Lessons being a YouTuber taught me. Pt. 1

to say the learning curve has been steep, is an understatement. Whilst i never thought it would just be a case or turning up and making videos and boom, i would be sucessful, i didnt honestly take into account the amount of work that would go into making, editing and producing videos.

'"I'm making models anyway, i may as well film myself doing it, theres no difference, right?" - HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA breathes HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! no...

A kit which takes, for example, 4 hours to build from start to finish, will take double that when filming. Its ok filming it in one take, but that then will take forever to upload, it will take forever to edit and chances are, you wont get enough variety of shots to keep people interested, so its more practical to film in short bursts, which are easier to upload, edit, and then perhaps change the angle of the camera to add little more interest.

All these added considerations, literally sap the fun out of building, and airbrushing and all the other assorted tasks necessary to a good build.

In terms of filming and editing, im relatively lucky to have a son who is a masters degree film graduate to ask for advice/critique/help whenever any problems present itself with that side of things, so most of those problems are relatively easy to solve, but more often than not, i find him applying the same rule of thumb to me as i did to him as a child, the 'you need to figure it out for yourself' school of thought. Yeah, so that backfired spectacularly...

Some of the most valuable (technical) lessons i have learned (mostly the hard way) in the first 4 months are this:

1.) It doesnt matter how good your model making is, if your filming and editing is bad, its all over.
2.) It doesnt matter how bad your model making is, if your filming and editing is good, people will still watch.
3.) It doesnt matter how good the above two are, if your lighting is awful, people wont care.
4.) Have a dedicated filming desk, not your work bench. draws, paints pots etc in the background look scruffy.
5.) Phones with 4K ability are most of the time much better than spending a lot of money on a camera.

Dusan Lekic (Scale model aircraft), is an amazing example of the above points.

Dont get me wrong, there are some amazing video and builds on YT done by poeple with just a camera and a model kit, who have a great following and a high viewcount, and great production values do not equate to great views, there are a lot of other things to take into consideration with this, which i will go into in the next part, whenever it is i get the time between filming and editing, live streaming and occasionally getting the time to make a model!