March 4, 2024 • 55 mins
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Can you be authentic and concise at the same time? Is it possible to share your personality while also staying on topic? This week's episode dives into the how's, why's, and huh?'s of scripting vs. improvising content on YouTube.
🎙This week's gear:
•The "Mystery Mic" was running through the Rodecaster Pro II with on the condenser preset.
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S12E02 | Series Episode 166
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Podcast Artwork by Kevin Ramirez
Original theme music written by Patrick Boberg and performed by Mike Alvarez
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Hello and welcome.
My name is Tom.
This is the Enthusiasm Project,season 2, episode no.
Season 12, episode 2.
I've been doing this for a while.
I swear I know what number itis and today you know what that
recovery.
There was a little bit ofimprovisation on my part,
because today we're going to betalking all about the art of
scripting versus improv'ing whenit comes to YouTube content,
(00:56):
and I'm excited to talk aboutthis because this is a topic
that I started putting togetherseveral weeks ago.
But then something happenedjust in the past week that made
it even more relevant and mademe even a little bit more
excited to talk to you about itand to share it with you.
So that's what we're going totalk about today and can't wait
to get into that.
But before we get into that,I'm going to do a little bit of
(01:18):
a gear rundown, because I've gota little bit of a treat for you
today.
I'm using the Roadcaster Pro 2.
I'm on the generic condensersetting, so nothing crazy there.
But the microphone I'm usingtoday is a mystery mic.
I can't tell you what thismicrophone is because it's
(01:39):
secret and I really am enjoyingit and the reason I wanted to
use this and sort of do thatunfair tease of not being able
to share what it is is becausethere are some things.
One I like this microphone andwhen you find out what it is
you'll understand why I likethis microphone.
(01:59):
It makes a lot of sense that Iwould like it.
But there's some cool thingshappening here.
So right now I'm pretty close tothe microphone.
I'm sitting in my chair, butI'm going to step back here.
I'm walking.
You can hear a lot of room toneright.
Right now the quality doesn'tsound great because of the room
tone and the reverb and stuff.
But if you notice, now I'mwalking closer to the microphone
(02:21):
.
So I went from a couple ofinches to about six feet away
and both in the roadcaster andin editing afterwards I have not
touched the gain levels.
So think about that again.
I'm not touching any levels,right.
I just I'm a couple of inchesfrom the microphone.
I'm backing up, backing up.
You can hear that reverb andthat room tone.
(02:42):
You wouldn't want the wholepodcast to sound this way.
But in terms of gain and volumeand signal level, nothing has
changed.
The microphone is keeping thingsperfectly even and so that's
not to say that this microphoneis supposed to be like an up
close broadcast microphone andthen a boom microphone.
That would be.
(03:03):
That's just clearly not whatit's for, because it doesn't
sound great when you're superfar away.
But where it really comes inhandy is a situation like this
Right now I'm a couple inchesaway from the microphone.
Now I'm about a foot away fromthe microphone.
Now I'm kind of over on theside of the microphone, kind of
over on the other side of themicrophone.
What that means is, even with atypical cardioid pickup pattern,
(03:25):
the microphone can zero in onmy voice and sort of keep the
level and the sound quality,even I'm moving all around.
I know we're not doing videoversion of the podcast, but if
you saw the video version youwould see that I'm not sitting
still at all.
I'm all over the place, I'mpointing my mouth in different
directions and the microphone isdoing a pretty decent job of
(03:46):
keeping that sound, the level,everything very, very consistent
.
And that, I think, is reallyreally cool, because if you're
somebody who just doesn't wantto have to focus on your mic
placement and positioning, it'skind of nice because you can be
facing different directions, youcan be moving around, get
(04:06):
closer, further away from themicrophone and your audio is not
going to jump all over theplace, your sound's not going to
be inconsistent and if you'resomebody who works with clients
or guests other people who arenot used to being behind
microphones you don't have togive them that tutorial.
I don't know if you've ever hadto do this I definitely have in
the past where you have toexplain to people here's a
(04:27):
microphone, be this close to it,position it this angle towards
your mouth, and then inevitablypeople will forget and they
start leaning back in theirchair and talking and getting
too close and they're kind ofall over the place and you have
to go back and edit audio thathas highs and lows and all that
kind of stuff.
This is a great microphone forsomebody who is new to
(04:48):
microphones and sort ofunfamiliar with that.
You can kind of just be like,hey, just talk around the
microphone and it's going topick things up, but somehow I
don't have two of these to showyou the comparison but somehow
it does have that regularcardioid pickup pattern and it
knows there are some coolsensors on the front of the
microphone so it actually knowsthat I'm the one who's talking
and so it doesn't mean that it'sjust an omnidirectional
(05:11):
microphone picking up all thesound in the room, and if I had
someone next to me it would belike bleeding all over the place
.
I don't really know how it doesit, it's all magic.
And the kicker, which you mayhave kind of caught onto, is
these sound like things thatwould be, you know, usb features
or software features.
This is an XLR only microphone.
It's an XLR condensermicrophone and somehow it can do
(05:34):
all that and that is.
I've never seen anything likethat before and it's pretty cool
and I'm excited to talk moreabout it when it's released.
But I've been playing with thisover the past couple of days,
really enjoying it, and I cannotwait until I can share more
about it because I think a lotof people are really going to
(05:55):
enjoy this microphone a lot whenit's released.
So, using a mystery mic thisweek into the RODECaster Pro 2
and that is our gear rundown, itmakes my life easy because I
can just sort of sit and becomfy and even if I drift a
little bit away from themicrophone or get close to the
microphone, it's not going tomess up the audio quality.
So hooray for more margin forerror.
(06:18):
I guess you could call it.
Let's dive in to what we'retalking about today the art of
scripting versus improvisation.
So the reason I initiallythought about this topic was
because I've talked about theElgato prompter a lot lately.
If you've been watching, I madelike three or four videos about
it.
I've talked on multiplepodcasts about it.
It's like one of my favoritethings.
(06:39):
I would absolutely put it upthere with something like the
ATEM Mini in terms of arevolutionary tool for my
workflow.
The ATEM is a good examplebecause what the ATEM did take
multi-input video switching andmake it relatively simple.
Atems can get very complex, butthe basics of you got these
(07:02):
four inputs and you just havebig buttons to switch between
them the ATEM made it relativelysimple and crazy affordable.
I mean the ATEMs are insanebecause the base model ATEM now
the ATEM Mini Pro it's like $300.
Prior to that, the cheapestfour-input HDMI hardware
(07:23):
switcher was like $6,000 or$4,000.
I forget I had the cheapestRoland one I could find at the
school that I taught at.
I forget the exact model, Ibelieve it was $6,000.
And then beyond that you'regoing into five, sometimes even
six figure prices formulti-input video switching and
(07:44):
the ATEM took a lot of thosecapabilities, a lot of those
features, and made it $300.
It was insane.
The Elgato Promptor kind of doesthe same thing.
There have been inexpensiveprompters it's $280.
There are phone-based,tablet-based prompters that are
like $100, $150.
But they're clunky, they'refrustrating.
(08:05):
And then of course, there'sother prompters with built-in
monitors.
As far as I can tell, currentlythe least expensive prompters
that have a built-in display areabout $1,000 and they only go
up from there.
And the problem is if thoseeven have prompter software of
any kind, it's usually reallybad and the Elgato Prompter is
$280, built-in display comeswith software.
(08:28):
Yes, the software needs someupdates, but they're already
putting out beta updates andbeta version.
The software, even with itsissues, is the best prompting
software I've ever used, whichkind of tells you how low the
bar is for prompter software butis only going to get better
from there and I'm super excitedabout that.
(08:50):
So the Elgato Prompter is athing I've been talking about a
lot, but what that's done is.
It sort of brought up theconversation and a lot of
comments and even some directmessages and emails and stuff
about using scripts and scriptsversus outlines and trying to be
authentic when you're talkingand can you be authentic with
the script and it's beeninteresting to see not only
(09:10):
different people's opinionsabout this, but how different
people approach it, because it'sone of those things, like many
things in the world of contentcreation, where there is no
right or wrong answer, so muchof it just comes down to you
know it's like should you have aschedule on our YouTube channel
?
For someone like me, yes, aschedule and planned out videos
really makes things manageable.
For other people, it could be anightmare to do that and not
(09:34):
having a schedule is the way togo, so it's very important to
figure out what works best foryou.
So the thing is the topic thatcomes up a lot is sort of
authenticity, and there's aninteresting discussion about
this, because some people feellike if you're reading a script,
it's very difficult to beauthentic, and I totally
(09:57):
understand that.
Every once in a while I do someclient projects and involve
script reading and I'm not theone who wrote the script, even
if I'm able to go through andkind of like modify or change
some things.
Like they have written theirscript how it should be and I
need to read it how it is, andit's hard sometimes because it's
like my brain won't even putwords in that order, because
that's not how I speak and it'snot the way I would say things.
(10:19):
But I'm not.
You know, I'm not being hiredas a creative writer, I'm being
hired as a presenter,essentially, or you know, just
to use a voice or something, andit's tricky.
It's sometimes tricky to makethat, to make something you
would never say sound natural.
In the case of the Elgatoprompter for independent content
creators, even if you'rereading from a script, hopefully
(10:40):
you're not saying somethingthat you would never say.
The problem is it's tricky toread from a script Like it
sounds like you're reading froma script, and it can be a skill
that takes a while to build up,to learn how to read from a
script in a natural way, whichthen leads into this discussion
of outlines versus scripting.
(11:01):
Do you want a script wherethings are word for word,
exactly how they should be, ordo you want a general outline,
like right now, for this episode, this podcast episode?
I don't have a script.
I don't know if you could tell.
I know it sounded so polishedand scripted.
I have an outline, though Ihave a checklist in the Notes
app of main points.
I wanna hit, and I know thatwhen I get to the end of those
main points even if I kindawander and weave about
(11:22):
throughout when I get to the endI will have covered everything
that I wanted to cover aboutthis topic and I will feel
confident that this episode isfinished.
It's complete in the way that Iwanted it to be complete when I
was planning it out and so forme that's been a good balance is
, I use outlines a lot.
I will use direct scripts everyonce in a while if I have like
(11:44):
very specific word play where itneeds to go in a certain order
for the joke to land.
Sometimes I will like scriptthat out and then other times,
especially if it's somethingtechnical, I don't like doing
deep dive tech spec type videos,but every once in a while I
have to talk about technicalspecifications or things like
that and I don't wanna messthose up.
(12:05):
I don't wanna say megabytesinstead of gigabytes or
something you know or whateverit is.
And so having tech specs in ascript is very important and
very helpful for overall videoquality and stuff like that.
But I feel like personally itdoesn't really affect the
ability to be authentic or not.
(12:25):
And if you look at when did theElgato prompter come out?
It came out.
I got mine in October.
I guess it's not about when itcame out, it's about when you're
actually able to get it.
I got mine in October.
I have used it.
Every video on my channel fromOctober to now that you're
looking at you're lookingthrough the Elgato prompter.
Now some of those you'relooking at there's no script.
(12:47):
There's nothing on screen, it'sjust a confidence monitor where
I can see that everything'srecording and the shots in focus
.
Other times there's an outline,like literally I would just
move the notes app to theprompter, and other times there
is kind of a direct script and Ifeel like, hopefully, if my
plan has gone the way I want itto, you can't tell.
Hopefully, if you click on anyof those videos, you don't know
(13:11):
if there's a script or anoutline or nothing at all, and
that's how I want it to be.
I don't want it to be obviouseither way and I feel like
that's cool because that means,even when there's a script, it
still feels like I'm being myauthentic self.
If there's no script and I'mjust sort of rambling and going
(13:34):
off, you know, based onwhatever's in my head, it still
also feels like my authenticself, and so I think a lot of
that varies by person, and athing that this kind of touches
on is that this is a skill,these are skill sets, and I was
reading a thing on Reddit theother day.
(13:54):
There was actually a very doomand gloom article about what was
it called the pandemic ofincompetence, and I think it
might have been a little moredoom and gloom, but it was
essentially about how currentstudents in high school and
younger a lot of them sort ofhave, like this, learned
helplessness, there's a lack ofcuriosity, and I know this is
(14:15):
like ah, kids, these days itreally sounds like it, but
there's a lot of evidence ofeverything from like literally
the tracked amount of minutes onlike mindless apps, screen time
sort of thing, all the way downto, you know, enrollment in
different types of program,academic performance, reading
skills, reading comprehension.
