BTM: GOD BLESS ‘MERICA

Camera: Samsung Camcorder

Editing Program: Windows Movie Maker

Other Equipment: Fourth of July accessories from Claire’s

My first year of YouTube was an adventure to say the least. I had no knowledge of how to film or how to act or even what worked best with the audience so I simply made videos with the most relevance to events happening at the time. But since I’m such a huge fan of stockpiling videos, I had to guess what would be relevant at the time of the video being posted. That lead to the creation of this video.

Posted on Canada Day, just three days short of the Fourth of July, I thought I was so clever for making a video about the Fourth. But I didn’t account the fact that most of my audience at the time lived in the United Kingdom/Canada/other and posting this video led to my very first dislike.

It’s still there….haunting me to this very day.

Then again, the dislike didn’t have to come from my very un-American audience. It could’ve came from the awkward jump cuts, the lack of focus, or the general obnoxious tone of the video. Really this video wasn’t very good. The filming and acting had potential, but the poor editing completely ruined the video. Even if I had just layered a song in the background, it would’ve been tolerable.

Despite this video’s flaws, it was the first of many things. Along with the first dislike, it was the first time I included music in a video other than my end screen ditty and it was the first time I made a video completely without a script.

I’ve been making videos without a script for a while now. My ‘Top 5 Disney Never Afters’ video is the most recent video with even an inkling of a script, but even that was only a list on my phone. But in the beginning, I insisted on using a full-on script for every video. Even when my friends told me they preferred me unscripted, I argued with them that I didn’t want to lose my channel or have my life threatened because of something I said out of line.

But this video had so little focus that I couldn’t write a script even if I tried. I just had to rely on my wit and my pure love for America to make this video. With ‘Fear’, it may have lacked a script but I still had an idea of what I was going to say or at least a subject in mind. This video is basically just the camera rolling while I came up with America-themed antics. It’s probably why the editing process went so poorly is because I wasn’t used to editing without a script to reference.

Now, of course, I’m more used to filming and editing without a script and feel sort of restricted when I have to follow one. But back then, this was revolutionary for me to go completely off-the-board. It’s the start of something new for the Maddness and it’s one of many videos that helped shape my channel to what it is today.

BTM: The BatDance!

Camera: Samsung Camcorder

Editing Program: iMovie/Adobe Premiere

Other Equipment: Acer Aspire Laptop, a stack of my roommate’s books, my bedsheet

I like Batman. I like being Batman. I am also crazy.

So if I’m stuck in an empty dorm hall for three days with no money due to a bank error, well I might just spend two hours dancing around to a playlist of songs in my Batman costume.

This video was a lot of effort for what it’s worth. I spent about an hour prepping everything (to give you some hindsight, the costume takes about 10 minutes to put on), another two-three hours filming, and around three hours of initial editing time on iMovie. When I edited it a second time a year later on Premiere, it took another two hours. Even the thumbnail took a solid two hours to create because I just couldn’t get the blur working right on Photoshop. Adding it all up, that’s about 11 hours of work for a three minute video that only got 65 views after three months.

The craziest part is that I spent all of this time on this one video and I never planned for it to go on YouTube. I only put it up because I needed a filler video to buy me editing time for next week’s video.

But I made this video and put all of this effort into it, not even planning on publishing it or anything, because I wanted to.

 

It was an idea that plagued me for months. I just thought that the idea of someone dancing to various songs dressed as Batman was hilarious. So on day two or three of my terrible spring break locked up in my dorm room, I was suffering from torturous boredom that I don’t handle well and finally fulfilled the idea that has always sat in the back of my mind.

That’s the beauty of making videos and running your own channel is that you get to do whatever you want. You can dress up as Batman and dance to songs that were miraculously never caught by Content ID. You can make videos stating your opinions on other YouTubers. You can teach people about copyright. You can do whatever you want with your own channel and video making abilities!

This is a good example.

There’s a certain freedom with running your own channel and making your own videos. It’s all on you on how you want to run a YouTube channel. If you want to listen to the industry experts and make each video a replica of what they say a perfect viral video is, then that’s fine. I’m just saying that it’s pretty fun to dress up as Batman and dance around to a playlist of silly songs. It’s even more fun to share that video among your friends and watch them get a kick out of you making a fool of yourself.

Making videos should be fun. You shouldn’t have to force yourself to be this viral internet sensation. I think WheezyWaiter said it best in this video, but honestly YouTube shouldn’t just be about going viral. It started out as a community of people who enjoy making videos just for the fun of it, so why can’t we continue that now?

