connection that's supposed to form ultimately fails to do so and causes a jarring break in the immersion. At first, I thought he just threw a second ball, as if working on his aim before launching a third ball at the security guard. is that however poorly constructed and edited the previous two shots were, they don't hold a candle to the debacle that is the shot of the supposedly-ricocheting hackey-sack "soaring" in front of Matt's face, depicted by the camera slowly panning left to right, with the hackey-sack resting at the bottom of the frame. The last shot is the sack hitting the security guard on the back of the head, thankfully bringing the sequence to its much-delayed conclusion.

It may not seem fair to say an entire film, however short, is brought down by a singularly weak scene, and that's not the case. This is overall a very bad short film, with the rent-a-cop knockdown just one of several examples of poor editing, mismanaged production values, and a total lacking of clarity of vision by its director.

If I had to say something nice about the movie, I could only point to a single frame, a shot of Daredevil crouched upon a ledge surveying the streets below. It's a brilliant image, but it's not cinematic in any way. It's certainly a far cry from the shot of Batman leering down on an alleyway in Sandy Collora's much-acclaimed fan film Batman: Dead End. Granted, that director's demo reel had a bigger budget, and Mr. Collora had far more experience in filmmaking than Mr. Notarile, but both directors take a more down-to-earth approach and give iconic heroes costumes that don't look like they came out of Stan Winston's studio yet rise above the look of cheap Halloween costumes.

The costumes look rushed and try way too hard to resemble their print-media predecessors. To top it off, Bullseye's costume is this ludicrous compromise between his original blue bodysuit and the trenchcoat-over-tanktop ensemble from the movie. It just begs the question: why pattern 2 of the 3 total costumes after the comics, but pull back on the third? The only upshot to these costumes is that they probably make it much easier for the actors to move around in during the fight scenes.

The fight choreography was horrendous and the camera seemed to wrestle with the dilemma of either zooming in tighter and risk looking like it's trying to disguise the actors' relative inexperience or keeping the shot wide and expose all the pauses and breaks that out the fight as staged. Instead, the camera stays at this odd middle distance that cuts off heads and legs and tries to center square on people's backs.

This is where I field defenses of not what film is so much as what it is trying to be:

"It's not trying to be Citizen Kane."
"They're just students."
"They had no money and barely enough time."
"No one told them to do this."
"It's a labor of love."

True, but despite these shortcomings this film can't even rise to the level of mediocrity.

Yeah, I should probably read fully the interview where Chris Notarile details the 40USD budget (spent on "materials, metrocards, and hot chocolate") so I can potentially get a better appreciation for what this film is and what it's trying to do, but this ignores something fundamental about filmmaking and perhaps about art in general: The end result must stand on its own.

I may not be an executive for a major studio, and my own skills as a director may be questionable at best, but I don't think I have to be in order to make a sound prediction for Mr. Notarile. Much like his Maniac Cop short (which I haven't seen, but don't feel all that enthusiastic about remedying), he's exhibiting his skills to try and land himself a major directing gig. If I were looking through demo reels, trying to handpick a director to helm my latest project, this wouldn't even make it into a "maybe" pile.

I'm not going to say "I could make a better film" because it's a bit of a faux pas for directors (aspiring or otherwise) to bash each other's work. That said, I do feel like I should re-enact the hackey-sack scene and present the video as a sort of critique-in-motion. Maybe that's mean, but I just can't overlook the shortcomings of this piece, low budget or not. The bar on fan films was raised years ago, long before Batman: Dead End, and Elektra: The Hand & The Devil misses it by a mile.

A Skinned Mole's Elaborate Remains

I learned what an Exquisite Corpse is in one of my video art classes. Apparently, it's a very well-known type of collaborative art project. However, when I put "exquisite corpse" in a search on DeviantART, I think I only got one result that was an actual Exquisite Corpse, and it wasn't even finished, only the start. That's very disappointing.

Something I said about collage once (from DevART)

tinkwig
A recent discovery. It's no secret that one of my favorite artists is David Mack (creator of Echo and Kabuki) in no small part for his psychedelic collage work. I actually have very mixed feelings about collage; I won't vocalize my negative sentiments about it, suffice it to say I find it really difficult to find compelling and interesting works in the style. Luckily, my search led me to his page, making the journey there all the more worthwhile. He is a poet of both prose and the mental photography that is collage. His works are snapshots into the depths of the mind, the part that synthesizes and collates and catalogs all the disparate images we absorb that eventually generates the abstractions that become inspiration and genius. It's like watching a chef take handfuls of different and inconsequential ingredients and turn them into a five-star dish that at once disguises its components and embraces them. Akira Kurosawa once said that “man is a genius when he is dreaming.” Well, that's completely true, and this guy's got the "photos" to prove it.

NAZCA (Copyleft Version)

I'll be making a sort of "behind the scenes" video explaining the dilemma presented by the Creative Commons license attached to the Nine Inch Nails song from their recent Ghosts album that was used in the first version of this video. It'll also be a sort of general overview as to the nature of the Creative Commons and how it relates to copyleft and traditional copyright.

Spiritually, I do prefer the NIN version, but this edition is more in line with the original goal of the project.

Hmmm...

Okay, so I've had an idea shot down by technical logistics, and I'm feeling let down by it. 

Anyway, the idea was to post little multimedia artworks via MMS to various weblogs, including Evernote. The idea was that the MMS would consist of a photo or illustration (maybe even a video), a snippet of text, and possibly an accompanying sound effect or musical piece. It would basically be a sort of piecemeal, episodic approach to making short films, one segment or shot at a time. 

Sadly, this was not to be, at least not in the way it was planned. For starters, when I sent a short video I shot to Evernote as an MMS directed to my upload e-mail, not only did the video not play, but the whole entry had a huge T-Mobile banner at the bottom of it, kindly (if loudly) reminding the reader that this message was sent by way of a T-Mobile handset. This probably wouldn't have bothered me so much if the video played, or at least if T-Mobile had slightly more fashionable colors than white and pink. It may have been passable on Evernote, but on Blogger, it would stand out like a sore thumb against my minimalist aesthetic sensibility. What's wrong with white text on a black background? It's far easier on the eyes than black on white. I'll admit I do like the earth-tone backgrounds a lot of people seem to be choosing for backgrounds, it gives the impression of parchment or papyrus, a nice homey and handcrafted feel. 

So, anyway, with Evernote a failure, I tried again, this time with an image and posting it to Blogger. It was a public domain image, an Arthur Rackham illustration for Wagner's Ring Cycle (God, I love Valkyries). The only thing that showed up this time was the snippet of text below the image, even the ugly T-Mobile banner wouldn't load. It all sort of makes me think people have missed the point of Multimedia Messaging Services. They'll send to other phones and e-mail accounts just fine, but somehow posting it to a web page creates a whole new set of problems no one has anticipated. 

What's really funny is that earlier today, I was helping a friend upload some pictures she'd taken with her camera-phone to her Flickr account. She's an Alltell customer, and not only did Alltell post each picture she sent twice, but it also included a third image consisting of the Alltell logo as a separate image. So, she sent three images, and got nine photos posted, three of which are just the same logo. Welcome to the internet, folks, where crap rolls downhill. Almost makes me wish Ragnarok would get here soon....