My plan for my Digital Artefact was always for it to be a YouTube channel. I Knew from the beginning of the semester that I wanted to make some form of commentary channel but wasn’t sure what yet. By the end of the semester, my DA was planned out to be a commentary channel focused on niche internet trends, topics and cultures.
I found that when looking at channels such as Strange Aeons and Drew Gooden, these types of videos were very popular and entertaining, and I thought that these videos would be relatively fun and easy to make. I also thought that discussing internet niches such as these may help to draw in more interest in these topics from others who may not have heard about them before.
After looking at how popular these videos were, I decided to make comedy-based videos discussing a range of topics, such as ARG’s, strange subreddits and other YouTube channels. By combining comedy with a broad explanation of these topics, my audience would find my videos interesting and entertaining.
Video production was kept relatively simple. I filmed the videos on my phone and then edited them with iMovie. As I didn’t personally have any recording equipment such as lighting or external microphones, I didn’t plan to use any at the time.
Before planning to make broader commentary videos, I had initially wanted to focus solely on gaming commentary. I decided that my first video in this genre would be to discuss why the game Minecraft had recently experienced a sudden spike in popularity. However, when I began to look into the topic, realised that many people had already made that exact video, in styles similar to how I had planned to make mine. The difference was that the production quality of those videos was better than what I would be able to do. I didn’t want to create content that had already been done several times over, and so switched to making videos on varying topics.
The next video I decided to make was meant to discuss the ARG channel, Dad. At the time, however, some personal issues had left me feeling pretty down. It wasn’t until I looked back over the footage that I had recorded that I realised how the video would have seemed to viewers. In all the footage I had recorded of myself, I appeared to be upset and looked as if I didn’t want to be making the video, which eventually lead to me scrapping it entirely. I realised that I would have to be in a batter headspace before trying to make comedic content.
This lead to me making a video where I unboxed some strange products that I had bought off of Wish. I didn’t account for the background noise when I was filming, and it’s pretty prominent throughout the video. I also had to shoot late in the day, and so the video lighting was too dark. I also somehow accidentally disabled the comments for this video, but fortunately, somebody left feedback on Twitter:
This essentially reaffirmed the significant issues with video, and I realised that while the concept of my channel was on the right track, I needed to focus on improving the video quality.
Sources
Dad: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFzpLhfgdPPVJ_7YrVO-GSw
Drew Gooden: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTSRIY3GLFYIpkR2QwyeklA
Lani Evergrine: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzTBJJgEO744HLVl-osVKpw
2019, A Bunch Of Weird Stuff I Bought On Wish, online video, 2 October, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrfTWvPXm-8&t=5s
Strange Aeons: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheUglyOtaku
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