So we’ve reached 250,000 subscribers and we’re just getting started.
For those maybe wondering why there’s an episode coming out and it isn’t Thursday,
today marks SFIA reaching 250,000 subscribers.
Of course this episode was made in advance and I suppose there’s a 1 in 7 chance it
is a Thursday and we’ve got a bonus episode for the day.
It’s been about a year since we celebrated reaching 100,000 subscribers, and it seemed
like we should commemorate 250k as well, but I wasn’t too sure what we should talk about.
We already did a biographical episode for 100k, and I’ll link that episode too, but
I’m not really a fan of biography, especially autobiography, so doing a repeat or going
into more detail seemed the wrong direction.
We also considered doing a behind the scenes look at the channel, and we will do a bit
of that too, but unlike a traditional TV show or movie we don’t have outtakes or interviews
with the actors or shots of stunts and special effects to show.
I get asked a lot how I make the episodes, what the process is, and my usual reply is
that I sit down at my computer with a cup of coffee, and tap away at the keyboard for
several hours, interrupted with breaks to get more coffee or play with my cats.[a] There’s
a little more to it than that, for instance I’ll sometimes pause to vent my brain by
playing some game or answering some correspondence, which explains how I am now on level 1301
of Candy Crush Soda Saga [b]and why I’m much more active on our Facebook group than
our Reddit or Twitter accounts.
I’ve gotten better about posting to Reddit the last year, and even did an AMA a few weeks
back at r/Space, but for twitter I still mostly just reply to direct messages and have a volunteer
who helps with regular posting.
Twitter’s enforced brevity doesn’t work well for me since I usually need a couple
paragraphs just to say hello.
There is obviously a lot more to making an episode than me just sitting at a desk, and
folks often ask me for advice on how to start their own channels too, which is something
I’m pretty passionate about encouraging.
There’s so much talent out there and not nearly enough quality material, and I think
a lot of potentially great creators are out there but unsure how to do it and nervous
of trying.
So I thought maybe we’d take this approach to things for today.
I’ve a lot of folks to thanks and as we go through this I’ll be putting their names
up on screen and some abridged bios for those of them who let me, many of course value their
privacy too.
I’ll start by saying that we never work on a single episode at a time anymore, I’d
mostly stopped doing that even before we started collecting volunteers to help on them.
As I write this I’ve just finished up an interview with my Friend Fraser Cain of Universe
Today, in a couple days our April 27th episode of Alien Beacons will come out, and I have
just started the script for the first episode of June, which will be one of our book of
the month episodes and I’ve been exchanging emails with its author today.
I don’t know when this episode will come out, but am guessing late May or early June.
Throughout writing it I’ll be taking pauses to record the fourth episode of May [c]and
work on the video overlays for the first episode of May[d], and tabbing back and forth to see
what script changes to the last episode of May have been suggested and messing around
with some of development blog and audio drama scripts for Hades 9, the game I consult for
that we see a lot of footage from in episode.
We just work on a lot of things simultaneously.
Every episode takes a lot of prep time so we need to work on more than one at a time.
They all have a beginning of course.
Some place where the episode originates.
Sometimes one gets spawned because a script I have been working on doesn’t feel complete,
and so it gets divided into two parts so we can spend more time on it.
Sometimes, we collaborate with another channel, and I get on the phone with them and we kick
around ideas till we find the right one.
Occasionally there’s a book I want to cover and I pick a topic and theme appropriate to
it and our channel.
Sometimes someone just leaves a suggestion in one of the comments and my brain locks
onto it.
However the two most common ways are polls or bouncing ideas around the Production Group,
the private facebook group where we do all our plotting and planning for episodes.
I typically split the polls between our main Facebook Group and Patreon, and usually while
we always do whoever came in #1, we’ll do at least a few others that came up high on
the poll.
At that point, I try to ask myself, before doing any other research, could I sit down
and talk about this for half an hour, right now?