Then, of course, there's a tonof outliers Like I can.
(14:37):
You know, fortunately, as mytime as a high school teacher, I
have tons of outliers Everytime someone says, oh, kids,
these days it's like oh, yeah,but like look at all of these
kids that I get to work withthat are like absolutely amazing
.
And, you know, through YouTubeI've been able to meet like
younger people, some of whom arenot so young anymore, who are
(14:57):
also, like, absolutely amazingand some of the smartest people
I know.
But essentially the gist of thearticle was, generally speaking
, there's sort of a lack ofcuriosity and a lack of problem
solving, critical thinking,whether students just don't have
it or were never taught it inthe first place, which is
probably what I kind of thinkthe problem is.
It's an issue and what doesthat mean?
(15:20):
As time goes on and thesepeople not only, like, enter the
workforce, which is of course,a thing people talk about, but
move beyond that, move beyondthe entry level positions and
when you need the reallyinnovative technical high level,
you know positions in society,who's going to fill those?
(15:41):
Because it seems like there's apandemic of incompetence
popping up and that's sort ofyou know, that was kind of the
gist of that article there andagain I feel like that was
leaning a little more heavilytowards doom and gloom than
probably is accurate, but I dothink it was an important point
to bring up.
But in the comments to thearticle, the top like most
(16:04):
upvoted comment with someonesaying like yeah, there can only
be so many influencers andYouTube stars which, of course,
like whenever you talk aboutthings like that, it's always
like you know, I think in moreold school times it was kids
wanted to be famous musicians,athletes or celebrities, movie
stars or whatever.
And now the modern version ofthat is being an influencer, a
(16:28):
YouTuber, something along thoselines and the fortunately and so
it's often dismissed sorry, see, this is where I should have
had a script.
It's often sort of said withthis dismissive tone of like oh
yeah, you know, kids just wannabe YouTubers or whatever.
But somebody actually repliedto that and said you know, the
(16:49):
thing that a lot of YouTubersand influencers don't highlight
and don't make apparent aretheir soft skills and the like.
I forget exactly how theyphrased it, but soft skills and
the ability to communicate, youknow, think critically, problem
solve, present themselveseffectively, manage people not
as necessarily a manager, butyour audience, your viewers,
(17:09):
dealing with brands, all ofthese soft skills that you know.
When a middle school kid justsees a streamer, a YouTuber or
whatever, those aren'tnecessarily the things they're
thinking about when they thinkabout that being something they
wanna do.
So it there is a skill andthere's so much like that that
goes into YouTube.
You know.
I know Heather and I on thecouples table have talked many
times about like I have seensome channels about things where
(17:30):
it's the info is really good,the technical production value
of the channel is amazing, butthe person is not a good
presenter and maybe they couldlearn to be, or not.
But I think sometimes peoplesort of think like because
something looks good and soundsgood, automatically the content
will be good, because somebodyhas a skill set or a knowledge
(17:52):
set, what they say is going tobe good or understandable, and
that's a lot of times absolutelynot the case.
The ability to communicateclearly, to present yourself, to
connect with an audience, tounderstand your purpose, your
tone, all of those things, thoseare skills and that's kind of
what it comes down to when we'retalking about scripting versus
improvisation.
When people say like, oh, Ican't read a script, I sound so
(18:13):
robotic.
What that says to me is youhaven't practiced reading
scripts enough.
Everybody's gonna sound roboticthe first dozen times they try
to read a script, you know.
But as you do it more and more,you sound a little more natural
.
Everybody's going to kind of,you know, go into the woods and
(18:34):
go off topic if they try to justimprovise something from
scratch.
But the more that you do it,the better you'll get at it.
Even you know.
I know I use teaching as anexample a lot, but it's a good
example because it's something Idid for a long time and it's
also something that's prettyrelatable, because pretty much
everyone has spent some time ina classroom at school, had
thoughts about teachers, andwhen I first started teaching,
(18:55):
my lesson plans were so detailedyou know, it's literally like
from 10.10 to 10.25, we would bedoing this on page whatever.
Do the like.
You know I type stuff out,write full pages.
You know, the last half of myteaching career I just had index
cards every day and it wouldjust be like.
You know, don't forget to takeattendance.
If we were doing a thing about,you know, whatever the lesson
(19:16):
might be, I would just put anote of what it was like.
Oh, projects due.
Next week final cut exportingscene coverage.
That would be my lesson planand I would know, going through
those bullet points okay, I needto take attendance.
That's the first thing to do.
Get that out of the way.
Oh, project due.
Let's talk about the reminderthat everyone has a project due
and what the requirements are.
Final cut exporting Okay, let's, you know, do a quick, you know
(19:40):
five, 10 minute thing where Ipull up the projector and walk
everyone through some of thesettings and the basics of how
to export projects, just as areminder so they can turn stuff
in on time.
And then, okay, scene coveragecool, this is gonna be our big
thing here.
I will have already had thingsset up where there's like
cameras and a little studio andlet's get some volunteers and go
(20:00):
over there and talk about howto film a scene from different
angles and get different scenecoverage to edit.
All that together that's a big.
You know, that's a full 90minute class with some pretty in
depth technical instruction.
But the lesson plan for it isfour bullet points.
And that's four bullet pointsbecause I had done it so many
(20:22):
times over so many years that Ididn't need to.
You know, I'm sure everybody hassomething in your life where
it's like, you know, if someonewas gonna pay you $10,000 to go
give a speech about any topicyou want, but you need to talk
for 45 minutes straight, I'msure all of us have something,
whether it's, you know, a TVshow, a band, a political idea,
whatever, something that you'rejust so into and obsessed with
(20:46):
and familiar with that you cantalk about it without needing
any outlines, any notes, anyanything.
It's your area of expertise andthat's a skill right.
You weren't born with that.
You weren't always able to dothat.
It's time, energy and effortthat got into being able to do
that, and that's somethingthat's really overlooked.
People spend so much timefocusing on what camera do I
(21:07):
need, what microphone do I needall of which are very important,
but if you can't communicateand you can't present on camera
or behind the microphone in aneffective way, then it kind of
doesn't really matter.
And so, going back to what Isaid before, when someone says
that reading a script to makethem sound robotic, yeah, to me
(21:27):
that says you need more practicereading scripts.
If somebody says they can'timprovise things because they go
off track, well, that kind ofis a weaning area, and that's
why I think outlines are reallygreat, because they're sort of
that sweet spot of keeping youon track.
You can, you know, put somespecific things that maybe are
semi scripted and then sort oflaunch you into whatever your
(21:50):
next topic is, but they alsothen teach you how to, to
improvise a little bit and youknow things will change too.
You'll have a new thought Ifyou're working with other people
or an audience.
Someone might say something orbring something up that suddenly
becomes relevant, that youcouldn't plan for, and you need
the ability to sort of adapt tothat.
You know that kind of stuffhappens all the time, but I
(22:12):
think it's important toemphasize that it is a skill,
and so I see this debate pop upa lot in comments and online.
You know, scripting versusoutlining and it's so black and
white, and I don't think Ireally ever hear anyone talk
about the skill set that notonly is it about what works for
you.
Some people are morecomfortable with scripts, some
(22:33):
more comfortable with outlines,some more with improvisation,
but so much of it is about aboutjust putting in the time and
the practice.
So here's an example.
So that was kind of like thetopic that I wanted to talk
about because it's been comingup so much about the prompter.
But then last week somethinghappened that was really
interesting and sort ofhighlighted this in a really
(22:55):
interesting way.
At the time I'm recording thisand the time you're listening to
this, if you listen, on the daythat it's released.
My most recent video is calledmy most underrated, my favorite
pieces of underrated, affordablecamera gear, something like
that.
The title's vaguely clunky, butit's something like that I
wanted.
This is a video idea I'd hadfor a while about.
I wanted to make, I wanted tohighlight small pieces of you
(23:18):
know, video, audio gear that Ithink are awesome, but I would
never make a whole video about.
They're just sort of too toosmall, too niche, too, whatever.
But you know you put 10 ofthose things together and hey,
now there's, there's enough roomthere for a whole video and
that's kind of cool.
And so that was the idea for avideo.
I don't really think that's anoriginal idea for video.
(23:38):
Tons of channels have donestuff like that.
I was trying to keep thingsunder $100, to keep it
relatively affordable, becauseyou know there's a lot of small
little doohickeys and whatnot'sin there and if someone was like
, hey, that's cool, I wantedthem to be able to go order it
without, you know, drainingtheir bank account.
And I also tried to focus onthings I hadn't talked about
(23:58):
before.
So there's other cool stuff,like, you know, mounting arms
and whatever, but things thathave those things have popped up
in other videos and so I triedto focus on stuff that I had not
covered in any video as far asI knew, at least, at least you
know, to my recollection anywayand that seemed like a cool
(24:18):
video idea.
And then I kind of decided well, sort of a couple of things
happened.
One is over the past few monthsI've been going back and
watching a lot of older YouTubevideos.
I've been trying to think aboutlike what was it back in like
2011 or so that really hooked meinto YouTube?
I've been watching YouTubesince it started, since like
(24:38):
2005,.
But for those first five or sixyears it was really like the
website for funny video clips.
You know it's like oh, did yousee the bootleg fireworks?
Did you see the Charlie bit myfinger or whatever?
You know, like it was that kindof a thing.
Or, you know, trying to watch abootleg family guy episode that
was broken into like four partsin low quality.
That was kind of what YouTubewas for me, at least for those
(25:02):
first number of years.
It wasn't until specificallyaround 2011, maybe into 2012,
that I started actuallyfollowing channels, and at the
time I don't even think I knewhow to subscribe to a channel,
so I would just sort of check inthe channels.
But you know, I would thinkabout like, hey, I'm interested
in this camera, let me seecamera reviews, let me see
(25:24):
unboxings, let me see this onespecific channel that I like.
Let me, you know, check out allof their videos on this topic.
And that's where channels likeDave Dugdale, dslr video shooter
, film Riot two out of three ofthose still going strong to this
day, which is incrediblyimpressive.
That's where a lot of thosetypes of channels first popped
onto my radar.
(25:44):
And Dave Dugdale was a big onebecause he did.
His channel was learning DSLRvideo, like.
It literally started with himgetting the Canon T2i and I
think he had a 50 millimeterprime lens with it.
Knew nothing about filmingvideo and over the years you
kind of watched him, you know,progress into having a super pro
(26:04):
setup, being a very skilledvideographer and then diving
really heavy into like computermodifications, upgrades, editing
software, like really technicalstuff, and it was cool.
That was really cool to see.
And the thing about Dave'svideos I think pretty much all
of them, but especially a lot ofthose early ones is he would
have B-roll mixed in, but he didsuch a good job of like the
(26:26):
B-roll was to help clarifysomething.
You know, if he's talking abouta camera slider, he would show
a B-roll shot of that.
He got with the camera on theslider and then there would be a
B-roll shot of him using theslider.
And you know, likecontextualizing, I guess, which
I try to do with my B-roll Ithink a lot of people on YouTube
do a really good job with nothaving just random, incoherent
(26:48):
B-roll.
But the videos were not hyperedited or anything.
I don't even know the length oftime.
I feel like a lot of his videosyou know 10 to 25 minutes, which
, again, we're talking back in2011, 2012.
That's pretty long for aYouTube video at that time and
so much of it were just him,like in his home office, sitting
(27:11):
down and talking to you aboutsomething, and sometimes he
didn't need slick B-roll, hewould just hold up the camera
and, like, point to a part of itand show you what he's talking
about, and that's sort of it,and I really liked it because it
felt like that's one of thechannels that I think of
specifically when I think ofhaving the first feelings of.
I could do this too, and maybeit would be really cool to have
(27:32):
my own YouTube channel one daybecause it felt like I was just
hanging out with someone who wastelling me about some cool
stuff or some interesting stuffand it didn't feel like out of
reach.
It didn't feel like something Iwas incapable of.
