Random Thoughts - September 12th 2023: Becoming a better YouTuber
Hello! I’ve been meaning to write a new blog post for a while, but have been too busy, and when I say too busy, I mean couldn’t be bothered. Well, that and I’ve had a minor case of Covid-19, typical, everyone gets it in 2020 when it was trendy and I get it three years later when no one cares!
Ok, so the first thing I’ve been up to is recording a hour-long playthrough of a Christian bible game called ‘Gate Zero’. This isn’t usually my sort of game, in fact I don’t think I’ve played any religious games, but something about Gate Zero appealed to me. You play Max, a time traveller who goes back to Jerusalem in the year 33AD at Passover.
I was hoping to meet Jesus in the game, but got stuck on trying to solve the riddle and gave up. I’m definitely going to check the full game out once I get my new PC, as you can probably see, the FPS in the video was pretty horrible. Anyway, I was quite proud of the thumbnail, I tried to actually put some effort in with this thumbnail, I spent quite a while carefully cutting around my head and shoulders, I think it looks OK. I’m definitely going to try and put more effort into my videos and thumbnails from now on.
My FTB Infinity Evolved series continues, latest episode is 19, I think I might stop the series at episode 26, or just do episodes sporadically from then on. I don’t know whether to continue playing the world into 2024. I wish I had more time to commit to Minecraft. I do have quite a long list of things I need to do, so I shouldn’t be running out of ideas just yet.
Grim Dawn news! I am planning a new series of videos all about the Dawn of Masteries mod! I think I will be choosing a mastery at random each week and then playing through most of act 1 to get an idea of the mastery and its abilities. If Ilike the mod, I think I might try and play every mastery in the mod! It would be nice to get back into Grim Dawn.
Again, I’m going to try and put some effort into these videos I might use some royalty free music, voice overs, etc.
Oh, I almost forgot! Crate have announced a new DLC coming in 2024 for Grim Dawn - Fangs of Asterkarn! There’s also a new patch coming shortly, I just hope they update Dawn of Masteries for it, otherwise I won’t be able to play and there is no way to NOT get automatically patched on Steam!
I recently bought a game called ‘My Summer Car’ on Steam after watching tons of videos about it on YouTube. It’s such a cool and funny game (and only 800MB in size!!!), I thought it might be nice to make a series or just a one-off video about it on my channel. You are basically a young guy in Finland alone in his parents house and the goal of the game is to build a car from scratch and race it in the local rally.
I’ve watched some really good playthroughs by people such as Robbaz, Squirrel, SpyCakes, SpeirsTheAmazingHD and Daggerwin. There’s even a Finnish guy, Klapa who has so far recorded 1141 episodes of the game!
Yeah, definitely expect a few MSC videos in the near future!
I have recently been taking notes and watching lots of videos about YouTube, thumbnail design, the algorithm, speaking on camera, writing good titles and video editing in DaVinci Resolve.
I’ve currently identified the following areas I need to improve:
- Start right into the content THEN introduce self/content of video (No boring long intros)
- Be more energetic and relax and breathe
- When speaking on webcam, look TO the webcam more
- Scrap the calls to action
- Make sure music isn’t too loud (or quiet!) - err on side of quieter
- Stop doing outros with calls to action! Leave audience satisfied, wanting more
- Try to write and memorise scripts, read in head scripts, revise them if they sound off
- Try to spend more time making and editing videos
- Design better thumbnails, avoid too much text, use contrasting BG/FG, use face reaction photos
- Relate content of title to thumbnail, compel viewer to watch
- Use sites like pixabay and Pexels for stock footage/SFX/music/photos
This means I’m going to try and apply these to my current two series, WoW and FTB. No more boring, long-winded intros, just straight into the action, and no predictable end with calls to action, I will have to think how to do that.
Apart from that stuff, I was thinking about finally taking the plunge and going XLR with my microphone. That means getting an audio interface and I’ve basically got it down to three devices - the Focusrite Scarlett Solo 3rd gen (has XLR connection on front which I don’t like), the Scarlett Solo 4th gen (has them on the back) and the Vocaster One, which seems ideal for people like me who just want to get using an XLR mic in OBS ASAP.
I’m still going to get a SM7B eventually, probably if/when I hit 500 subs, that can be my goal. Oh yes, YouTube has lowered its requirements to become a partner, you now only need 500 subs to become eligible!
One more YouTube/streaming related thing! I am thinking of getting a green screen, I am currently experimenting with an OBS plugin called Background Remover, but it’s not perfect, in fact it refuses to recognise my headphones when I’m wearing them and looks generally very sloppy (see WoWCrendor’s videos), so I think I might get myself an Elgato green screen and just chroma key the background out, hopefully saving on CPU usage and RAM. I’m just worried that the lighting might not be good enough in my room, might have to get some floor light to hine onto the green screen when I’m recording.
Right, I’m off, see you in the next blog post! Subscribe to my YouTube channel!
PS: Diablo III season 29 starts this Friday I think, fucking hell, there’s a lot to do! Thanks for reading watch the below video!