By the time this video goes live,
this YouTube channel will be
almost exactly six years old.
I started it in mid-August, 2016.
And given that lately, I have been wanting
to experiment more with my content,
a little bit reflective on the content
I've been doing lately,
I thought it might be fun to take a look back
at some of my older videos to see sort of
how we got here and possibly share with you,
some of the things I've learned along the way.
So I've got the "Gerald Undone" YouTube channel
up here and let's sort the videos
by Date Added oldest.
Oh God.
Okay. (laughs)
Some of these are rough.
Okay. So let's start with the very first video.
Now this was in the era of my videos
where I thought
the video didn't need to look good.
Hey everybody, so today I wanted to talk
about light and how it pertains to making videos.
I've seen a lot of videos on YouTube in which,
it didn't seem like there was really
much thought put into lighting now.
(laughs)
The irony of that.
Oh man. (laughs)
It didn't seem like there was much
thought put into lighting here either, boss.
Also, it's funny how (laughs) prominent
that T-shirt is.
Like, I find I'm looking more...
It almost looks like it's superimposed the text,
that it's not actually on my body,
but like on the video,
like annotation or something.
Maybe just a little bit of information involving
how to light their shots a little bit better.
(laughs) Did you see that edit?
That is probably the worst joining
of a jump cut I've ever done in my entire life.
I guess I thought that if I somehow,
like on the exhale of one
and the inhale of the other, blended it there,
that it would just sound like one breath.
But, instead it sounds like I'm hyperventilating.
And I was like, "Yeah, that's good."
(breathing)
We'll keep that in.
And you can get fairly high.
Like I would say, I'm using a light stand now
behind the camera.
I would say that this is
almost the same height as that.
It's completely useless information.
It's like, you can't see
what's behind the camera, but I can.
But, I'm like, you're gonna want to set this
to the same height as that.
And you have no idea what I'm pointing at.
Anyway, that's it guys.
Thanks for watching.
I hope you found the video helpful.
And I'll take, like I said, the products
and the descriptions, and I'll put them
in description below.
If you like the video, please like.
(laughs)
These edits and just the stuttering and stuff.
Oh my God.
Posted that August 15th, 2016.
It's got 73,000 views.
Let's see what else we've got.
Okay. So I went through a phase here.
You can see kind of in these thumbnails,
different experimenting.
You know, I think it's hilarious though
for this thumbnail, I thought,
because I opened the umbrella in that video
and it came close to hitting me in the eye.
(umbrella opening) Ah!
And I thought, oh it'd be funny
to make that the freeze frame.
And I put little fake blood on the umbrella.
Who am I packaging this video for exactly?
I still have that problem.
Now this was part of a phase
of comedy gear reviews.
Which I guess, fundamentally my channel's
still doing that.
But, these ones were bad.
So you could see, I started with just sort
of like this one frame where I'm taking a pair
of bolt cutters to a camera bag.
And then I started adding text to the thumbnails,
but there's still the same idea.
This one, I've got a drill in the box.
This one I'm sniffing the lens bag.
Hey everyone.
So I wanna do an unboxing,
and sort of a brief review
for the "Cannon Speedlite 430 EX".
Okay, so a couple things.
First of all, never start your video
with (slurps) whatever sound I was making
at the beginning of that video.
Just (slurps) cut that out.
For only six years,
I feel like I look a lot younger in these.
That's what YouTube will do to you.
Six years on YouTube will
make you look old apparently.
All right. So let's cut to some
of the comedy parts here.
(drill buzzing)
All right. So now that that's open.
Good one.
Good one, Gerald.
That drill still exists.
People say, "Why do you always
got tools behind you?"
For unboxing.
Obviously, you need them.
(plastic bad rustling)
First things first, I'm the realest.
Oh my God. Is that an Iggy Azalea joke?
♪ I'm the realest ♪
It smells like, (heavy breathing)
like old Super Nintendo cartridges.
(plastic bag scrunching)
It's getting foggy in here.
So that's the kind of quality I was uploading
in August, 2016.
34,000 views.
Apologies to the 34,000 people
who had to watch that.
So this next video here that we'll look
at is this OBS one.
And I was. (laughs)
I forgot about that.
I forgot about that intro.
Hello, Legion. I'm Gerald Undone.
And today I'm gonna talk about--
I was into streaming at the time.
I was learning how to stream.
And so I was doing my own research in OBS,
and often what a lot of my videos would be.
And this is kind of, maybe a bit of advice,
is I would come up with challenges myself.
