Youtube Thumbnails

Byjack

I originally thought about using the thumbnails as a way to create worlds with drawing in almost taking a children’s book approach using it to create the sort of imagination, curiousity, and creativity I always aim to create in my artwork.

On second thought I feel I need to photos for my thumnails for the most part. Creative photos that have mystery and intrigue and magic and emotion. But photos not just drawings.

I was looking at children’s book covers for inspiration and I realized that when I see a beautiful children’s book cover, I expect the inside to be filled with those beautiful illustrations.

I want the cover to be a photo to something related to what is in the video so that there people get the world that they are looking for inside the “pages” of my video. The thumbnail is like a cover for a book.

Here are some inspiration:

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Workpost 83: Making a Gaming Video

Byjack

Need to shoot a gaming video today

  1. “I got a bit of a dilemma”
  2. “This is my Valorant jacket. I got it when I watched the world championship in LA a year ago. I love playing Valorant.”
  3. “But this is the 21 day youtuber challenge”
  4. “I’ve yet to figure out how to connect those two passions together. But that changes today”
  5. “Hi everyone, my name is Jack, and this in the Youtuber challenge, the challenge where I post a video everyday, working not for views, but for the love of making videos”
  6. “There are a bunch of things I’m super passionate about, but haven’t figured out how to connect to a Youtube video yet. And one of those things is gaming.”
  7. “But here’s my problem with gaming. I like playing alone, I don’t like talking while I’m gaming, but I do feel like there are certain things I like to share after the game is done.”
  8. “Here is the plan. I have fun gaming. In between, I’ll do a little bit of journaling, and afterwards, I’ll just edit a video that is fun for me”

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Recap Video Ideas

Byjack

This is a recap of an exercise I did a few weeks ago. I was watching a ThinkMedia youtube video about how to succeed at youtube. He went through and exercise looking at 3 things in this order: passion, proficiency, and profit.

Basically, he said to make a list of all the things that you are passionate about, either things you like or things you hate, and things you do even if you weren’t getting paid to do it.

My list was:

  1. Making money
  2. Finding leverage
  3. Valorant
  4. Corporate life (hate)
  5. Coaching
  6. Challenges
  7. Superhuman abilities
  8. Graphic novels
  9. Children’s books, fantasy
  10. Health
  11. AI
  12. Surface level thinking (hate)

Then, he said to take that list of things and think about what we have at least 1 year of proficiency in, where we have been doing that thing semi-successfully. So I narrowed down my list to:

  1. Making money
  2. Valorant
  3. Feeling stuck in life
  4. Deeper thinking
  5. Coaching
  6. Health
  7. AI

Then, he said to narrow down that further into things that we could build an audience around, something people need or would want to buy. Here was my list:

  1. How to get started with a business
  2. How to aim
  3. How to get unstuck in life
  4. How to unlock your potential
  5. How to repair your body
  6. How to use AI to improve your life

I don’t know if I have any interest pursuing youtube in this way, but it was an interesting exercise to reflect on.

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Workpost 7: New AI Consulting Plan

Byjack

Okok. After working on my AI Consulting Plan for a few days, something is really fucking clear to me (excuse my French).

I need more than 10 days to make a name for myself. I am going to need 3 months. Videos are the absolute best way to make a name for myself. However, videos take absolutely forever to create.

So let us give us enough time to make them.

Goal: Be known, give preview of consulting

UNIT ONE (1 month): Build a crowd who will engage with anything I put out

  • Shoot 3 simple videos
  • Shoot 3 complex videos
  • Write 6 LinkedIn posts
  • Involve people every step of the way

UNIT TWO (1 month): Get people to start reaching out to me with AI questions

  • Create reaction videos to comments
  • Create videos based off on comments

UNIT THREE 1 month): Get big enough following to invite famous people on my videos

  • Figure out the platform I can get big on
  • Post on it consistantly

BONUS (1 day): Look for automation/outsourcing, try to make as low effort as possible

Ok let’s dive in deeper.

UNIT ONE (1 month ends March 22nd)

  1. Planning and setting up artifacts for videos (10 days ends March 2nd)
  2. Executing, shooting and editing (10 days ends March 12th)
  3. Feedback and editing for bigger videos (10 days ends March 22nd)

And even deeper….