It was like, oh, I'd love to godo my own version of that too,
and that was really neat and Ijust sort of, you know, in this
(27:57):
world where a lot of people talkabout YouTube fatigue and
watching it less and stuff, Iwas kind of just wondering like
what was it that hooked me backthen?
And a lot of those videos havesuch a different tone and such a
different pace.
And then a while ago, a couplemonths ago, for Patreon and
channel supporters, I starteduploading a couple updates that
were just sort of I mean,honestly, they were just kind of
(28:17):
me rambling in front of thecamera for a bit like I just
pressed record in the e-cam,talked about stuff.
Sometimes I had like amicrophone or something I was
showing off.
Sometimes I was just talkingabout ideas or the channel or
just giving updates or whateverand sharing those.
And I got more positivefeedback about those than
anything I had posted forchannel supporters ever, and
(28:39):
typically I would almost kind ofdo blog posts like here's an
update, here's that.
You know there's hyperlinks inthere and stuff is kind of
formatted very similar to like ashort blog post.
And a lot of people said thatthey really prefer the video
updates.
Even if it was just me kind ofsitting and rambling is what it
felt like, because they couldjust turn it on and have it on
in the background like a podcast.
You know they didn't need towatch every frame of it, they
(28:59):
could listen to it and kind ofglance over if I mentioned
something interesting or heldsomething up and people really
enjoyed that and was like, okay,you know that's not terribly
difficult for me to produce andyou enjoy it, so I'll put that
there.
So then I was kind of thinking,okay, if I'm going back and
sort of appreciating sort ofthis slower paced thing, people
(29:22):
who have taken the extra step togo out of their way to support
the stuff that I make seem toalso like this.
What if I tried something likethat for everybody on the main
channel?
And I know that's.
You know, what worked on YouTube13 years ago might not be super
relevant or effective today,and you know the thing that
(29:43):
people like who have alreadydecided that they've opted into
really liking the stuff that Imake.
Maybe other people who are justsort of random.
You know the algorithm randomlypushes stuff out to.
They might not be as patient orlike it quite as much, but
anyway, what I decided to do wastake that underrated gear video
(30:03):
and film it in one shot,unedited, so it's just me
talking into the camera.
Every piece of gear issomething I just pick up and
hold up.
There's no B roll shots, eventhough I totally am aware at
times it would probably be moreeffective to have one or two B
roll shots to specifically showsomething you know, without
having to wait for the camera tofocus in on it or whatever.
(30:26):
But for this video specifically,you know, I wanted to explore
that and I made the video.
I was pretty nervous about thatvideo because what I was
worried about was that I wasgoing to publish it and people
were going to say that I wasbeing lazy because it felt kind
of like cheating.
Like the video is 34 minuteslong.
(30:47):
I think it took 36 minutes tofilm.
You know, like it's, there's alittle bit at the beginning and
a little bit at the end that Icut off, otherwise it is
unedited.
There's not a single cut in thewhole video and editing it was
very easy because I just wentthrough and made sure it made
sense.
I just saw the color a littlebit, you know, polished up the
sound a little bit and at theend I added in the the supporter
(31:09):
names and the outro music.
That's it.
But again there's not a singlecut in that video.
So there's a couple mistakes.
There's parts where you can seeme glancing off, you know, not
even because I didn't have ascript so the prompter was just
the confidence monitor, so youcan see me glance off to the
side to look at kind of my notes, like wait, what was I supposed
to talk about next?
(31:30):
And you know it's way slowerpaced than one of my typical
videos and I'm not even someoneI don't think so who hyper edits
, like I'm not.
I don't do the Mr B style ofediting where there's a cut
every fraction of a second andthings are just loud and in your
face and all over.
I try to keep thingsinteresting and fun to watch and
you know if I talk aboutsomething I try to then show
(31:51):
B-roll clip of that thing or aspecific part of it, especially
if it's a product I really dotry to like.
If you can't hold this productin your hands and look at it and
see what it feels like, I tryto make a video that gives you
the best like by proxy versionof that.
Through me, you can see andfeel and hold and understand
(32:11):
what this thing is so you candecide if it's something you're
interested in or something thatwould be a good fit for you.
And you know, I don't, I don'tthink that that, you know, goes
into the hyper editing.
But from a production standpointit's a lot of work.
You know it's a lot of planning, it's a lot of work.
Takes a couple days to make,even you know, a simple basic
(32:33):
video, usually at least.
And it felt kind of likecheating when, honestly, this
video was less than an hour tomake, like if you count the raw
footage and the time editing andexporting, it was like under an
hour.
And then the you know, thethumbnail was just a frame grab
and the title was just what thevideo is like 10 pieces of
underrated gear or whatever.
And I was excited to try that.
(32:57):
But I was very nervous when Ischeduled it and then, much to
my surprise, it became like oneof my most popular videos.
It was one out of ten onYouTube for a while.
It like for me at this pointwith my channel, a typical
average video in the first daythat it's uploaded will get
somewhere between two and threethousand views.
If I kind of get around liketwo thousand twenty five hundred
(33:19):
in that first day, it's usuallykind of on track, which is
pretty modest for a channel ofmy channel, a channel of my size
.
It's.
You know it's not going to beon the trending page anytime
soon, but it's also not zero.
This video, this unedited video, was ten thousand at the end.
I don't know where it is now,but it it.
I was so surprised when Ichecked it in the morning I was
(33:41):
like wait, did I publish like adifferent video that I forgot
about?
Like this, this video isoutperforming like other videos
that I spent like weeks on, likereally polished, wonderful
things, like me just sitting andtalking for a bit, and in the
video I do mention I do explainthat.
So it's not just this randomthing I dropped on people, but I
explain like this video isgoing to be unedited, me just
(34:02):
sharing stuff.
There are chapter markers soyou can skip around if you want,
which I think really does help.
And so a lot of the comments.
The comments kind of splitbetween, you know, people
talking about the gear and likesuggesting their own things they
like or asking questions orconfirming that something's
really cool or whatever, andthen the the other big chunk of
(34:23):
comments are about thatstructure and the vast majority
of them are really positive,like people really liking sort
of I keep kept seeing the wordsauthentic, genuine, like, able
to connect those kinds of thingsis what they felt with that
type of YouTube content.
And a lot of people said thatthey're excited to see more
channels returning to this typeof content, which makes me think
(34:46):
that other channels are alsodoing maybe slower-paced videos.
So it's a 35-minute uneditedvideo that people seem to like
and seem to do really well interms of analytics and stuff,
which is crazy, and it was there.
There's no script.
I'm not reading from theprompter or anything on it, and
(35:07):
that, to me, was so interestingwhen we're talking about
scripting versus outlining,because, you know, there were,
of course, a couple people whowere upset with it and were just
like.
You know, please, like, go backto editing videos like this is
such a waste of time or you knowlike, oh yeah, it's so much
better to look at blurry blobsin front of your face instead of
good footage or whatever, butthey, I feel like those people
(35:27):
missed the point honestly.
And it's not that I would wantevery video to be like that,
because then I feel like thependulum would swing way too far
in the other direction and thatwould become old very quickly.
But it's a cool thing to knowthat, like you know what, every
once in a while and for acertain topic that was a topic
that just worked really well forthat style of video Every once
(35:50):
in a while it might be aneffective thing to do.
And it even does have methinking as I go into, you know,
making quote, unquote, normalvideos.
But if you know what, if I tookthat video, which is an
unedited video, and I edited itonly a little bit?
So what if you know, I took avideo, I made a video like that
(36:13):
and maybe cut out some of themistakes in the dead space, put
in a little bit of B-roll, somaybe it's almost like there's
there's tears of editing videos.
There's the fully uneditedthing on one end of the spectrum
and the you know very polishedhigh production value thing on
the other end and everything inthe middle and it kind of just
(36:36):
depends on what the topic is.
But what I'm noticing, at leastright now, was the biggest value
to this unedited video was theconnection with the audience,
where people felt like that waswhat I said at the beginning.
I wanted this to feel likeyou're just hanging out with me
and I'm telling you about stuff.
Because that's probably whathappened, Like if you came over
and we were hanging out and wewere in my studio, I would just
(36:57):
start telling you about stuff,and that's the same with
everybody I know on YouTube.
Like I did a another Patreonpost recently that was with Alan
from SoundSpeeds, who he cameand visited a couple of weeks
ago and I literally this was notwe weren't planning on making a
video, but I just asked himabout XLR cables because he had
(37:18):
made me a handmade cable a whileago.
And then last year Rode cameout with their cables, which
I've been liking, and I was kindof asking those.
He literally, you know, likewas taking the cables apart and
showing me the things andpointing out.
It was like I'm just watching aSoundSpeeds video right now.
I was like, okay, let's turn onthe camera and can.
Can you just say this stuff infront of the camera, like it's?
(37:40):
It's silly to let this go andrecord it.
And same thing with, like youknow, my buddy, peter Lindgren,
who you know we talk all thetime and so many times, even
when we're hanging out in person, it feels like I'm watching a
Peter Lindgren video, like myown personal one.
If I ask him like, oh, do youreally like that capture clip on
your backpack?
And he's like oh, yeah, thecapture clip is really cool
(38:00):
because you can do this, andmaybe it's just because we're
trained to like talk that way asYouTubers.
But I also think it's because alot of people who have channels
and people have been fortunateenough to become friends with,
are really enthusiastic aboutthis stuff, and so when we talk
about it, it we kind of can'thelp but almost make it into a
video.
(38:22):
And I totally forgot why I toldthose stories, but those are
enjoyable stories.
See, this is where where thescript is needed.
I don't remember why I toldthat story honestly, which is
really funny, but you know therewas a point there and I'm sure
you can make the leap to.
Whatever my point was, I guessI guess it was about that
(38:43):
connection with people.
That was kind of the biggestthing I was taking away from the
comments was the connectionwith people hanging out,
spending time together, sharingyou know my thoughts about a
thing.
And then you know, for me,somebody who does like to have
at least a little bit of likemild humor, at least in the
videos the fun part was therethere were like jokes that are
(39:06):
in that video that I would havecut out in an edited one, not
because they're like bad orinappropriate or anything, but
just because they're.
They're kind of clunky, they'remore, it's less like here's a
clever wordplay thing which Ilike those I can be wrong, I'm
proud of those.
I like those like want to keepdoing those, but it's more of
like you know, like like I.
One of the one of the productsthat I talk about is a set of
(39:28):
gloves photography gloves andthey're really cool like weather
proof gloves.
They have capacitive fingertipsso you can use touchscreens
with them, but the thumb, middleand index fingers on each hand,
the tips can like fold back sothat way you can.
It's perfect for still holdinga camera or a drone remote
controller or something likethat while wearing gloves.
(39:49):
That's like you know whatthey're made for.
But I pull out the gloves andon the confidence monitor I was
looking at it really looked likethe OJ Simpson trial and so I
was like I had, you know, made ajoke about like these are my
gloves that I use for, you know,drones and crime and like it
was sort of like a throughoutthat whole segment and kind of
the rest of the video was sortof the joke of like committing
(40:10):
crimes with these gloves and itwas.
It was like stupid and sillybut kind of funny and it was
almost like an inside joke foranyone who was watching that
video.
And there was another.
The other one was one of theproducts was sandbags.
You can go to B&H photo and getpre-filled sandbags, which I
(40:30):
know sounds like why can't youjust fill up your own sandbags?
It's a pain, it's total painand you can just for $15 or
whatever, just get a pre-filledsandbag shipped across the
country to you, which is amazing.
And I was trying to explainlike these bags are really cool
because they have double zippers, so that way it's not just one
layer of zippers but two, so thesand doesn't fall out and the
(40:51):
sand itself is in this reallythick plastic bag.
So I've never had one break oranything.
But when I opened up thesandbag and showed the sand in
the plastic bag it really lookedlike cremated remains, like it
was hard not to make jokes aboutthat.
And those are like those werefunny little moments that would
have probably been edited outfor clarity, because what makes
(41:15):
those jokes funny?
I mean, okay, I'm using I'mbeing very generous with the
term funny here, but what makesthose funny isn't so much like
that.
It was a funny joke in a moment, but it kind of did become like
an inside joke that I was ableto reference repeatedly
throughout the video because itwas on the top of my mind.