If the answer is no, the episode goes into what I call my cold storage queue, a big list
of possible topics that would easily keep me busy for another decade to come, and which
I occasionally review for possible episodes as circumstances change.
While we often do a lot of research after picking a topic, I will not do an episode
I feel I need to further research to discuss competently.
I feel I really need to know a topic and have a good idea what we’ll cover in it before
it gets greenlit.
Often that changes, as we delve into topics before writing them and scripts go out the
window and get re-started, or have whole sections added or removed during drafting, but I feel
very firmly that if I’m not confident about a topic and interested enough in it to discuss
it for half an hour from the beginning, then it’s not one I should do, at least at that
time.
Sometimes at this point I’ll do an outline, or brainstorm with some of the folks who help
edit the scripts, but often I just go ahead and do a first draft.
I’d say probably about a third of our scripts get written the day I decide on a topic and
make it through editing with only minor alteration, where I just sat down and started typing until
I felt done.
Many others will get re-written one or more times before anyone else ever sees them.
When they do though, I post them up as a google doc and send links in for others to view and
comment.
I usually try to leave them up there for at least a week of commentary, though occasionally
I’ll decide one needs to just be killed and re-written.
That commentary can be anything from spelling and grammar fixes to discussion about the
science and bits we can add or trim, to entire page re-writes and while you’ll often see
in episode credits someone else listed with me as writer, rather than editor.
The one you’ll probably see the most is Mark Warburton, who I rely on very heavily
for both his science and writing skills, but there’s a couple dozen folks who regularly
help in this capacity as their time and skills permit and they run the spectrum from being
experts in a field to just very good with writing and phrasing or grammar, some I know
well and others I literally do not know their real name.
We don’t really have to worry about spoilers and leaked scripts so when someone expresses
an interest in helping out I’m only too glad for it.
And google docs, once folks get used to commenting-mode, is an amazing way to collaborate on documents.[e]
We do very occasionally do Skype chats for brainstorming but not nearly as much as I’d
like, I keep meaning to set up more regular ones, particularly after seeing how well that
works for the Discord server my friends at Legion Tech Studios have for Hades 9, but
I haven’t quite yet figured out how to do that, or even properly use it, and when I
do I will set one up for the channel too.[f] Sadly a lot of projects get put on the backburner,
if I’m not too sure the best way to do them and have to rely on other folks who have limited
time to work on volunteer projects.
A SFIA wikia has been in-progress for around a year now, and our website always has planned
changes we keep not getting done, in spite of valiant efforts by Apollo and Ventislav
since Luis had to leave us for time limitations.
Skilled people tend to be busy people, you can grab them sometimes if they have a spell
of inactivity but they will tend to get busy again soon.
And of course we’re always looking for a hand on these to get them rolling, or to help
moderate comments here or on facebook or reddit.
Folks move on and I always like to encourage them to get what they can out of the experience
to do their own projects.
Those moderators on our facebook group are possibly the most overworked of all and never
get thanked in the credits, but have been absolutely vital in making that such a busy
and friendly polite place to share ideas.
One of those mods and editors left us under the saddest circumstances last October, Travis
Wright, who passed away at age 29, he was with us almost from the beginning and he is
greatly missed.
An awful lot of folks put a lot their time and passion into helping out here and making
this channel the great success we are celebrating today and I never thank them enough, nor in
truth could I.
At some point of course we complete our script editing and move on to record.
There was always a lot of debate in the early days if I should have someone else narrate
instead of me, though it was mostly me arguing that I should get a narrator and others saying
no, keep doing them myself.
The most important purpose of the channel is to share ideas in an easy to understand
way, and many folks have no problem with my impediment but many do, and for me that was
unacceptable in the long term.
In the end I decided to accept that with a caveat, I’d gotten some good convincing
evidence my speech impediment was fixable and found a group that did online therapy
via webcam.