UNIT ONE | Part 1 Planning and setting up artifacts for videos (10 days ends March 2nd)

  1. Create plans for each of the videos (4 days ends Feb 25th)
    • What videos I want to shoot (already done)
    • What those videos will look like in the intro (partly done)
    • What clips I need
    • What research I need
    • Who I need to talk to
    • When I need it by – figure out shooting schedule
    • How to break down each of the ideas into smaller content
  2. Figure out how to shoot each video (3 days ends Feb 28th)
    • Break down as much of the video as I can
    • If needed, come up with an imaginary best case scenario story just to know what shots I need
    • Solidify shooting schedule
    • Reach out to the people I need to reach out to
  3. Shoot preliminary non-essential parts of video (3 days ends March 2nd)
    • Shoot any part that I can that don’t require other people
    • Essentially get started with filming
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New Coaching Instagram Page

Byjack

I had a really rough day today. I woke up at 4:30 AM in order to get to the airport and fly to Houston. Coming back I hit so much traffic, my uber took almost 2 hours and I was late for my flight by 2 minutes. Luckily, there was no one in line for security, I blazed through, ran to the gate and somehow they hadn’t departed yet.

While I was in the car for 2 hours seeing the time tick down and knowing that I was probably going to miss my flight, probably get on the next one, be stuck in the airport for another two hours, and get home at around 10 PM, I tried to make the best of my bad situation. I thought about my Instagram page for coaching, specifically posts and videos.

I had some ideas for the posts, having a dark gray background with a simple serif font. Also, I was thinking about doing some digital painting for my posts.

The videos were a little bit harder.

I stopped making the reminder videos because I felt so stuck and frustrated with them and I wanted to use connection theory to come up with some solutions.

I think there are a bunch of steps in the video-making process: shooting, editing, and final polish. Each has its own challenges and solutions that came to me.

Shooting

This is hard because I felt a lot of anxiety and overthinking about saying the right thing, and coming off as clear and interesting. Using connection theory, I felt that what I needed is to focus less on the words that I am saying and focus more on evoking feelings through my delivery (my voice and my expressions). They say when someone is talking, verbal queues (literally what they are saying) is only 10% of communication and non-verbals (your tone of voice, inflection, facial expressions) account for 90%. I want to really focus next time not on what I say, but how I say it. Also, I want to try spending something feeling into the reminder and shooting broll that evokes it in a non-verbal way. In general, I want to focus on non-verbals more.

Editing

This is hard because there is a lot of overwhelming decisions that I face at this stage. I am conflicted with staying true to what I originally shot vs any new visions on how to convey my thoughts. I feel often that I avoid emotions or lose touch of emotions just looking at the transcript without hearing the delivery and when I hear the delivery I am conflicted on what to cut out or change. I often feel the original work is no longer recognizable afterwards. I feeling into connection theory, I felt that fear dominated my ability to think, feel, and be creative and I’m thinking about using the law of contradictory intentions by “trying” to be unclear, trying to make no sense.

Final Polish

I didn’t think about this too much because it isn’t really a challenge except for maybe logistically (takes a long time). i was thinking about using the syllabus method, or batch a bunch of videos for the weekend to finalize and publish.

A quick silly example of what this might look like:

  1. Reminder: Today’s reminder is to eat chocolate
  2. Shooting: Focus on how to deliver the words. “Chocolate…mmmm. We want to crunch it!” Shoot broll of breaking chocolate. Of inhaling the chocolate smell.
  3. Editing: Try to make it a bad video.
  4. Editing: Try to find a song that doesn’t fit.
  5. Polish: Add it to a queue with instructions on what needs to be done to finish it off.
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Finding the First People On Social Media

Byjack

I had a thought today. I have a friend on Instagram who has a handle @theirname1. I was wondering who got the handle without the number at the end. I was thinking, they cannot be that old since Instagram itself is not that old. And why stop there…why not look at the people who old the handles for the most common names? Like who owns @bob? Or @john or @mary? Do famous or rich people ever buy those handles or are they owned just by early adopters?

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Editing Youtube Videos: Rediscovering the Inner Artist

Byjack

I have been struggling with making videos for some time. I feel that a video isn’t perfect, I immediately get very stressed out. I don’t know whether to refilm or not, I don’t know what to do with the existing footage.

