**SEGA**
Ah yeah G'day, it's How to DAD here and this is the story on how my first ever video went viral
**First you're gonna need a baby...
**baby.
A lot of people always ask how it all started off for me and to be honest my
first ever thing I made, went viral.
**CLAPPING**
This is why or how.
Um, so back in 2015...
you got to write backwards on this thing for it to make any sense.
You get it, back in 2015, um...
I've got this thing because I'm trying to be fancy like the other cool directors that do scene breakdowns on
YouTube, you know, that's meant to be this. Um, anyway, back in 2015 I didn't
have a youtube channel. Well, like everyone else, I had a YouTube channel
just so I could subscribe to other people. I wasn't making videos I wasn't
making content. It was on, it was a weekend, it was a Sunday, I'm at home, my
wife's at home. I got a kid and I got a baby.
It was a casual Sunday, there I am and my casual Sunday attire which has now become quite
famous for How to Dad, which is the the green bush shirt and the stubbies, the
blue shorts or here in New Zealand we call them stubbies.
**AS THEY WELCOMED IN STUBBIES**
My wife, she went out and took the middle kid and that left me at home
to look after the baby. After a few minutes, like a lot of dads,
I got bored.
That's, that's not bad.
Um and I had a friend who had a baby on the way
and being a bored Dad, I was like, I might make a video, that he'll find funny
because you know I was a experienced Dad, two kids.
So I got the camera out
We had like, this is like our living room, wasn't a very big place.
We had, you know, this is like a couch this is a little dining table and then I was
standing here with, that's my nose, little baby there. I put the camera on
the, on the table and was filming this way so the Sun was shining and that, you know,
gave us a little light through the window. And we used to have a vacuum
cleaner that you clip the vacuum cleaner, you know, the bit that you move, into the
base of the vacuum it used to stand in the air like five feet high so I
used to go and stand where I wanted to stand, I'd grab the vacuum, put it next to
me and then I walk around to the camera, focus on the vacuum cleaner and then you
walk back, stand next to the vacuum cleaner, grab the vacuum, move it out of
shot, without moving, you need to stay on your spot.
And then you know that you're in focus.
**WHOA!!**
I grabbed my laptop and I wrote
down a few ways of holding a baby. So I thought I'd do a video called...
...how...
...to...
'How to hold a baby'. Here's a little taste of what the video ended up looking like.
**AH YEAH G'DAY AND WELCOME TO THIS INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO ON HOW TO HOLD A BABY. FIRST YOU'RE GONNA NEED A BABY**
So I was a vacuum...
I'm not a vacuum.
Genius.
So it carried on like this, the different holds.
I put it all together, again, no big thought in my head, not once was I
thinking 'man I'm gonna make a viral YouTube video today'. Um, I was just
trying to make the friend laugh. I put it on this YouTube channel and I pasted the
link to his Facebook page and I wrote like 'hey man you'll have a laugh at this good luck'
I went to bed and I woke up the next day and my phone was full
of YouTube notifications. It went like, it went around the world. It almost went to more
media outlets than actual YouTube views.
So back then down in little old New Zealand, a million views, you know,
you were viral and that was, that was massive. That shook the nation.
I was on Huffington post, in the UK, The Today Show in USA
**Well YouTuber Jordan Watson saw this as a golden opportunity
and he created a handy how-to guide.
**I don't know if those are all approved by the American Academy of Pediatrics**
I went on TV for you know live interviews.
**And so I was bored, got the camera out.
Two days of being like one of those weird internet viral video people.
**Aint nobody got time for that!
And that was how...
'How to hold a baby'...
went viral.
**No babies were harmed in the making of this video**
There was no plan.
There was no thought once on
'man I've made a quality video that's gonna go viral'.
I was really just hoping
that my friend would have a laugh at it. That was the only aim and it just blew up from there.
So it goes to show you, you can't plan a viral video, you just keep...
just keep doing what you're doing and hope the, the internet stars and the
internet algorithms align and it does well.
Even to this day, like some videos I
think are great, do really badly. Some videos I think are terrible, do amazing! Go viral.
Um and ending on that, the next video
I'll do for this series of BEHIND THE VIDEO with How to DAD
is the 'How to put a baby to sleep'
**Do you want to go to sleep?**
It's the video where I get the most questions about how did I train my baby
to do that. To drop, go to sleep on command. Well stay tuned and you'll see that
one when I film it and I don't know if this will be here next time because that was really....
...hard.
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