Which is exactly what happenedif we were hanging out right
Like we'd be doing something.
(41:37):
Something happens and it kindof becomes an inside joke and
then throughout the rest of thenight or whatever, we can say
that thing or reference thatthing and we laugh because it's
that inside joke.
That's kind of what those did.
And the reason those would havebeen edited out of another video
is because it would have beentoo hard to like make that
(41:58):
coherent.
You know I would just be atsome point later in the video
kind of randomly referencingcommitting crimes like what are
you talking about?
In order for that to make sense, this other part has to make
sense, but that's taking toomuch time away from the actual
point of the video.
You know, like it's just forthe sake of, like, keeping the
video lean and focused and onpoint, those things would have
just been cut out, but theyweren't cut out and so I think
(42:22):
lots of little moments like thathelped people to feel, you know
, a little more connected.
It's not unlike this podcast, tobe honest with you.
It's very much like a podcastepisode where it's like I know I
could edit these and cut outthe mistakes and cut out the ums
or bad sounds or things thathappen or whatever.
But part of what I like aboutthis show is the fact that it
(42:42):
can feel as much as possible asme just sort of talking to you
about stuff.
And you know it's a one wayconversation because it's a
pre-recorded audio, but it'sabout as close as we could get
to.
You know, if we're hanging outand I'm dominating the
conversation, I get, I guess,and that is.
You know, that was prettyinteresting and it really led to
the coolest thing about thatvideo.
(43:04):
One of the coolest things wasthere were multiple people who
have their own channels, wholeft comments and were saying
stuff.
Like I'm editing a video rightnow and I was going to cut out a
bunch of stuff because Ithought it was too unrelated,
but now I think I want to leaveit in because it lets me show my
personality more and it lets me, like, create a more, you know,
mellow tone, and so it was likethat video gave people
(43:25):
permission in a weird way.
It's not like sometimes youjust need to see someone else
doing something you're thinkingof doing and it's that, quote
unquote gives you permission todo it.
But even Heather was thenworking on a video and she was
like, yeah, I had this idea.
It was kind of a big idea, butinstead I kind of want to just
like press record and go.
And so I was like, wow, itseems like audience, you know,
(43:46):
viewers kind of want to be ableto connect with people in this
way and even creators sort ofwant to be able to create and
communicate in this way, andthis little goofy gear video was
sort of a good.
It was a good experience for me, and it turns out that for some
people, it's also a pretty goodexample of what that kind of
thing can be.
Now the thing is though, as Isaid, I wouldn't want to make
(44:09):
every video like that.
I wouldn't want to never edit avideo.
But the question I was kind ofasking myself is is this video
really unedited?
Because what I wouldn't want todo and I kind of talked a
little bit to people in thecomments on that about this is,
as happy as I am, that it's amotivating thing for people to
be like oh, I don't need to dohyper editing and stuff.
I can kind of just sit and talkin front of a camera.
(44:31):
For a lot of people, especiallyif you're new, if you just
press record and talk for 35minutes, you might not end up
with a 35 minute video thatpeople want to watch and that
doesn't.
This is where I hope you knowI'm not like tooting my own horn
or being braggadocious, but itgoes back to that skill set.
The video is unedited.
(44:52):
There's not a single cut oranything.
There was not a script for it,but there was an outline for it.
There was.
I did have each piece of gearin order.
I made a little notes doc, thatwas on my monitor.
It had each piece of gear withthe price, so I could say like,
oh, this thing is $49.
This thing is $29, whatever,and I ordered them in a specific
(45:13):
order that I thought kind ofmade sense so I could transition
in ways that just sort offlowed well.
So, right there, the video isnot being edited, but the plan,
that's all that.
The outline was there wasn'tlike multiple bullet points per
item or anything, because itkind of goes back to that lesson
planning thing of.
This is gear that I've used alot and so I can talk about each
piece without needing to havenotes to refer to.
(45:35):
But I do want to remember whatorder to talk about things in
and I do want to remember theprice of everything accurately,
which is tough to do, you know,on my own without a couple of
notes.
And then I also, of course, hadeverything ready to go.
Like all of the gear I wastalking about was sitting on my
desk, just out of frame, so thatI could very easily reach over,
(45:56):
pick something up, talk aboutit and then put it down, you
know, usually on the floor onthe other side there.
So there was, like there wasplanning put into it.
Right, it was, you know,planning and preparation put
into it which helped me to beable to create that video.
So that, which is somethingthat you know I don't want to
overlook when we talk about this, is an unedited video.
(46:17):
Yes, it's unedited, but a lotof planning and preparation went
into it.
Plus, there is my own skill set, which this is why I want to be
clear that I'm not tooting myown horn.
I used to be a horrific publicspeaker.
Not only was I nervous andscared, but I could not stay on
track.
I could not make a point.
If you, you know, if you wereto go back and watch like
presentations I gave in highschool or my first year or two
(46:38):
of college.
They are confusing at bestbecause it's like you don't even
know what I'm talking about andI'm so nervous and shaky.
You know I've talked about thisin a couple videos.
I think my first year teaching Ihad to get these special sweat
pads because you know I'd alwayswear like a button-up shirt and
a tie and stuff.
But you can get these littlepads that you sort of stick
(47:00):
under your armpits and they soakup your sweat, because I would
get so nervous that I was likenot just little sweat stains but
like massive, like did somebodyspill something on you?
Levels of sweat.
And it was interesting becausethat's how I felt at first and
after honestly wasn't even theend of the first year, but after
a few months of doing it I kindof just noticed like I don't
(47:23):
need these anymore.
And it was crazy, like I mean,physiologically, it was crazy to
go from like I'm gonnadehydrate myself because of how
much I'm sweating to I can, youknow, raise my arms to the sky.
And there's nothing there thatthat just came from repetition,
from planning, and I'm notsomebody who innately had that
(47:44):
skill.
It sort of got built up.
And then you know, teachingteaching was really the first
school I taught at we had sixperiods a day, six hour long
periods a day.
The second school I taught at,we had four 90 minute periods a
day and the kids had eightclasses.
So it was like periods onethrough four one day, five
(48:06):
through eight the next day, onethrough four the next day.
So it was kind of a weirderschedule.
But those point being you'reessentially doing like multiple
performances, multiple speechesall day, every day for years,
and your audience is teenagerswho are, like you know, just
simmering in hormones.
Their bodies are changing everysecond.
(48:26):
They even the ones who want topay attention are like in this
soup of teenage hormone nests,trying their best to just figure
things out.
And now I have to like teachthem a skill.
Got a little easier when I'mtalking about digital media, but
when I started I was teachingEnglish.
It's like okay, you guys reallywant to hang out here and talk
about grammar?
Okay, that's, the only way tomake that happen is to be able
(48:47):
to talk about grammar in a waythat's interesting or relatable
or mildly entertaining.
And you know, like that was agood audience to kind of cut
your teeth on.
I have a friend who is a middleschool teacher and maybe about
five or six years ago shestarted also doing just open mic
stand-up comedy and then shewas doing really well and got
(49:09):
like quite popular.
And so one of the local likebars that has a comedy night.
It's like oh, can you do aweekly set or whatever?
You know you can do 45 minutesevery week, sure?
So she was doing a brand new 45minutes set every week for like
months and she didn't realize,like, when a stand-up comic has
a stand-up comedy special andyou see their hour-long thing,
(49:31):
they have workshopped that forusually what?
At least a year, sometimesmultiple years, to like figure
out their jokes, get theirtiming, get their structure and
then get it into something thatis a very tight, you know, 60
minutes and I'm not saying, youknow, obviously, like a person
who's essentially improving a 45minute set every week is on the
(49:52):
level of a professionalcomedian.
But she won, like you know,there's like stand-up events and
things and she won them and shegot like the biggest crowds, I
think to this day.
But she didn't realize untilmonths later that like she
didn't have to make a new thingevery time, like she could have,
you know, material that you cancome back to.
(50:13):
But because she's a middleschool teacher, she is used to
not repeating the same thing atleast in the course of a year.
She's used to.
Every time I see this group,every time I see a group, it
needs to be a new topic thatwe're talking about and the
group she's used to our middleschoolers, who have even less
attention span than highschoolers do, and she's to keep
them engaged and interested intopics that they're being forced
(50:36):
to learn.
She's.
She's an English teacher, soit's like they're not.
You know they have to take thatclass to pass to the next grade
.
It's not an elective oranything.
And when you think about, youknow, distracted middle
schoolers and you think alsoabout intoxicated adults.
There's a lot of overlapbetween what you need to do to
keep their attention and keepthem interested in what you're
(50:59):
talking about, and she was ableto do that partially because of
her personality and her lifeexperience and all that, but
also because she'd, I think,because she'd been a teacher for
years.
It was a uniquely preparingexperience for something like
that, and so that's whysometimes, if I'm, if I do a
(51:20):
podcast where I managed to makesome sort of sense for an hour,
or a live stream or a 35 minuteunedited video, there are
there's experience and skill setcoming into play that have been
worked on for a very long time,and I'm not special because I
can do that.
You know anybody can do that,but I just have taken the time
(51:41):
to do that.
It's the same thing like ifsomeone has practiced an
instrument for many years andthey pick up the instrument,
they play it really well andthen you've never played it and
you pick it up and you don'tknow what to do.
It doesn't mean that they'rebetter than you or anything.
It just means, oh, they putmore time into this one specific
skill, but they're probably aperson who's then more equipped
to go on stage and play thatinstrument than you are.
(52:02):
It's kind of the same thing herewhether you script or improv.
Stuff is personal preference,but when we're talking about
stuff like this video, this,this unscripted, unedited, you
know, 34 minute video that'sgonna go out to thousands of
people, it does take a skill setto be able to talk about
something in a way that's atleast somewhat interesting for
(52:24):
that amount of time.
And I think to just tellsomeone like, yeah, I press
record, talk about whatever youwant, don't edit it, upload it.
For a lot of people that wouldactually be a big mistake.
But pretty much anybody, ifyou're willing to put in the
reps, can learn, can build upthat skill set to be able to do
that, and that's that's reallythe main thing that I kind of
(52:44):
wanted to emphasize here was Ithink it's something that's
worth trying, it's worthexperimenting, and every, every
creator for themselves, needs tofigure out where that line is
between you know, totallyimprovising something and
totally scrimping something oroutlining in the middle or
whatever it might be, but toalso know that you know if
you're bad at reading a scriptnow or you're bad at improvising
(53:05):
now, all that takes is practiceand they are skills that will
be built up, the same way thatyou know, on that, that article
that I talked about earlierwhere somebody said you know the
youtubers don't emphasize theirsoft skills that's very true,
like it's a skill set, and ifyou go back and watch even big
channels, you go back and watchtheir first videos.
(53:25):
You you oftentimes see peoplethat are awkward and
uncomfortable and things thatare poorly edited or whatever,
and then you watch their mostrecent videos and they seem like
a polished professional.
It's like, yeah, you're lookingat thousands of hours and many
years of practice in between andI just think that's kind of the
important thing to remember is,even if we're talking about an
artistic endeavor, we're talkingabout also talking about a
(53:47):
skill set that needs to bepracticed and honed and also,
like, maintained.
I don't think it's as much of ause it or lose it thing as a
perishable skill as some thingsare.
But you know, if you build upyour public speaking skill set,
your presenting skill set, your,your on-camera personality, and
you don't use it for a coupleof years, there's definitely
(54:08):
gonna be some rust there whenyou go back to it.
So continuing to sharpen andhone and refine these skills is
something that is reallyimportant and incredibly helpful
.
So that's a that's the end ofthat chapter.
That's we're talking abouttoday, and I just thought that
was so interesting.
It's fun to already have anidea about improv versus
scripting.
And then this, this random, youknow, video experience sort of
(54:30):
happened that was really relatedto that, which I thought was
super cool.
So thank you so much forlistening.
As always, if you havesomething you want to share, if
you want to either sharesomething scripted or or improv,
you can go to highmanamistomcomand click little button says
leavea message for the show andwe can include you in a future
episode.
Of course, episode five of theseason will be the Q&A episode,
(54:52):
as always, but you don't have towait until then.