Like I would be trying to do something,
the information wasn't there that I wanted.
And so I ended up sort of creating the information
after my hours, days, weeks of testing.
I would then share my results and findings.
It's fundamentally what I do
with modern camera reviews, you know.
It's more just, "Hey here's what I've found
from monkeying around."
And so that's what this video was.
And this video ended up
getting lifetime 156,000 views.
And this was in December, 2016.
And this is also early set,
and the first sort of introduction of purple
into the "Gerald Undone" sort of branding.
I made a purple backdrop.
Hello, Legion.
So I thought, you know, I was watching videos
where you had to have a name for your fan base.
And so I came up with Undone Legion.
And I thought it'd be fun to have like a kind
of weird snappy intro thing.
So that's what that thing is with my fingers,
and the sound effect and stuff.
Looking back on it now, it makes my skin crawl.
But, I thought it was a good idea.
I've tried a lot of stuff on YouTube, you know.
But, check out some other videos if you're here
for a different reason.
And hopefully we'll see you around.
I'm gonna be doing some streaming hopefully now soon too.
So subscribe and you'll be notified
when the stream goes up.
And then if you have further questions
about streaming, you can ask me in there.
And I can hopefully answer them
for you on the fly.
What is he talking about?
What the hell are you talking about?
He just randomly like checked out.
I was only watching 10 seconds
and I checked out.
All right, I'm done.
(funky music)
Ooh. That's a funky beat.
(funky music)
All right, I'm done.
Made an appearance all the way back then.
I don't really do much with end cards now.
Historically, after doing end cards
for the majority of my channel,
I would say it probably wasn't until this year
that I stopped doing them.
The total conversions,
or like click-throughs,
from whatever end card elements I have
was less than 2% across
like the entire sort of history of my channel.
So, I'm not saying for everybody they don't work.
But for me, they didn't do anything.
I didn't find that people were really clicking
on videos in the end card.
The way YouTube's built now is it just kind
of like in five seconds plays the next video
that it thinks you wanna watch anyway.
So I don't know how valuable end cards are.
But for me, it didn't do much.
Today we're gonna make some stuff with this.
And with this.
Let's get Undone.
(upbeat music) ♪ Gerald Undone ♪
(upbeat music) ♪ He's crazy ♪
Hello, Legion. I'm Gerald Undone.
And today, I'm going to attempt
to make a portable pop-up green screen.
So that's one of the earliest,
if not the earliest, you know living version
of the, "Let's get Undone,"
and then cutting to that intro jingle.
♪ He's crazy ♪
Which some people hate that little jingle
in the intro, and some people love it.
But, I can say, I think it worked.
I did not expect it to work.
It was a joke.
It was just a silly joke,
like everything else I do.
And then it stuck, but this other stuff
with the like (fast whooshing),
you don't wanna be doing any of that stuff.
Now this next video completely mystifies me.
It's called how to remove white spots
from monitors and TVs.
"LED/LCD screen fix with BenQ GW2470 Disassembly".
You know, a nice elegant title.
And it has 685,000 views.
And it only really started getting those views
like maybe a year, year and a half ago.
It might have picked up like a 100,000
over the course of its life.
And then picked up like half a million
in the last, you know, 18 months.
For some reason, this goes to show you something
maybe about YouTube.
Is that I just turn on the camera one day,
and was like this is interesting,
I'm gonna record this.
And what was interesting was I'd taken my monitor apart
because there was this weird white smudge on it
that was annoying me.
So I took my monitor apart trying to find it
and then I was able to find the smudge
and came up with a solution I thought
that would fix it.
So I started recording on the camera.
Then tried to show it and then fix,
put it back together, and test it.
Kind of like live while recording it.
But it's such a specific use case,
which I think is why I wanted
to make the title so long.
So I didn't make people think
that you could do it on anything.
But yet for some reason,
I still get lots of comments of like,
"Can this work on my tablet?"
I don't know.
It worked on that one monitor.
That's all I know.
But the video's hilarious.
Like, look at the shot.
I got two sets of sunglasses on now
because I was, or two sets of glasses,
because I was using the sunglasses
with a flashlight to be able to
because they're polarized
and I could actually see the smudge better
if I like reflected a flashlight off the screen.
Anyway, I look like a crazy person.
The shot is a mess.
There's rolls of purple paper.
I wasn't planning on making a video about this
but then I realized that this is a good opportunity
to show what I've discovered.
So we're gonna have to kind of do it in reverse.
That doesn't tell me anything about the video.
