- What's going on?
So today is day 7 of daily blogging and,
I'm just going to say it,
I'm so glad today's my last day of doing it,
I'm glad I didn't decide to go do it
for a month or whatever.
By the way,
do you guys like my arm?
(grunts) I got my cast removed a few days ago.
(grunts) That's how much I can move my arm right now.
Hello!
But I'm in the process of
stretching it out every single day,
trying to get my range of motion to be a little bit more,
and hopefully soon enough I can just
karate chop with both arms.
Oh my God I can actually touch my face!
This is great, yesterday I couldn't.
But look,
oh, I can touch my nose, this is great news guys!
(laughs)
Anyways as most of you already know,
I'm not a complete noob to vlogging,
I've done it before,
especially if I have something interesting going on,
if I'm traveling.
But daily vlogging is on a whole other level.
And after watching vlogs by you know,
people like Casey Neistat I was like,
hmm I wonder if I were to just start filming and
documenting my daily life.
Is my life interesting enough
to make a daily vlog that people would watch?
I quickly realized the answer is no!
(laughs)
My life is boring as hell compared to most vloggers.
But I definitely learned a whole lot by just
trying to daily vlog for a week.
I think one of the things that's very valuable
to identify early on is,
what kind of content is interesting to you and yourself,
and what kind of content is interesting to your audience?
So the first few days I was literally just filmimg
everything and I was trying to figure out okay,
what's going to make it in the vlog?
I don't know,
but I'm just going to film everything.
And there was a whole bunch of moments where I'm like,
"Oh this is a great moment that I think is interesting,"
and I looked at some of the other footage and said
"Oh this would actually be interesting
for my audience to see."
Oh dude you're in trouble now.
All right well this is a nice little studio,
I think we can make this work.
Like I did one shoot and to me it was a very,
very simple basic shoot in front of a green screen,
I never really thought about trying to vlog that shoot
because it wasn't that unique or interesting enough.
But now looking back on it,
maybe people are interested to see that kind of content.
See these pre-lit studios are awesome
because we just show up and,
all I'm going to do is probably just
adjust a few of these switches.
Having fun there?
- Yeah.
- (laughs)
This is what set life is actually like you just
shoot a little bit- - It's a bunch of waiting.
- And then you wait.
You shoot a little bit and you wait-
- But they do have sandwiches, so.
- That is true. - It's a plus.
- I am not dumb enough
to stand in front of this green screen
and give you guys access to that footage,
but Sam is!
(rhythmic dance music)
(laughs) Oh no you're in so much trouble!
(laughs)
(rhythmic dance music)
And the day before that we had to go to
the wardrobe shop to pick up costumes,
and to us it was just another chore that we had to do.
And then when we got there I realized,
there's not that many people that actually have seen
the inside of a costume shop so,
this might be kind of interesting to film.
(sighs) We just spent $1900 at a costume shop,
to rent like five different costumes.
- Five.
- And like two prop guns.
That's crazy if you think about it,
$1900 to rent it.
- Each segment will be about 10 seconds long.
Times five so about 50 seconds worth of content,
$1900 in costumes.
- That's super expensive because you can probably
buy a lot of this stuff
for the price they charge for the rental almost.
But the thing is,
it's nice because we just show up to one building
and they literally have
everything just right then and there.
They just literally brought out all the stuff
and they were like,
"This is how you put on the suit,
make sure you tuck in your
pants into your boot just like this and,
also here's how the props should be laid out,
make sure nothing's dangling."
So they're very much on top of that so that's pretty cool,
that probably makes it worth it for,
a producer like you to just show up and,
you don't have to do the leg work on
figuring out what kind of costumes.
They go "Okay this is your scene,
we're going to give you the appropriate props
and costumes to execute that scene."
One of the first things you should figure out is,
who are you making these vlogs for?
Are you going to make them for yourself
to have some of these videos to show
your kids and grandkids,
"This is what life was like before
everybody was a cyborg." (makes robot noises)
So halfway through filming my vlogs I decided
"Oh I'm just going to actually just
make these vlogs for myself,
I'm not going to put it out there publicly.
Everything just kind of shifted a little bit and,
I actually enjoyed it a whole lot more.
I wasn't necessarily
trying to come up with things that are
interesting just for the sake of the vlog.
I just started documenting daily things,
and it was awesome.
So if you're thinking about daily vlogging,
I would suggest starting off by just
making them for yourself,
to at least get started.