I’ve had tons of therapy in the past when I was young, all of it a failure, but things
change.
I decided I would try it for two months and evaluate if I’d gotten better and could
see a path to major improvement, it’s interesting in hindsight because the channel was teetering
on the edge right there.
I’d decided if the answer was no I would get a narrator, looking back, I think that
would have been a bad move and probably seen the channel stop.
I’ve been at it for around 9 months now doing a few sessions a week and still have
a long way to go.
The accent, whatever it is and no one has ever figured it out, is here to stay, nor
do I have any desire to get rid of it to be honest, it’s too much a part of me, but
I’m confident I’ll have the impediment gone by the end of the year.
Recording those narrations is probably more time consuming than folks think, and the editing
even longer, it’s probably about 20% of total production time.
For those who are curious, while I’ve used a lot of different microphones, I switched
over to using what’s known as a condenser mic about a year and a half ago and my recommendation
for anyone wanting to try their hand at it is to grab a cardoid condenser microphone
if you’re recording while sitting and reading from a script like I do.
Good mics and audio setups can run hundreds or even many thousands of dollars but you
can get some pretty cheap but good ones for about 30 bucks, complete with pop filter and
scissor arm, that will plug right into a USB port and can be recorded and edited with Audacity,
a free program that’s among the best.
You can always upgrade later but when you’re just starting out, keep it simple and cheap.
At that point I export the finished file as wav and upload it to my google drive, and
then export is as a MP3 for our narration-only version of the episodes on Soundcloud and
iTunes.
I then share that with the production group and Luca De Rosa, who has been helping on
the channel in a lot of ways for over a year now but has taken on the role of music manager
recently.
He picks out the music we use for episodes nowadays and these days we mostly try to limit
our selections to musicians he and I have gotten to know.
There are a lot of great musicians out there who make their work freely available for people
like me to use, and to who I am very grateful, and indeed in some cases gotten to know, but
we’ve also been reached out to by a lot of folks in the audience who are composers
who’ve lent their music to us or even composed songs just for the channel.
One of the most awesome things about running this channel is constantly finding out just
how much diverse talent there is among the audience.
We contemplate some pretty awesome and deep topics here so I shouldn’t be surprised
to encounter so many impressive and creative minds among the viewers, but I’m always
amazed at the quality of some of the engagement I get.
At this point, usually about a month before the episode airs, it goes to the back burner
to simmer for a while.
We need graphics to accompany these ideas, most of which simply do not exist, they have
to be made, and this is mostly when that happens, though work often begins as soon as an episode
gets scheduled.
For those of you who aren’t too familiar with graphics, even one 10 second clip can
take a whole work day to put together and days or weeks for it to render even on powerful
computers.
We could never produce enough for a whole episode every week, so of course we have to
reuse clips a lot and supplement heavily from public domain sources like NASA or Pixabay
and stock footage houses.
Our usual approach is for the topic or a bit of the script or narration to suggest an animation
to one of our artists and them to do it and send it to me, and I am always grateful for
any new animation or large image I can pan and zoom around.
I do ask folks to put their signature or watermark on them these days though, as it’s very
hard to keep track of who did which or if I used them in an episode.
Nobody gets paid for this so it’s doubly important to me that they get the credit they
deserve, and that’s best done right on the animation.
I do still do some animations myself, you can usually tell those because they’re not
very nice, and I use a software called Blender for that, which is also free though has a
steep learning curve.
However there are some awesome tutorials on Youtube for that.
For overall graphics, every artist uses the software they work best with.
Once those graphics are in, and Luca sends me the musical score for the episode, I go
to work on the video itself.
I normally avoid saying what software I use for this as I don’t like to endorse anything
that’s not free but I’ve never found a good free software for video production.
If folks have suggestions for any, let me know, because the lower the cost of getting
a channel started, the more folks will give it a try.