Well, I suppose I don't need to because it's
in the 400 word title that I composed.
What's up Donk Squad. I'm Gerald Undone.
And today, I--
So that's the evolution of the intro.
It's a, "What's up Donk Squad."
I did that finger thing for a long time.
I think I even have like an emoji,
like a member emoji on YouTube for it.
I still think it's all right.
It's because in real life,
that came from real life.
Often, you know when you see someone
on the street, you would just be like,
I'd give them a little two finger salute nod.
But Donk Squad was what I started calling my followers
after the Undone Legion.
I started calling them Donk Squad.
I have torn my monitor apart.
Anyway, the great part about this video
is there's nothing I can tell you about it
as to why it was successful.
Which is sort of a lesson in of itself is
that sometimes you just need to turn the camera on,
and just sort of document what you're doing.
Or, maybe you have an idea.
You're not really sure about it,
just record it anyway.
And if there's nothing high stakes going on,
post and upload it.
Because, maybe a few years later
it's gonna have 700,000 views for some reason.
I don't know maybe the thumbnail
in this one's not terrible.
But what's funny is that it's also one
of the most kind of, YouTube-y thumbnails
I've ever done too.
With like the silly face and like pointing
at something.
So maybe that's why it worked.
I've even got a red circle.
Yeah. It's so like a cringey YouTube thumbnail.
But there it is.
Anyway, this was posted January, 2018.
So at this point we're entering
into the 2018 zone, which you can see
from the rest of the thumbnails now.
But this is also during the period
where I'm getting louder and louder.
Here's an example of just me yelling
for no reason about an SD card.
I don't know how I got louder and louder.
I think maybe I thought it was more energy.
I'd be providing more energy to the video.
But check this out.
What is happening, everybody?
I'm Gerald Undone.
And today we're gonna be talking about--
What is happening, everybody?
I'm Gerald Undone.
We're talking about SD cards.
You want an SD card.
She wants it too.
Why am I yelling?
What am I yelling about?
SD cards.
The shot here you can see is a little bit better.
Still, not a lot of color contrast though.
But it is getting a little bit
more moody is really what it is.
I don't know if it's an improvement or not.
Also, for the next few months,
I've been wearing that beanie
because this is the stage
when I started growing my hair out.
I was in a very awkward hair phase at this point.
So I was like, "Well put the hat on.
That'll stop it."
Because it was like doing
some weird sprouty stuff
while it was trying to grow in.
However, I also shot my videos
in a different way back then than I do now.
In terms of how I was scripting them,
and reading the script.
I wasn't using a teleprompter.
Instead, I was memorizing sections
of my script at a time.
Which I don't know if I would advise this or not.
It was difficult.
And it created a certain result
due to the way that I edited.
It became another part
of the "Gerald Undone" brand,
which is that he talks really fast.
But the reason why these intermediate videos came
across as so fast is because they were filled
with jump cuts of me memorizing a paragraph.
Like a complicated paragraph that I wrote.
Memorizing it.
Trying to say it quickly so I didn't forget
what I was saying through a transition.
And this is logical if you know
how contrast detection works.
And it's also where phase detection beats it.
But that doesn't mean we should
be immediately disappointed when we hear
that a camera uses contrast detection.
There was no breathing room in the script
in the way I shot the video.
The cuts were always awkward
because you're just catching me
kinda like halfway looking down.
So all the jump cuts were kind of like
doing this weird thing.
So what would happen is,
I would just cut from immediately
after finishing the one sentence
to then immediately starting the next sentence.
Because I thought that cuts that happened
at the beginning looked awkward.
So if you left, I could leave space
before starting the next sentence,
but then it was weird.
I would just finish saying one sentence
then it would jump cut,
and I'd be staring for a second
before starting the next sentence.
It's very awkward and weird.
Of the quality or codec used.
But you can draw some conclusions
based on the container because there are
some combinations that you just won't see.
Okay. So with all that in mind.
These days when I make videos,
I try to leave more breathing room in my scripts
by specifically one, using a teleprompter.
I'm not using a teleprompter now.
I don't wanna keep pointing at it.
But using a teleprompter and then writing it
in a way where I know to take a break.
You know, like a natural one.
So I would say, "And that's why we need
to look at the autofocus.
Now autofocus is."
Like I would kind of bake in a delay like that.
So now if we move forward to the end of 2019,
beginning of 2022.
Three things happened.
First off, I cut my hair.
Which at that point had grown down to about here
after about two years.
Just got sick of it.