I felt that I was able to be a little bit more raw,
and everything felt a lot more genuine
because I felt like I was just being myself
opposed to trying to speak to a bunch of people and,
always wondering "what are they going to think
if I did this? What should I show?
What should I not show?"
It was just more like "Hey this is what's going on,
this is how I feel, this is what I'm doing,
this part of my life is going great,
this part of my life sucks."
For example one of the days the water heater went out
and also I had my cast on,
so I had to take a cold bath and
these are the type of things that
I'm glad I was daily blogging for that period of time
because that's a memory that
I probably would completely forget about
a few months out from now.
And it was funny and I'm glad I got to
capture that moment on camera.
But if your goal is to have Internet fame
and all that success that you see on some channels,
you will definitely have to make all the vlogs very
thoughtful and you have to constantly keep it fresh
and giving people a new perspective on something.
And all that is going to take a lot of mental effort to do,
and if your life isn't already interesting,
you're going to have to make it interesting
by going out of your way to do
things that will make good content.
One thing I did do before I even started YouTube
was this app called "One Second Every Day" and,
I'm not associated with them in any way,
but basically this app would make a sequence
and it would just pull one second out of every day.
And then after a year you'll have 365 seconds of footage,
one second from every single day.
And I loved that app,
I was just doing it purely for myself.
And I did that for years,
and it's so much fun looking back on that
just to see what was going on,
because now everything's just like a big blur.
Another thing that I think is also important
is to try to show not tell,
which is a very popular phrase
we hear about in the film industry,
is you don't want to tell a whole bunch of information.
You're on video,
you can show a lot and people can interpret it
and figure things out for themselves.
Which makes sense, right?
But naturally when I first started on day one,
I was like "Okay so today we're going to go and do this,
and then afterwards we're going to go to that,"
and I was just talking all these things through.
And then when I would go to the places to show it,
I would forget to film it.
So I was literally just telling not showing.
But you should try to do the opposite.
If you're going to go out and do something,
try to show that thing happening,
opposed to saying "I'm going to go do this.
I'm going to go do that next," blah, blah, blah.
Another thing I found very useful is to
edit as soon as possible.
The days I would go out
and just film a whole bunch of footage,
come back and drop it on my computer,
I was like "Aw man I have all this footage."
But then the days where I would
go out and film for a little bit then edit that bit,
then film a little bit more and edit that bit,
those were very, very smooth.
I think partially it was because it was so fresh,
I literally recorded it just an hour ago so
I remember every little detail,
and I know what I need to pick out of the shots.
But even just putting it off for a few hours or
until that evening,
it's surprising how much you forget what you recorded
so then you have to start watching through the footage
and forgetting about which one's the good take,
and which one's the bad take.
And the whole editing process,
you just have to remember that
you're going to be doing this every single day.
So you're not going to have a break,
every little task that you do in editing,
you want to streamline that as much as possible.
You just don't have the time to invest all this time
into every little step anymore.
Sometimes you're like "Oh the color grade is close enough,
let me just run with it."
Having a good solid music library helps,
and having your favorites marked down so you can just
(makes bloop noises)
I use Epidemic Sounds and Musicbed
those are the two I've been using,
and they're both really great.
What I like about Epidemic is they have a huge selection
and the majority of my music is under the category of
"Laid Back Hip-Hop",
if I select those two then most of my songs are from there,
especially background music.
The song that's playing in the background right now?
(relaxing hip-hop music)
See this song is from Epidemic.
It's nice, chill, laid back background music.
And then Musicbed is one that I
recently started trying out
and they actually have some really cool music.
Something that I would actually listen to
if it was playing on the radio.
So in the last couple videos,
whenever there was like an epic sequence,
I would always go to them for that music.
(adventurous percussive music)
If you're looking for a music service,
I would say go try them both out
and see which one sticks.
Links down in the description
for a free trial for both of them.
One thing I personally find to be very important,
at least for my vlogs,
is to try to keep things as real as possible.
Just keep it raw and keeping it real.
I'm not going to try to fluff up my life to make it look
wonderful in every way,
because that's, nobody's life is like that.
So I definitely made it an effort to
try to film when I wanted to,
but also when I didn't really want to.
It always sucks when this happens,
we went out to dinner and we came back and
she's got all this dirt on her face,
she's got this little patch of blood...
We came back home one day,
it looked like she had gotten bitten
by one of the other dogs and kind of beat up,
because her face was completely covered in dirt.