Often those free softwares are very good, for instance I still use Paint.net for creating
most of my non-animated visuals However the one I do use most of the time
is fairly cheap and straightforward to use, Pinnacle Studios Ultimate, and if you’re
curious I usually work with 6 layers, bottom two for the music and narration, top for text,
and the others for the main visuals.
It is always a good idea to have one more layer than you typically use.
There’s a lot more to this than just slapping a video clip on the timeline but you can do
it that way and you pick up a lot of tricks with practice.
Then I render it, which happens a lot faster nowadays with the very upgraded computer donations
have allowed me to acquire.
By default I go for a MPEG-4, 25 fps, 1080p render.
One day we may upgrade to 4k, but right now we have a hard enough time even getting 1080p
graphics and often we use 720p or even lower.
I also knock out a copy of the audio-only with the music on it, and both it and the
narration only version both get uploaded to Soundcloud and iTunes, I often forget to mention
those during episodes, but yes there’s audio-only versions as mp3 for free download.
At that point we review it, and a big thanks to Keith Blockus who seems to have a knack
for catching errors.
Typically this is also when Jakub Grygier does the cover art for the episode too, and
he deserves a special mention, as the very first to volunteer here and he’s been turning
out beautiful work for the channel since early in the second season.
Sometimes we have to re-render episodes for errors or glitches, occasionally one is minor
enough we decide to let it slide or we miss one.
Whenever we have an error we pin it up at the top of the comments on a video, we used
to do those as on-screen annotations but Youtube removed that feature.
Errors happen, and please don’t hesitate to point one out if you see one, I consider
it a favor.
I should also note that every episode is up on Bitchute too, and while I do always send
take down notices to folks who reupload my work to youtube or other places, usually crammed
full of ads and with the credits removed, you are absolutely welcome to download them
for home use, schools, presentations, and so on.
My only request is that you make it clear where it came from so other folks can find
us.
We do lose out on some advertising money that way, but I don’t really use ads much here
in favor of donations, sponsors, and relying on volunteers.
The sponsors are a new thing since we did the 100k special, and if anyone is wondering
we get lots of offers for that and I’m very picky.
The turndown rate is about 98%.
It’s important to me that the content be freely and easily available to everyone and
I don’t personally like ads on the front end, hence why I do sponsor messages at the
end of episodes right before the schedule and credit roll.
I also like being able to pick what’s running, I’ve nothing against car ads but they’re
not a very logical match for SFIA, whereas a science fiction novel obviously is and we’ve
been recommending novels since the outset of the channel.
I also don’t like the idea of the channel being dependent on Youtube for everything,
and that served us well during last year’s Adpocalypse that killed a lot of good channels.
We mostly run on donations on Patreon and by paypal, and those folks have been very
generous and I don’t like asking folks for more.
Plus it’s good to diversify if you want to last, and we are here to stay.
A really big part of that is getting to interact with all the folks who come here, and that
would be my last bit of advice for anyone considering jumping into the game themselves.
You have to earn your audience’s respect and if you’re doing that right, they will
have earned yours in the process.
They are where you’ll get the comments that keep you inspired to go back to work, and
it is a lot of work.
They will give the ideas that fuel future episodes, help you find the errors and things
to improve for future episodes, they will disagree with you so you don’t get a big
head.
They’re the ones taking their time to watch your work, and they deserve your eyes and
ears when they’ve something to say, you owe them that and you will be repaid ten times
over for it too.
You just keep at it, and keep trying to improve a little more with each episode, you never
phone it in and always give it your all, and they will help you with that.
I hope I have not painted too boring or arduous a picture of the channel and making episodes
today, and given some folks an idea how we do it here and how they can too, if they want
to.
In the end, all I can say is that the last few years of doing this have been among the
most enjoyable and rewarding of my life.
I look forward to doing it for many years to come, and I hope you’ll stay with me
for that journey.
As always, thanks for watching, and we’ll see you Thursday!