If you want to send something,send something anytime or you
can email tom atenthusiasmprojectcom.
So, with that being said,really appreciate you listening,
really appreciate you giving meyour time on my unscripted semi
outlined episode here and Ihope you have a safe, happy,
healthy rest of your week and Iwill see you next time you.
Hello and welcome.
My name is Tom.
This is the Enthusiasm Project,season 2, episode no.
Season 12, episode 2.
I've been doing this for a while.
I swear I know what number itis and today you know what that
recovery.
There was a little bit ofimprovisation on my part,
because today we're going to betalking all about the art of
scripting versus improv'ing whenit comes to YouTube content,
(00:56):
and I'm excited to talk aboutthis because this is a topic
that I started putting togetherseveral weeks ago.
But then something happenedjust in the past week that made
it even more relevant and mademe even a little bit more
excited to talk to you about itand to share it with you.
So that's what we're going totalk about today and can't wait
to get into that.
But before we get into that,I'm going to do a little bit of
(01:18):
a gear rundown, because I've gota little bit of a treat for you
today.
I'm using the Roadcaster Pro 2.
I'm on the generic condensersetting, so nothing crazy there.
But the microphone I'm usingtoday is a mystery mic.
I can't tell you what thismicrophone is because it's
(01:39):
secret and I really am enjoyingit and the reason I wanted to
use this and sort of do thatunfair tease of not being able
to share what it is is becausethere are some things.
One I like this microphone andwhen you find out what it is
you'll understand why I likethis microphone.
(01:59):
It makes a lot of sense that Iwould like it.
But there's some cool thingshappening here.
So right now I'm pretty close tothe microphone.
I'm sitting in my chair, butI'm going to step back here.
I'm walking.
You can hear a lot of room toneright.
Right now the quality doesn'tsound great because of the room
tone and the reverb and stuff.
But if you notice, now I'mwalking closer to the microphone
(02:21):
.
So I went from a couple ofinches to about six feet away
and both in the roadcaster andin editing afterwards I have not
touched the gain levels.
So think about that again.
I'm not touching any levels,right.
I just I'm a couple of inchesfrom the microphone.
I'm backing up, backing up.
You can hear that reverb andthat room tone.
(02:42):
You wouldn't want the wholepodcast to sound this way.
But in terms of gain and volumeand signal level, nothing has
changed.
The microphone is keeping thingsperfectly even and so that's
not to say that this microphoneis supposed to be like an up
close broadcast microphone andthen a boom microphone.
That would be.
(03:03):
That's just clearly not whatit's for, because it doesn't
sound great when you're superfar away.
But where it really comes inhandy is a situation like this
Right now I'm a couple inchesaway from the microphone.
Now I'm about a foot away fromthe microphone.
Now I'm kind of over on theside of the microphone, kind of
over on the other side of themicrophone.
What that means is, even with atypical cardioid pickup pattern,
(03:25):
the microphone can zero in onmy voice and sort of keep the
level and the sound quality,even I'm moving all around.
I know we're not doing videoversion of the podcast, but if
you saw the video version youwould see that I'm not sitting
still at all.
I'm all over the place, I'mpointing my mouth in different
directions and the microphone isdoing a pretty decent job of
(03:46):
keeping that sound, the level,everything very, very consistent
.
And that, I think, is reallyreally cool, because if you're
somebody who just doesn't wantto have to focus on your mic
placement and positioning, it'skind of nice because you can be
facing different directions, youcan be moving around, get
(04:06):
closer, further away from themicrophone and your audio is not
going to jump all over theplace, your sound's not going to
be inconsistent and if you'resomebody who works with clients
or guests other people who arenot used to being behind
microphones you don't have togive them that tutorial.
I don't know if you've ever hadto do this I definitely have in
the past where you have toexplain to people here's a
(04:27):
microphone, be this close to it,position it this angle towards
your mouth, and then inevitablypeople will forget and they
start leaning back in theirchair and talking and getting
too close and they're kind ofall over the place and you have
to go back and edit audio thathas highs and lows and all that
kind of stuff.
This is a great microphone forsomebody who is new to
(04:48):
microphones and sort ofunfamiliar with that.
You can kind of just be like,hey, just talk around the
microphone and it's going topick things up, but somehow I
don't have two of these to showyou the comparison but somehow
it does have that regularcardioid pickup pattern and it
knows there are some coolsensors on the front of the
microphone so it actually knowsthat I'm the one who's talking
and so it doesn't mean that it'sjust an omnidirectional
(05:11):
microphone picking up all thesound in the room, and if I had
someone next to me it would belike bleeding all over the place
.
I don't really know how it doesit, it's all magic.
And the kicker, which you mayhave kind of caught onto, is
these sound like things thatwould be, you know, usb features
or software features.
This is an XLR only microphone.
It's an XLR condensermicrophone and somehow it can do
(05:34):
all that and that is.
I've never seen anything likethat before and it's pretty cool
and I'm excited to talk moreabout it when it's released.
But I've been playing with thisover the past couple of days,
really enjoying it, and I cannotwait until I can share more
about it because I think a lotof people are really going to
(05:55):
enjoy this microphone a lot whenit's released.
So, using a mystery mic thisweek into the RODECaster Pro 2
and that is our gear rundown, itmakes my life easy because I
can just sort of sit and becomfy and even if I drift a
little bit away from themicrophone or get close to the
microphone, it's not going tomess up the audio quality.
So hooray for more margin forerror.
(06:18):
I guess you could call it.
Let's dive in to what we'retalking about today the art of
scripting versus improvisation.
So the reason I initiallythought about this topic was
because I've talked about theElgato prompter a lot lately.
If you've been watching, I madelike three or four videos about
it.
I've talked on multiplepodcasts about it.
It's like one of my favoritethings.
(06:39):
I would absolutely put it upthere with something like the
ATEM Mini in terms of arevolutionary tool for my
workflow.
The ATEM is a good examplebecause what the ATEM did take
multi-input video switching andmake it relatively simple.
Atems can get very complex, butthe basics of you got these
(07:02):
four inputs and you just havebig buttons to switch between
them the ATEM made it relativelysimple and crazy affordable.
I mean the ATEMs are insanebecause the base model ATEM now
the ATEM Mini Pro it's like $300.
Prior to that, the cheapestfour-input HDMI hardware
(07:23):
switcher was like $6,000 or$4,000.
I forget I had the cheapestRoland one I could find at the
school that I taught at.
I forget the exact model, Ibelieve it was $6,000.
And then beyond that you'regoing into five, sometimes even
six figure prices formulti-input video switching and
(07:44):
the ATEM took a lot of thosecapabilities, a lot of those
features, and made it $300.
It was insane.
The Elgato Promptor kind of doesthe same thing.
There have been inexpensiveprompters it's $280.
There are phone-based,tablet-based prompters that are
like $100, $150.
But they're clunky, they'refrustrating.
(08:05):
And then of course, there'sother prompters with built-in
monitors.
As far as I can tell, currentlythe least expensive prompters
that have a built-in display areabout $1,000 and they only go
up from there.
And the problem is if thoseeven have prompter software of
any kind, it's usually reallybad and the Elgato Prompter is
$280, built-in display comeswith software.
(08:28):
Yes, the software needs someupdates, but they're already
putting out beta updates andbeta version.
The software, even with itsissues, is the best prompting
software I've ever used, whichkind of tells you how low the
bar is for prompter software butis only going to get better
from there and I'm super excitedabout that.
(08:50):
So the Elgato Prompter is athing I've been talking about a
lot, but what that's done is.
It sort of brought up theconversation and a lot of
comments and even some directmessages and emails and stuff
about using scripts and scriptsversus outlines and trying to be
authentic when you're talkingand can you be authentic with
the script and it's beeninteresting to see not only
(09:10):
different people's opinionsabout this, but how different
people approach it, because it'sone of those things, like many
things in the world of contentcreation, where there is no
right or wrong answer, so muchof it just comes down to you
know it's like should you have aschedule on our YouTube channel
?
For someone like me, yes, aschedule and planned out videos
really makes things manageable.
For other people, it could be anightmare to do that and not
(09:34):
having a schedule is the way togo, so it's very important to
figure out what works best foryou.
So the thing is the topic thatcomes up a lot is sort of
authenticity, and there's aninteresting discussion about
this, because some people feellike if you're reading a script,
it's very difficult to beauthentic, and I totally
(09:57):
understand that.
Every once in a while I do someclient projects and involve
script reading and I'm not theone who wrote the script, even
if I'm able to go through andkind of like modify or change
some things.
Like they have written theirscript how it should be and I
need to read it how it is, andit's hard sometimes because it's
like my brain won't even putwords in that order, because
that's not how I speak and it'snot the way I would say things.
(10:19):
But I'm not.
You know, I'm not being hiredas a creative writer, I'm being
hired as a presenter,essentially, or you know, just
to use a voice or something, andit's tricky.
It's sometimes tricky to makethat, to make something you
would never say sound natural.
In the case of the Elgatoprompter for independent content
creators, even if you'rereading from a script, hopefully
(10:40):
you're not saying somethingthat you would never say.
The problem is it's tricky toread from a script Like it
sounds like you're reading froma script, and it can be a skill
that takes a while to build up,to learn how to read from a
script in a natural way, whichthen leads into this discussion
of outlines versus scripting.
(11:01):
Do you want a script wherethings are word for word,
exactly how they should be, ordo you want a general outline,
like right now, for this episode, this podcast episode?
I don't have a script.
I don't know if you could tell.
I know it sounded so polishedand scripted.
I have an outline, though Ihave a checklist in the Notes
app of main points.
I wanna hit, and I know thatwhen I get to the end of those
main points even if I kindawander and weave about
(11:22):
throughout when I get to the endI will have covered everything
that I wanted to cover aboutthis topic and I will feel
confident that this episode isfinished.
It's complete in the way that Iwanted it to be complete when I
was planning it out and so forme that's been a good balance is
, I use outlines a lot.
I will use direct scripts everyonce in a while if I have like
(11:44):
very specific word play where itneeds to go in a certain order
for the joke to land.
Sometimes I will like scriptthat out and then other times,
especially if it's somethingtechnical, I don't like doing
deep dive tech spec type videos,but every once in a while I
have to talk about technicalspecifications or things like
that and I don't wanna messthose up.
(12:05):
I don't wanna say megabytesinstead of gigabytes or
something you know or whateverit is.
And so having tech specs in ascript is very important and
very helpful for overall videoquality and stuff like that.
But I feel like personally itdoesn't really affect the
ability to be authentic or not.
(12:25):
And if you look at when did theElgato prompter come out?
It came out.
I got mine in October.
I guess it's not about when itcame out, it's about when you're
actually able to get it.
I got mine in October.
I have used it.
Every video on my channel fromOctober to now that you're
looking at you're lookingthrough the Elgato prompter.
Now some of those you'relooking at there's no script.
(12:47):
There's nothing on screen, it'sjust a confidence monitor where
I can see that everything'srecording and the shots in focus
.
Other times there's an outline,like literally I would just
move the notes app to theprompter, and other times there
is kind of a direct script and Ifeel like, hopefully, if my
plan has gone the way I want itto, you can't tell.
Hopefully, if you click on anyof those videos, you don't know
(13:11):
if there's a script or anoutline or nothing at all, and
that's how I want it to be.
I don't want it to be obviouseither way and I feel like
that's cool because that means,even when there's a script, it
still feels like I'm being myauthentic self.
If there's no script and I'mjust sort of rambling and going
(13:34):
off, you know, based onwhatever's in my head, it still
also feels like my authenticself, and so I think a lot of
that varies by person, and athing that this kind of touches
on is that this is a skill,these are skill sets, and I was
reading a thing on Reddit theother day.
(13:54):
There was actually a very doomand gloom article about what was
it called the pandemic ofincompetence, and I think it
might have been a little moredoom and gloom, but it was
essentially about how currentstudents in high school and
younger a lot of them sort ofhave, like this, learned
helplessness, there's a lack ofcuriosity, and I know this is
(14:15):
like ah, kids, these days itreally sounds like it, but
there's a lot of evidence ofeverything from like literally
the tracked amount of minutes onlike mindless apps, screen time
sort of thing, all the way downto, you know, enrollment in
different types of program,academic performance, reading
skills, reading comprehension.