And that's definitely unusual for
one of our dogs to attack another,
but it has happened before.
And whenever it does it sucks,
so I filmed that process.
- She always looks like she did something.
- She always looks guilty no matter what,
she always looks like "Uh, uh sorry!"
Eventually I got on FaceTime with Kari
and she was like "Oh that's where her wart was,
she probably stuck her nose under the fence
and probably scraped off the wart
and got her face all dirty, she's probably fine."
And after thinking about it more it's like,
yeah, that's exactly what happened! (laughs)
So that ended up being a funny story.
But you know those types of things that are
real life issues I think is good to document.
- I'm sorry I accused you, Pita.
(laughs)
She was my prime suspect I'm like
"I knew it was you!"
(laughs)
- [KARI] Close your eyes! - Okay.
Kari just stopped by to say hi.
(chewing) Mmm!
- Do you know what it is?
- It was a gummy, it's like um,
Oh is it a Gusher?
- Yeah! (laughs) - Mmm, mmm, that is so good!
- I haven't had these- - Haven't had these in so long
- I know right?
- Great, now I have a bunch of stuff in my teeth now,
I can't get it out!
I think another thing that I found to be useful
is to try to figure out what your video is going to be about
whether it's the theme or idea the day before.
Because the tough part for me the first few days was
that I just literally filmed everything,
and I tried to assemble a vlog in editing
which was a pain.
But if I were to wake up and say "Oh today
will be a video about the costume shop and
let's try to get as much interesting content we can
about that costume shop, then that will be the video."
And one of the days I started filming on this
DJI Osmo Action,
I could have just made that into
an entire video for that day.
But instead I kind of played
with this camera for a little bit,
then I went to the costume shop for a little bit,
then I did this and that...
It just turned into a big mish-mash.
There was no real structure or
a theme that the video was about,
it was just, blah!
Cluster of events that happened,
that doesn't really tell a story or is not really
useful to the audience.
So that was definitely a big mistake I made,
it definitely helps to have your concept in mind
as early as possible so that you can develop
your vlog around that idea or concept as much as possible.
Finally I think one of the best parts about
daily vlogging,
is that you learn a whole lot about yourself.
Because it's one thing to
slightly think something in your head,
but then when you make the decision to
talk about it publicly to potentially thousands,
millions of people,
then you really have to believe in what you're saying.
Because usually I'll find myself saying something
and then I'll go back in my head and be like
"Are you sure you want to say this?
You definitely believe in what you're saying, right?
Yeah, positive? Okay, we'll go and say it." (laughs)
So things that you believe in strongly
will come out on your vlogs and,
that's another thing with daily vlogging is that,
you're filming yourself every single day so
you can't really pretend to be someone you're not.
At some point or another,
your true self will come out on camera,
and you can't hide that.
But if this was for Instagram,
I would totally be like (sighs) right now.
Take a photo! (sighs)
- [KARI] We (mumbles) candles and bubbles.
- Yeah,
as soon as you get the shot I'll just be back to like
(shivers) it's so cold!
Let's close this video out by reading a few comments
from my last video,
where I watch and show you guys some films I made
19 years ago!
Top comment was from DorzStream.
"Your After Effects in 2003 is better than mine in 2019."
(laughs) Actually my skills back in 2003
are probably better than my skills now!
Because I loved After Effects back then,
but now I'm just,
I'm lazy, that's, I just don't have the patience anymore.
It is super fun though,
every time I open it up it's like
"Oh man you can do all this and do all that",
but it's just, it takes a lot of time and patience.
Cody Leon says "Had After Effects
but yet still lit real fires, love it."
(laughs) There's nothing more fun than having
practical effects and blowing stuff up.
WEGO says "Curious,
how did you convince your friends to be set on fire?"
It honestly wasn't very difficult,
I think I just had the right friends,
I was like "Can I light you on fire?"
And they were like "No way are you crazy?"
"Come on, please?" And they'll be like
"Okay fine, let's do it." (laughs)
Sean C says "Potato Jet field trip in Mexico?
Yes please."
Ooh to fill everyone in on that,
I am going to Mexico near Cancun,
we're going to be staying in Playa del Carmen I believe,
in August.
So if there are still tickets
I will leave a link in the description
if you want to join us on this trip.
But if you go down in the description
and you don't see any links,
that means the tickets have sold out so,
maybe you can join us on the next one!
Anyways thanks for tuning in,
see you guys later!
(relaxing hip-hop music)