Here is a process that I came up with when sitting with the feelings for a bit:

  1. Acknowledge that part of you that feels that things are missing or could have been said better by coming up with ideas for a new video to shoot (that might be almost the same or different)
  2. Feel the feelings of discomfort in feeling not perfect, slow down, nothing else is important
  3. Search for what the video wants to be, just like searching for beauty in the world to paint
  4. Focus on the areas that are most clear or exciting to you.
  5. Paint in broad brushstrokes, you don’t need the best takes at first, just focus on laying down the footage so you can see the context of how everything relates to each other
  6. Develop the video around the areas that are most clear and start to fill out the details
  7. Focus on the transitions

While we are at it, maybe I can think of ideas for how I can approach filming a video:

  1. Come up with a short writeup on what feels like the right flow
  2. Come up with some concepts of what the shoot will look like
  3. Set up the shoot and lighting
  4. Do three takes, first take is a direct recitation of the script, but as the takes go on, let the video become what it wants to become

Or just do step 4 and call it a day. You don’t need a script, you don’t need a plan.

I wonder a lot sometimes on when I should make a video and when I should just restart (like in art). I think there is no right answer, but making a “mediocre” video is not for the artform of Youtube, it is because I am learning Youtube. Anything you want to learn will have many imperfect tries to succeed.

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Drafting out My Disclaimer

Byjack

Intro goal:

  • Create a disclaimer for my hot takes channel
  • Make people understand why I’m doing what I’m doing
  • Make it ok for people to disagree and debate

It is important to talk about controversial issues because controversial issues are controversial because they are important issues. I have strong opinions and will say exactly what I mean and be very direct. I am not an expert on everything. I can be wrong and you can disagree with me. I might also change my mind, this is just what I believe right now.

Outro goal:

  • Get them thinking deeper
  • Get engagement

What came up for you during this video? What is your hot take? Add to the conversation in the comments sections below. I read everything.

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What I Want My Job To Be

Byjack

I think a lot of people have it wrong when they look to people for guidance. We look for the rich, the successful, the types of people who made a million dollars and are now flaunting it with expensive cars, watches, and parties, and beautiful women almost saying, “you want this? I can show you how to get it”.

But the truth is that no one wants that, even though they think they might want it. People want to know the truth of things. They want to know how to live, how to love, and how to lose. They want to learn how to see beauty, find joy and feel sadness. They want to find meaning, feel like they are special, and that they are exploring the world like we did when we were kids. There is nothing wrong with money, but it was once just a tool, and now it has become the goal.

The people who got the closest to the answer are not businessmen, but artists. Is it not the music of musicians, the books of authors, the paintings or painters, and the films of filmmakers that are often the most profound teachers of life?

This is why I’ve always sought creation, youtube, and art out much more than success. This is why creators like Mr. Beast (though more well meaning than some creators disgust me with their materialism).

I’ve decided that THIS is the job I want. I want the hard job of creating. Creating art, music, writing, and videos. Creating something that will help people reach the deep ideas in life, but also simplify things to the sensations we feel and guide us back to being kids in the present moment.

I’ve always felt like some things in life feel like a damn waste of time. I always wonder what work is worth doing for me, something that I feel I was meant to do, and what feels not worth it for me.

I always knew it was understanding life, working through my traumas and understanding how to make life magic. But I never was so clear on what the work was.

I want to serve as more than just an artist but a speaker, a coach, someone who can explain the art in logical and easily understandable ways. I don’t want to be studying to be a coach. I want to be studying life, living it, exploring it, touching it. I want my coaching to be a collaboration in the enterprise of spreading this practice of understanding deeper truths in life and finding true purpose. The kind of purpose you feel when you hear a song you love, the kind of clarity when you read something profound.

And when I get money. Lots of money. I will just continue to create. Organizations, experiences, works of art.

Elements of my enterprise:

  1. Creating art coloring life (comics, paintings, writings, etc.)
  2. Live streaming/videos on creation/techniques/challenges/stories
  3. Discussing works of art that color life
  4. Creating guides on how to live/succeed/understand
  5. Speaking on practical topics/problems/challenges
  6. Coaching on developing color in life
  7. Creating events that color life

*When I say “color life”, I mean the feeling of deep conversations, connecting with childlike wonder, being in the moment and feeling the feelings, being spontaneous, taking risks, and finding silence and simplicity. But why explain it? Listen to it down below.