Then, of course, there's a tonof outliers Like I can.
(14:37):
You know, fortunately, as mytime as a high school teacher, I
have tons of outliers Everytime someone says, oh, kids,
these days it's like oh, yeah,but like look at all of these
kids that I get to work withthat are like absolutely amazing
.
And, you know, through YouTubeI've been able to meet like
younger people, some of whom arenot so young anymore, who are
(14:57):
also, like, absolutely amazingand some of the smartest people
I know.
But essentially the gist of thearticle was, generally speaking
, there's sort of a lack ofcuriosity and a lack of problem
solving, critical thinking,whether students just don't have
it or were never taught it inthe first place, which is
probably what I kind of thinkthe problem is.
It's an issue and what doesthat mean?
(15:20):
As time goes on and thesepeople not only, like, enter the
workforce, which is of course,a thing people talk about, but
move beyond that, move beyondthe entry level positions and
when you need the reallyinnovative technical high level,
you know positions in society,who's going to fill those?
(15:41):
Because it seems like there's apandemic of incompetence
popping up and that's sort ofyou know, that was kind of the
gist of that article there andagain I feel like that was
leaning a little more heavilytowards doom and gloom than
probably is accurate, but I dothink it was an important point
to bring up.
But in the comments to thearticle, the top like most
(16:04):
upvoted comment with someonesaying like yeah, there can only
be so many influencers andYouTube stars which, of course,
like whenever you talk aboutthings like that, it's always
like you know, I think in moreold school times it was kids
wanted to be famous musicians,athletes or celebrities, movie
stars or whatever.
And now the modern version ofthat is being an influencer, a
(16:28):
YouTuber, something along thoselines and the fortunately and so
it's often dismissed sorry, see, this is where I should have
had a script.
It's often sort of said withthis dismissive tone of like oh
yeah, you know, kids just wannabe YouTubers or whatever.
But somebody actually repliedto that and said you know, the
(16:49):
thing that a lot of YouTubersand influencers don't highlight
and don't make apparent aretheir soft skills and the like.
I forget exactly how theyphrased it, but soft skills and
the ability to communicate, youknow, think critically, problem
solve, present themselveseffectively, manage people not
as necessarily a manager, butyour audience, your viewers,
(17:09):
dealing with brands, all ofthese soft skills that you know.
When a middle school kid justsees a streamer, a YouTuber or
whatever, those aren'tnecessarily the things they're
thinking about when they thinkabout that being something they
wanna do.
So it there is a skill andthere's so much like that that
goes into YouTube.
You know.
I know Heather and I on thecouples table have talked many
times about like I have seensome channels about things where
(17:30):
it's the info is really good,the technical production value
of the channel is amazing, butthe person is not a good
presenter and maybe they couldlearn to be, or not.
But I think sometimes peoplesort of think like because
something looks good and soundsgood, automatically the content
will be good, because somebodyhas a skill set or a knowledge
(17:52):
set, what they say is going tobe good or understandable, and
that's a lot of times absolutelynot the case.
The ability to communicateclearly, to present yourself, to
connect with an audience, tounderstand your purpose, your
tone, all of those things, thoseare skills and that's kind of
what it comes down to when we'retalking about scripting versus
improvisation.
When people say like, oh, Ican't read a script, I sound so
(18:13):
robotic.
What that says to me is youhaven't practiced reading
scripts enough.
Everybody's gonna sound roboticthe first dozen times they try
to read a script, you know.
But as you do it more and more,you sound a little more natural
.
Everybody's going to kind of,you know, go into the woods and
(18:34):
go off topic if they try to justimprovise something from
scratch.
But the more that you do it,the better you'll get at it.
Even you know.
I know I use teaching as anexample a lot, but it's a good
example because it's something Idid for a long time and it's
also something that's prettyrelatable, because pretty much
everyone has spent some time ina classroom at school, had
thoughts about teachers, andwhen I first started teaching,
(18:55):
my lesson plans were so detailedyou know, it's literally like
from 10.10 to 10.25, we would bedoing this on page whatever.
Do the like.
You know I type stuff out,write full pages.
You know, the last half of myteaching career I just had index
cards every day and it wouldjust be like.
You know, don't forget to takeattendance.
If we were doing a thing about,you know, whatever the lesson
(19:16):
might be, I would just put anote of what it was like.
Oh, projects due.
Next week final cut exportingscene coverage.
That would be my lesson planand I would know, going through
those bullet points okay, I needto take attendance.
That's the first thing to do.
Get that out of the way.
Oh, project due.
Let's talk about the reminderthat everyone has a project due
and what the requirements are.
Final cut exporting Okay, let's, you know, do a quick, you know
(19:40):
five, 10 minute thing where Ipull up the projector and walk
everyone through some of thesettings and the basics of how
to export projects, just as areminder so they can turn stuff
in on time.
And then, okay, scene coveragecool, this is gonna be our big
thing here.
I will have already had thingsset up where there's like
cameras and a little studio andlet's get some volunteers and go
(20:00):
over there and talk about howto film a scene from different
angles and get different scenecoverage to edit.
All that together that's a big.
You know, that's a full 90minute class with some pretty in
depth technical instruction.
But the lesson plan for it isfour bullet points.
And that's four bullet pointsbecause I had done it so many
(20:22):
times over so many years that Ididn't need to.
You know, I'm sure everybody hassomething in your life where
it's like, you know, if someonewas gonna pay you $10,000 to go
give a speech about any topicyou want, but you need to talk
for 45 minutes straight, I'msure all of us have something,
whether it's, you know, a TVshow, a band, a political idea,
whatever, something that you'rejust so into and obsessed with
(20:46):
and familiar with that you cantalk about it without needing
any outlines, any notes, anyanything.
It's your area of expertise andthat's a skill right.
You weren't born with that.
You weren't always able to dothat.
It's time, energy and effortthat got into being able to do
that, and that's somethingthat's really overlooked.
People spend so much timefocusing on what camera do I
(21:07):
need, what microphone do I needall of which are very important,
but if you can't communicateand you can't present on camera
or behind the microphone in aneffective way, then it kind of
doesn't really matter.
And so, going back to what Isaid before, when someone says
that reading a script to makethem sound robotic, yeah, to me
(21:27):
that says you need more practicereading scripts.
If somebody says they can'timprovise things because they go
off track, well, that kind ofis a weaning area, and that's
why I think outlines are reallygreat, because they're sort of
that sweet spot of keeping youon track.
You can, you know, put somespecific things that maybe are
semi scripted and then sort oflaunch you into whatever your
(21:50):
next topic is, but they alsothen teach you how to, to
improvise a little bit and youknow things will change too.
You'll have a new thought Ifyou're working with other people
or an audience.
Someone might say something orbring something up that suddenly
becomes relevant, that youcouldn't plan for, and you need
the ability to sort of adapt tothat.
You know that kind of stuffhappens all the time, but I
(22:12):
think it's important toemphasize that it is a skill,
and so I see this debate pop upa lot in comments and online.
You know, scripting versusoutlining and it's so black and
white, and I don't think Ireally ever hear anyone talk
about the skill set that notonly is it about what works for
you.
Some people are morecomfortable with scripts, some
(22:33):
more comfortable with outlines,some more with improvisation,
but so much of it is about aboutjust putting in the time and
the practice.
So here's an example.
So that was kind of like thetopic that I wanted to talk
about because it's been comingup so much about the prompter.
But then last week somethinghappened that was really
interesting and sort ofhighlighted this in a really
(22:55):
interesting way.
At the time I'm recording thisand the time you're listening to
this, if you listen, on the daythat it's released.
My most recent video is calledmy most underrated, my favorite
pieces of underrated, affordablecamera gear, something like
that.
The title's vaguely clunky, butit's something like that I
wanted.
This is a video idea I'd hadfor a while about.
I wanted to make, I wanted tohighlight small pieces of you
(23:18):
know, video, audio gear that Ithink are awesome, but I would
never make a whole video about.
They're just sort of too toosmall, too niche, too, whatever.
But you know you put 10 ofthose things together and hey,
now there's, there's enough roomthere for a whole video and
that's kind of cool.
And so that was the idea for avideo.
I don't really think that's anoriginal idea for video.
(23:38):
Tons of channels have donestuff like that.
I was trying to keep thingsunder $100, to keep it
relatively affordable, becauseyou know there's a lot of small
little doohickeys and whatnot'sin there and if someone was like
, hey, that's cool, I wantedthem to be able to go order it
without, you know, drainingtheir bank account.
And I also tried to focus onthings I hadn't talked about
(23:58):
before.
So there's other cool stuff,like, you know, mounting arms
and whatever, but things thathave those things have popped up
in other videos and so I triedto focus on stuff that I had not
covered in any video as far asI knew, at least, at least you
know, to my recollection anywayand that seemed like a cool
(24:18):
video idea.
And then I kind of decided well, sort of a couple of things
happened.
One is over the past few monthsI've been going back and
watching a lot of older YouTubevideos.
I've been trying to think aboutlike what was it back in like
2011 or so that really hooked meinto YouTube?
I've been watching YouTubesince it started, since like
(24:38):
2005,.
But for those first five or sixyears it was really like the
website for funny video clips.
You know it's like oh, did yousee the bootleg fireworks?
Did you see the Charlie bit myfinger or whatever?
You know, like it was that kindof a thing.
Or, you know, trying to watch abootleg family guy episode that
was broken into like four partsin low quality.
That was kind of what YouTubewas for me, at least for those
(25:02):
first number of years.
It wasn't until specificallyaround 2011, maybe into 2012,
that I started actuallyfollowing channels, and at the
time I don't even think I knewhow to subscribe to a channel,
so I would just sort of check inthe channels.
But you know, I would thinkabout like, hey, I'm interested
in this camera, let me seecamera reviews, let me see
(25:24):
unboxings, let me see this onespecific channel that I like.
Let me, you know, check out allof their videos on this topic.
And that's where channels likeDave Dugdale, dslr video shooter
, film Riot two out of three ofthose still going strong to this
day, which is incrediblyimpressive.
That's where a lot of thosetypes of channels first popped
onto my radar.
(25:44):
And Dave Dugdale was a big onebecause he did.
His channel was learning DSLRvideo, like.
It literally started with himgetting the Canon T2i and I
think he had a 50 millimeterprime lens with it.
Knew nothing about filmingvideo and over the years you
kind of watched him, you know,progress into having a super pro
(26:04):
setup, being a very skilledvideographer and then diving
really heavy into like computermodifications, upgrades, editing
software, like really technicalstuff, and it was cool.
That was really cool to see.
And the thing about Dave'svideos I think pretty much all
of them, but especially a lot ofthose early ones is he would
have B-roll mixed in, but he didsuch a good job of like the
(26:26):
B-roll was to help clarifysomething.
You know, if he's talking abouta camera slider, he would show
a B-roll shot of that.
He got with the camera on theslider and then there would be a
B-roll shot of him using theslider.
And you know, likecontextualizing, I guess, which
I try to do with my B-roll Ithink a lot of people on YouTube
do a really good job with nothaving just random, incoherent
(26:48):
B-roll.
But the videos were not hyperedited or anything.
I don't even know the length oftime.
I feel like a lot of his videosyou know 10 to 25 minutes, which
, again, we're talking back in2011, 2012.
That's pretty long for aYouTube video at that time and
so much of it were just him,like in his home office, sitting
(27:11):
down and talking to you aboutsomething, and sometimes he
didn't need slick B-roll, hewould just hold up the camera
and, like, point to a part of itand show you what he's talking
about, and that's sort of it,and I really liked it because it
felt like that's one of thechannels that I think of
specifically when I think ofhaving the first feelings of.
I could do this too, and maybeit would be really cool to have
(27:32):
my own YouTube channel one daybecause it felt like I was just
hanging out with someone who wastelling me about some cool
stuff or some interesting stuffand it didn't feel like out of
reach.
It didn't feel like something Iwas incapable of.
It was like, oh, I'd love to godo my own version of that too,
and that was really neat and Ijust sort of, you know, in this
(27:57):
world where a lot of people talkabout YouTube fatigue and
watching it less and stuff, Iwas kind of just wondering like
what was it that hooked me backthen?