And that's when I learned something
about YouTube.
That as much as you want to upload videos
in an order and have people maybe watch them
in an order, or maybe in your latest video,
you reference back to an old video
or something like that,
people don't watch videos in any kind of order.
And this is important to remember,
and you shouldn't build content
on expecting people to watch things in order.
Because things get recommended to them.
That's how it works.
They might get recommended a video
from four years ago where you're talking
about some monitor you took apart.
And think that that's
what "Gerald Undone" is today.
Or they might get recommended your latest video.
Who's to say?
Now there are loyal subscribers
that will watch all your content.
But the continuity of like your internal story
doesn't exist on YouTube.
So don't work within those confines,
because it's a mistake.
And I learned this because every day
I would get comments of someone
who would be like, "Oh, your hair's long."
"Oh, your hair is short."
"When did you cut your hair?"
"Why's your hair short again?"
"Oh, your hair's long again."
Like they were just confused
because I guess they were just getting video served
with like long hair, short hair.
They didn't know what day or month it was.
And obviously people could figure that out.
But don't expect your audience to do that.
Don't expect them to go into your video page,
and like look through all your videos.
And be like, "Oh, that's when he grew his hair."
They don't care.
They just get confused.
Hair is inconsequential though.
But it's important to know that
that affects everything.
What camera you're using.
What your set's like.
What your new thoughts are.
If you've changed philosophies.
If you change content directions.
They don't know what's going on.
Only key certain subscribers know
what's going on. Nobody else does.
Other thing that happened in 2020 was
that I started that series of studio tours,
which I still love.
And I'd still love to do more of.
- Is that a hot air ballon? (laughs)
Whatever, come on in.
- Yeah. Actually it was "Storyblocks"
that provided that.
It's stock footage.
- What's that smell?
- Yeah.
You're probably smelling my stock footage horse,
because this video is brought
to you by "Storyblocks".
I am super appreciative with "Storyblocks"
for sponsoring those videos
and sponsoring this video.
Because if it wasn't for "Storyblocks"
and their belief in my channel,
and their commitment to sponsor me
for months and months and multiple videos
and stuff like that, a lot of the content
that I've made wouldn't have been possible to make.
Let's face it.
You've heard enough of my "Storyblocks" sponsor reads
if you've been following the channel.
But if you haven't and somehow you got here
for the first time, it comes down to this,
"Storyblocks" provides stock footage.
And it can be used both in the comedy videos
that I like to make.
Which I love, because sometimes,
they're the perfect stock footage clip
that just like works over the top.
But I've also seen it used in news videos,
and like drama videos.
It's a YouTuber's close friend,
without just stealing videos from YouTube,
from other videos.
But you're actually licensed the content.
And the licensing from "Storyblocks" is fantastic.
You can use it both personally or commercially.
So you can make money off of it.
Or you can just make a goofy video for yourself.
And it's all fine.
And the searching has always yielded
great results for me.
Every time I think this is too stupid.
There's no way this is gonna be on "Storyblocks",
there's some kind of clip there that I can use,
and the filters are really good.
You can go, "I want it in 4K,
and I want it 24 frames per second.
So it fits well in my video."
It's a sponsor that I've stuck with for so long,
because it works.
It's the service, I think is fair price.
It does what it says is gonna do.
The footage is there.
You can filter it.
It's good quality.
They update it all the time.
I like the interface.
There's nothing to really complain about.
You can't really tell the story of "Gerald Undone",
and look at all videos
without mentioning "Storyblocks".
So, okay.
That's enough talking about "Storyblocks".
(sniffing)
Yep.
It's good.
And what's great about the recent videos
is that it's almost full circle.
You know, I started this channel
because I'd be sitting around doing something
and go, "You know what'd be funny is
if I shot this and did that."
And maybe it's not funny
but I thought it'd be funny in my head.
And so you go and you shoot it.
And I kind of laugh a little bit when I do it.
And then when I get it in the edit,
and I'm editing, it makes me chuckle.
And then you post the video,
and you're like, "Ah, well, there it exists now.
You know, maybe that's funny for other people."
This is very strange.
You know, I don't know what the future
of "Gerald Undone" holds.
But I do know it's been a great ride,
a great six years.
I'm so grateful to you, the viewer,
for following along here
and watching these videos,
wherever you joined on the journey.
And I hope that a lot of you will stay,
and see where it goes.
The bananus.
I don't know what's next,
but I hope to see you there.
Alright...
I'm done.
For now.
(funky music)