And a lot of those videos havesuch a different tone and such a
different pace.
And then a while ago, a couplemonths ago, for Patreon and
channel supporters, I starteduploading a couple updates that
were just sort of I mean,honestly, they were just kind of
(28:17):
me rambling in front of thecamera for a bit like I just
pressed record in the e-cam,talked about stuff.
Sometimes I had like amicrophone or something I was
showing off.
Sometimes I was just talkingabout ideas or the channel or
just giving updates or whateverand sharing those.
And I got more positivefeedback about those than
anything I had posted forchannel supporters ever, and
(28:39):
typically I would almost kind ofdo blog posts like here's an
update, here's that.
You know there's hyperlinks inthere and stuff is kind of
formatted very similar to like ashort blog post.
And a lot of people said thatthey really prefer the video
updates.
Even if it was just me kind ofsitting and rambling is what it
felt like, because they couldjust turn it on and have it on
in the background like a podcast.
You know they didn't need towatch every frame of it, they
(28:59):
could listen to it and kind ofglance over if I mentioned
something interesting or heldsomething up and people really
enjoyed that and was like, okay,you know that's not terribly
difficult for me to produce andyou enjoy it, so I'll put that
there.
So then I was kind of thinking,okay, if I'm going back and
sort of appreciating sort ofthis slower paced thing, people
(29:22):
who have taken the extra step togo out of their way to support
the stuff that I make seem toalso like this.
What if I tried something likethat for everybody on the main
channel?
And I know that's.
You know, what worked on YouTube13 years ago might not be super
relevant or effective today,and you know the thing that
(29:43):
people like who have alreadydecided that they've opted into
really liking the stuff that Imake.
Maybe other people who are justsort of random.
You know the algorithm randomlypushes stuff out to.
They might not be as patient orlike it quite as much, but
anyway, what I decided to do wastake that underrated gear video
(30:03):
and film it in one shot,unedited, so it's just me
talking into the camera.
Every piece of gear issomething I just pick up and
hold up.
There's no B roll shots, eventhough I totally am aware at
times it would probably be moreeffective to have one or two B
roll shots to specifically showsomething you know, without
having to wait for the camera tofocus in on it or whatever.
(30:26):
But for this video specifically,you know, I wanted to explore
that and I made the video.
I was pretty nervous about thatvideo because what I was
worried about was that I wasgoing to publish it and people
were going to say that I wasbeing lazy because it felt kind
of like cheating.
Like the video is 34 minuteslong.
(30:47):
I think it took 36 minutes tofilm.
You know, like it's, there's alittle bit at the beginning and
a little bit at the end that Icut off, otherwise it is
unedited.
There's not a single cut in thewhole video and editing it was
very easy because I just wentthrough and made sure it made
sense.
I just saw the color a littlebit, you know, polished up the
sound a little bit and at theend I added in the the supporter
(31:09):
names and the outro music.
That's it.
But again there's not a singlecut in that video.
So there's a couple mistakes.
There's parts where you can seeme glancing off, you know, not
even because I didn't have ascript so the prompter was just
the confidence monitor, so youcan see me glance off to the
side to look at kind of my notes, like wait, what was I supposed
to talk about next?
(31:30):
And you know it's way slowerpaced than one of my typical
videos and I'm not even someoneI don't think so who hyper edits
, like I'm not.
I don't do the Mr B style ofediting where there's a cut
every fraction of a second andthings are just loud and in your
face and all over.
I try to keep thingsinteresting and fun to watch and
you know if I talk aboutsomething I try to then show
(31:51):
B-roll clip of that thing or aspecific part of it, especially
if it's a product I really dotry to like.
If you can't hold this productin your hands and look at it and
see what it feels like, I tryto make a video that gives you
the best like by proxy versionof that.
Through me, you can see andfeel and hold and understand
(32:11):
what this thing is so you candecide if it's something you're
interested in or something thatwould be a good fit for you.
And you know, I don't, I don'tthink that that, you know, goes
into the hyper editing.
But from a production standpointit's a lot of work.
You know it's a lot of planning, it's a lot of work.
Takes a couple days to make,even you know, a simple basic
(32:33):
video, usually at least.
And it felt kind of likecheating when, honestly, this
video was less than an hour tomake, like if you count the raw
footage and the time editing andexporting, it was like under an
hour.
And then the you know, thethumbnail was just a frame grab
and the title was just what thevideo is like 10 pieces of
underrated gear or whatever.
And I was excited to try that.
(32:57):
But I was very nervous when Ischeduled it and then, much to
my surprise, it became like oneof my most popular videos.
It was one out of ten onYouTube for a while.
It like for me at this pointwith my channel, a typical
average video in the first daythat it's uploaded will get
somewhere between two and threethousand views.
If I kind of get around liketwo thousand twenty five hundred
(33:19):
in that first day, it's usuallykind of on track, which is
pretty modest for a channel ofmy channel, a channel of my size
.
It's.
You know it's not going to beon the trending page anytime
soon, but it's also not zero.
This video, this unedited video, was ten thousand at the end.
I don't know where it is now,but it it.
I was so surprised when Ichecked it in the morning I was
(33:41):
like wait, did I publish like adifferent video that I forgot
about?
Like this, this video isoutperforming like other videos
that I spent like weeks on, likereally polished, wonderful
things, like me just sitting andtalking for a bit, and in the
video I do mention I do explainthat.
So it's not just this randomthing I dropped on people, but I
explain like this video isgoing to be unedited, me just
(34:02):
sharing stuff.
There are chapter markers soyou can skip around if you want,
which I think really does help.
And so a lot of the comments.
The comments kind of splitbetween, you know, people
talking about the gear and likesuggesting their own things they
like or asking questions orconfirming that something's
really cool or whatever, andthen the the other big chunk of
(34:23):
comments are about thatstructure and the vast majority
of them are really positive,like people really liking sort
of I keep kept seeing the wordsauthentic, genuine, like, able
to connect those kinds of thingsis what they felt with that
type of YouTube content.
And a lot of people said thatthey're excited to see more
channels returning to this typeof content, which makes me think
(34:46):
that other channels are alsodoing maybe slower-paced videos.
So it's a 35-minute uneditedvideo that people seem to like
and seem to do really well interms of analytics and stuff,
which is crazy, and it was there.
There's no script.
I'm not reading from theprompter or anything on it, and
(35:07):
that, to me, was so interestingwhen we're talking about
scripting versus outlining,because, you know, there were,
of course, a couple people whowere upset with it and were just
like.
You know, please, like, go backto editing videos like this is
such a waste of time or you knowlike, oh yeah, it's so much
better to look at blurry blobsin front of your face instead of
good footage or whatever, butthey, I feel like those people
(35:27):
missed the point honestly.
And it's not that I would wantevery video to be like that,
because then I feel like thependulum would swing way too far
in the other direction and thatwould become old very quickly.
But it's a cool thing to knowthat, like you know what, every
once in a while and for acertain topic that was a topic
that just worked really well forthat style of video Every once
(35:50):
in a while it might be aneffective thing to do.
And it even does have methinking as I go into, you know,
making quote, unquote, normalvideos.
But if you know what, if I tookthat video, which is an
unedited video, and I edited itonly a little bit?
So what if you know, I took avideo, I made a video like that
(36:13):
and maybe cut out some of themistakes in the dead space, put
in a little bit of B-roll, somaybe it's almost like there's
there's tears of editing videos.
There's the fully uneditedthing on one end of the spectrum
and the you know very polishedhigh production value thing on
the other end and everything inthe middle and it kind of just
(36:36):
depends on what the topic is.
But what I'm noticing, at leastright now, was the biggest value
to this unedited video was theconnection with the audience,
where people felt like that waswhat I said at the beginning.
I wanted this to feel likeyou're just hanging out with me
and I'm telling you about stuff.
Because that's probably whathappened, Like if you came over
and we were hanging out and wewere in my studio, I would just
(36:57):
start telling you about stuff,and that's the same with
everybody I know on YouTube.
Like I did a another Patreonpost recently that was with Alan
from SoundSpeeds, who he cameand visited a couple of weeks
ago and I literally this was notwe weren't planning on making a
video, but I just asked himabout XLR cables because he had
(37:18):
made me a handmade cable a whileago.
And then last year Rode cameout with their cables, which
I've been liking, and I was kindof asking those.
He literally, you know, likewas taking the cables apart and
showing me the things andpointing out.
It was like I'm just watching aSoundSpeeds video right now.
I was like, okay, let's turn onthe camera and can.
Can you just say this stuff infront of the camera, like it's?
(37:40):
It's silly to let this go andrecord it.
And same thing with, like youknow, my buddy, peter Lindgren,
who you know we talk all thetime and so many times, even
when we're hanging out in person, it feels like I'm watching a
Peter Lindgren video, like myown personal one.
If I ask him like, oh, do youreally like that capture clip on
your backpack?
And he's like oh, yeah, thecapture clip is really cool
(38:00):
because you can do this, andmaybe it's just because we're
trained to like talk that way asYouTubers.
But I also think it's because alot of people who have channels
and people have been fortunateenough to become friends with,
are really enthusiastic aboutthis stuff, and so when we talk
about it, it we kind of can'thelp but almost make it into a
video.
(38:22):
And I totally forgot why I toldthose stories, but those are
enjoyable stories.
See, this is where where thescript is needed.
I don't remember why I toldthat story honestly, which is
really funny, but you know therewas a point there and I'm sure
you can make the leap to.
Whatever my point was, I guessI guess it was about that
(38:43):
connection with people.
That was kind of the biggestthing I was taking away from the
comments was the connectionwith people hanging out,
spending time together, sharingyou know my thoughts about a
thing.
And then you know, for me,somebody who does like to have
at least a little bit of likemild humor, at least in the
videos the fun part was therethere were like jokes that are
(39:06):
in that video that I would havecut out in an edited one, not
because they're like bad orinappropriate or anything, but
just because they're.
They're kind of clunky, they'remore, it's less like here's a
clever wordplay thing which Ilike those I can be wrong, I'm
proud of those.
I like those like want to keepdoing those, but it's more of
like you know, like like I.
One of the one of the productsthat I talk about is a set of
(39:28):
gloves photography gloves andthey're really cool like weather
proof gloves.
They have capacitive fingertipsso you can use touchscreens
with them, but the thumb, middleand index fingers on each hand,
the tips can like fold back sothat way you can.
It's perfect for still holdinga camera or a drone remote
controller or something likethat while wearing gloves.
(39:49):
That's like you know whatthey're made for.
But I pull out the gloves andon the confidence monitor I was
looking at it really looked likethe OJ Simpson trial and so I
was like I had, you know, made ajoke about like these are my
gloves that I use for, you know,drones and crime and like it
was sort of like a throughoutthat whole segment and kind of
the rest of the video was sortof the joke of like committing
(40:10):
crimes with these gloves and itwas.
It was like stupid and sillybut kind of funny and it was
almost like an inside joke foranyone who was watching that
video.
And there was another.
The other one was one of theproducts was sandbags.
You can go to B&H photo and getpre-filled sandbags, which I
(40:30):
know sounds like why can't youjust fill up your own sandbags?
It's a pain, it's total painand you can just for $15 or
whatever, just get a pre-filledsandbag shipped across the
country to you, which is amazing.
And I was trying to explainlike these bags are really cool
because they have double zippers, so that way it's not just one
layer of zippers but two, so thesand doesn't fall out and the
(40:51):
sand itself is in this reallythick plastic bag.
So I've never had one break oranything.
But when I opened up thesandbag and showed the sand in
the plastic bag it really lookedlike cremated remains, like it
was hard not to make jokes aboutthat.
And those are like those werefunny little moments that would
have probably been edited outfor clarity, because what makes
(41:15):
those jokes funny?
I mean, okay, I'm using I'mbeing very generous with the
term funny here, but what makesthose funny isn't so much like
that.
It was a funny joke in a moment, but it kind of did become like
an inside joke that I was ableto reference repeatedly
throughout the video because itwas on the top of my mind.
Which is exactly what happenedif we were hanging out right
Like we'd be doing something.
(41:37):
Something happens and it kindof becomes an inside joke and
then throughout the rest of thenight or whatever, we can say
that thing or reference thatthing and we laugh because it's
that inside joke.
That's kind of what those did.
And the reason those would havebeen edited out of another video
is because it would have beentoo hard to like make that
(41:58):
coherent.
You know I would just be atsome point later in the video
kind of randomly referencingcommitting crimes like what are
you talking about?
In order for that to make sense, this other part has to make
sense, but that's taking toomuch time away from the actual
point of the video.
You know, like it's just forthe sake of, like, keeping the
video lean and focused and onpoint, those things would have
just been cut out, but theyweren't cut out and so I think
(42:22):
lots of little moments like thathelped people to feel, you know
, a little more connected.
It's not unlike this podcast, tobe honest with you.
It's very much like a podcastepisode where it's like I know I
could edit these and cut outthe mistakes and cut out the ums
or bad sounds or things thathappen or whatever.
But part of what I like aboutthis show is the fact that it
(42:42):
can feel as much as possible asme just sort of talking to you
about stuff.
And you know it's a one wayconversation because it's a
pre-recorded audio, but it'sabout as close as we could get
to.
You know, if we're hanging outand I'm dominating the
conversation, I get, I guess,and that is.
You know, that was prettyinteresting and it really led to
the coolest thing about thatvideo.
(43:04):
One of the coolest things wasthere were multiple people who
have their own channels, wholeft comments and were saying
stuff.
Like I'm editing a video rightnow and I was going to cut out a
bunch of stuff because Ithought it was too unrelated,
but now I think I want to leaveit in because it lets me show my
personality more and it lets me, like, create a more, you know,
mellow tone, and so it was likethat video gave people
(43:25):
permission in a weird way.
It's not like sometimes youjust need to see someone else
doing something you're thinkingof doing and it's that, quote
unquote gives you permission todo it.
But even Heather was thenworking on a video and she was
like, yeah, I had this idea.
It was kind of a big idea, butinstead I kind of want to just
like press record and go.
And so I was like, wow, itseems like audience, you know,
(43:46):
viewers kind of want to be ableto connect with people in this
way and even creators sort ofwant to be able to create and
communicate in this way, andthis little goofy gear video was
sort of a good.
It was a good experience for me, and it turns out that for some
people, it's also a pretty goodexample of what that kind of
thing can be.
Now the thing is though, as Isaid, I wouldn't want to make
(44:09):
every video like that.
I wouldn't want to never edit avideo.
But the question I was kind ofasking myself is is this video
really unedited?
Because what I wouldn't want todo and I kind of talked a
little bit to people in thecomments on that about this is,
as happy as I am, that it's amotivating thing for people to
be like oh, I don't need to dohyper editing and stuff.
I can kind of just sit and talkin front of a camera.
(44:31):
For a lot of people, especiallyif you're new, if you just
press record and talk for 35minutes, you might not end up
with a 35 minute video thatpeople want to watch and that
doesn't.
This is where I hope you knowI'm not like tooting my own horn
or being braggadocious, but itgoes back to that skill set.
The video is unedited.
(44:52):
There's not a single cut oranything.
There was not a script for it,but there was an outline for it.
There was.
I did have each piece of gearin order.
I made a little notes doc, thatwas on my monitor.
It had each piece of gear withthe price, so I could say like,
oh, this thing is $49.
This thing is $29, whatever,and I ordered them in a specific
(45:13):
order that I thought kind ofmade sense so I could transition
in ways that just sort offlowed well.
So, right there, the video isnot being edited, but the plan,
that's all that.
The outline was there wasn'tlike multiple bullet points per
item or anything, because itkind of goes back to that lesson
planning thing of.
This is gear that I've used alot and so I can talk about each
piece without needing to havenotes to refer to.
(45:35):
But I do want to remember whatorder to talk about things in
and I do want to remember theprice of everything accurately,
which is tough to do, you know,on my own without a couple of
notes.
And then I also, of course, hadeverything ready to go.
Like all of the gear I wastalking about was sitting on my
desk, just out of frame, so thatI could very easily reach over,
(45:56):
pick something up, talk aboutit and then put it down, you
know, usually on the floor onthe other side there.
So there was, like there wasplanning put into it.
Right, it was, you know,planning and preparation put
into it which helped me to beable to create that video.
So that, which is somethingthat you know I don't want to
overlook when we talk about this, is an unedited video.
(46:17):
Yes, it's unedited, but a lotof planning and preparation went
into it.
Plus, there is my own skill set, which this is why I want to be
clear that I'm not tooting myown horn.
I used to be a horrific publicspeaker.
Not only was I nervous andscared, but I could not stay on
track.
I could not make a point.
If you, you know, if you wereto go back and watch like
presentations I gave in highschool or my first year or two
(46:38):
of college.
They are confusing at bestbecause it's like you don't even
know what I'm talking about andI'm so nervous and shaky.
You know I've talked about thisin a couple videos.
I think my first year teaching Ihad to get these special sweat
pads because you know I'd alwayswear like a button-up shirt and
a tie and stuff.
But you can get these littlepads that you sort of stick
(47:00):
under your armpits and they soakup your sweat, because I would
get so nervous that I was likenot just little sweat stains but
like massive, like did somebodyspill something on you?
Levels of sweat.
And it was interesting becausethat's how I felt at first and
after honestly wasn't even theend of the first year, but after
a few months of doing it I kindof just noticed like I don't
(47:23):
need these anymore.
And it was crazy, like I mean,physiologically, it was crazy to
go from like I'm gonnadehydrate myself because of how
much I'm sweating to I can, youknow, raise my arms to the sky.
And there's nothing there thatthat just came from repetition,
from planning, and I'm notsomebody who innately had that
(47:44):
skill.
It sort of got built up.
And then you know, teachingteaching was really the first
school I taught at we had sixperiods a day, six hour long
periods a day.
The second school I taught at,we had four 90 minute periods a
day and the kids had eightclasses.
So it was like periods onethrough four one day, five
(48:06):
through eight the next day, onethrough four the next day.
So it was kind of a weirderschedule.
But those point being you'reessentially doing like multiple
performances, multiple speechesall day, every day for years,
and your audience is teenagerswho are, like you know, just
simmering in hormones.
Their bodies are changing everysecond.
(48:26):
They even the ones who want topay attention are like in this
soup of teenage hormone nests,trying their best to just figure
things out.
And now I have to like teachthem a skill.
Got a little easier when I'mtalking about digital media, but
when I started I was teachingEnglish.
It's like okay, you guys reallywant to hang out here and talk
about grammar?
Okay, that's, the only way tomake that happen is to be able
(48:47):
to talk about grammar in a waythat's interesting or relatable
or mildly entertaining.
And you know, like that was agood audience to kind of cut
your teeth on.
I have a friend who is a middleschool teacher and maybe about
five or six years ago shestarted also doing just open mic
stand-up comedy and then shewas doing really well and got
(49:09):
like quite popular.
And so one of the local likebars that has a comedy night.
It's like oh, can you do aweekly set or whatever?
You know you can do 45 minutesevery week, sure?
So she was doing a brand new 45minutes set every week for like
months and she didn't realize,like, when a stand-up comic has
a stand-up comedy special andyou see their hour-long thing,
(49:31):
they have workshopped that forusually what?
At least a year, sometimesmultiple years, to like figure
out their jokes, get theirtiming, get their structure and
then get it into something thatis a very tight, you know, 60
minutes and I'm not saying, youknow, obviously, like a person
who's essentially improving a 45minute set every week is on the
(49:52):
level of a professionalcomedian.
But she won, like you know,there's like stand-up events and
things and she won them and shegot like the biggest crowds, I
think to this day.
But she didn't realize untilmonths later that like she
didn't have to make a new thingevery time, like she could have,
you know, material that you cancome back to.
(50:13):
But because she's a middleschool teacher, she is used to
not repeating the same thing atleast in the course of a year.
She's used to.
Every time I see this group,every time I see a group, it
needs to be a new topic thatwe're talking about and the
group she's used to our middleschoolers, who have even less
attention span than highschoolers do, and she's to keep
them engaged and interested intopics that they're being forced
(50:36):
to learn.
She's.
She's an English teacher, soit's like they're not.
You know they have to take thatclass to pass to the next grade
.
It's not an elective oranything.
And when you think about, youknow, distracted middle
schoolers and you think alsoabout intoxicated adults.
There's a lot of overlapbetween what you need to do to
keep their attention and keepthem interested in what you're
(50:59):
talking about, and she was ableto do that partially because of
her personality and her lifeexperience and all that, but
also because she'd, I think,because she'd been a teacher for
years.
It was a uniquely preparingexperience for something like
that, and so that's whysometimes, if I'm, if I do a
(51:20):
podcast where I managed to makesome sort of sense for an hour,
or a live stream or a 35 minuteunedited video, there are
there's experience and skill setcoming into play that have been
worked on for a very long time,and I'm not special because I
can do that.
You know anybody can do that,but I just have taken the time
(51:41):
to do that.
It's the same thing like ifsomeone has practiced an
instrument for many years andthey pick up the instrument,
they play it really well andthen you've never played it and
you pick it up and you don'tknow what to do.
It doesn't mean that they'rebetter than you or anything.
It just means, oh, they putmore time into this one specific
skill, but they're probably aperson who's then more equipped
to go on stage and play thatinstrument than you are.
(52:02):
It's kind of the same thing herewhether you script or improv.
Stuff is personal preference,but when we're talking about
stuff like this video, this,this unscripted, unedited, you
know, 34 minute video that'sgonna go out to thousands of
people, it does take a skill setto be able to talk about
something in a way that's atleast somewhat interesting for
(52:24):
that amount of time.
And I think to just tellsomeone like, yeah, I press
record, talk about whatever youwant, don't edit it, upload it.
For a lot of people that wouldactually be a big mistake.
But pretty much anybody, ifyou're willing to put in the
reps, can learn, can build upthat skill set to be able to do
that, and that's that's reallythe main thing that I kind of
(52:44):
wanted to emphasize here was Ithink it's something that's
worth trying, it's worthexperimenting, and every, every
creator for themselves, needs tofigure out where that line is
between you know, totallyimprovising something and
totally scrimping something oroutlining in the middle or
whatever it might be, but toalso know that you know if
you're bad at reading a scriptnow or you're bad at improvising
(53:05):
now, all that takes is practiceand they are skills that will
be built up, the same way thatyou know, on that, that article
that I talked about earlierwhere somebody said you know the
youtubers don't emphasize theirsoft skills that's very true,
like it's a skill set, and ifyou go back and watch even big
channels, you go back and watchtheir first videos.
(53:25):
You you oftentimes see peoplethat are awkward and
uncomfortable and things thatare poorly edited or whatever,
and then you watch their mostrecent videos and they seem like
a polished professional.
It's like, yeah, you're lookingat thousands of hours and many
years of practice in between andI just think that's kind of the
important thing to remember is,even if we're talking about an
artistic endeavor, we're talkingabout also talking about a
(53:47):
skill set that needs to bepracticed and honed and also,
like, maintained.
I don't think it's as much of ause it or lose it thing as a
perishable skill as some thingsare.
But you know, if you build upyour public speaking skill set,
your presenting skill set, your,your on-camera personality, and
you don't use it for a coupleof years, there's definitely
(54:08):
gonna be some rust there whenyou go back to it.
So continuing to sharpen andhone and refine these skills is
something that is reallyimportant and incredibly helpful
.
So that's a that's the end ofthat chapter.
That's we're talking abouttoday, and I just thought that
was so interesting.
It's fun to already have anidea about improv versus
scripting.
And then this, this random, youknow, video experience sort of
(54:30):
happened that was really relatedto that, which I thought was
super cool.
So thank you so much forlistening.
As always, if you havesomething you want to share, if
you want to either sharesomething scripted or or improv,
you can go to highmanamistomcomand click little button says
leavea message for the show andwe can include you in a future
episode.
Of course, episode five of theseason will be the Q&A episode,
(54:52):
as always, but you don't have towait until then.
If you want to send something,send something anytime or you
can email tom atenthusiasmprojectcom.
So, with that being said,really appreciate you listening,
really appreciate you giving meyour time on my unscripted semi
outlined episode here and Ihope you have a safe, happy,
healthy rest of your week and Iwill see you next time you.
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