BTM: How To Not Be Socially Awkward

Camera: iPod Touch

Editing Program: Windows Movie Maker

Other Equipment: The little brother, a nail in the wall

How ironic of me to make a video on how to not be socially awkward in the most awkward way possible.

-sigh-

Alright let’s get this over with…

Obviously, not the best quality video. This video is far more cringe-worthy than “LoL So RaNdOm” and look where that video ended up. But in my defense, this was back in my iPod touch days where like three people knew I had a YouTube channel and I had hardly any experience with any sort of video-making. It was a miracle I could even get my brother to help me with it, but it’s probably the reason why he refuses to help out with any subsequent productions.

Sorry Nate.

Even though it’s at such a low quality and it’s so incredible cringe-worthy, it’s popular for two reasons:

1. Because some people are genuinely looking for advice on how to not be socially awkward. Even though this video is clearly NOT a good example, comments and analytics show that a solid portion of views come from fellow socially awkward people.

   

   Sorry socially awkward people.

   My only hope is that when they see this video, they get a good amount of self-confidence and knowledge that their situation could be much worse.

2. Beautiful, wonderful, magnificent Nerdfighteria.

I got lucky. I posted this video around Nerdfighter Idol 2013 back when there was still a thing as video responses. Yeah, I know. That was a thing. I miss that thing. Anyway, I used that thing known as a video response to submit this video to Nerdfighter Idol 2013 to try and win a chance to replace John Green for a week during his paternity leave from Vlogbrothers.

Once again, obviously I had no chance of winning this thing. But I thought I did. I thought my videos were the best thing since Fred (oh god I’m dating myself again, aren’t I?) and so I gave this Nerdfighter Idol 2013 thing a shot. Thankfully Nerdfighters are kind beings and either gave me encouraging comments or ignored my video. I had a huge subscriber boost and honestly this video kept my channel going. I saw that people at least liked the idea of my videos and so I kept making them, even if it took two years to get them to a semi-decent level.

There are several morals to this story. For one, don’t be afraid to be a little confident. If I wasn’t confident with this video and submitted it to Nerdfighter Idol 2013, I never would’ve received the positive comments and support that encouraged me to keep making videos. That leads us to the second moral: EXPOSURE IS YOUR FRIEND.

Exposure is never going to be a bad thing when you’re starting out. Unless you already have a good-sized audience to build off of, you need to promote your videos everywhere and anywhere. Look for those mid-sized contests like Nerdfighter Idol that encourage self-promotion and networking. You can’t get subscribers unless people actually watch your videos and they’re never going to watch your videos if they never find them.

Finally the third moral is to never watch your first ten videos again unless you’re some sort of YouTube video-making prodigy because wow this was a trip. Please do not judge my current video-making abilities off of this video because wow.

Sorry world.

 

Judge my video-making abilities instead off of my most recent YouTube video! Or better yet, my music video!

BTM: Writer – A Nature Documentary

Camera: Samsung Camcorder

Editing Program: iMovie

Other Equipment: iPod Touch, Apple Earbuds, iTunes

I don’t say this often about my videos, so please believe me when I say that this video is the work of miracles and a true feat in filmmaking. Alright I’ll admit that might be a slight exaggeration, but I seriously did this entire video in one take and that is a miracle for me!

Should I have done this all in one take? No.

Could I have done this better? Probably.

But with my editing, filming, and acting skills at the time, this truly is a goddamn triumph and needs to be excessively celebrated for at least this blog post.

How I achieved this directorial triumph is actually a lot of excessive behind-the-scenes work. First, I carefully scripted out the voiceover and split the script up into sections to accommodate for my live-action reaction. I recorded each section separately on my iPod touch and then imported the audio files into my iTunes. After carefully labeling each audio file, I placed them in a playlist and then played the audio files through my earbud so that I could react to the voiceover in real time. If you’re looking for it, it’s blatantly obvious when I play the next audio track to continue the video. Sometimes it’s a subtle tap of the spacebar, but most of the time it’s physically clicking on the next audio file.

It’s especially evident at 1:49 in the video

 Believe it or not, this one-take-miracle really did essentially only take one take. I only restarted filming on the scene once and that was because of a technical error where the audio didn’t play when expected and it was at the very beginning of the scene. The reason behind the success of only using one attempt is that my improv skills are somewhat adequate so I was able to react to each voiceover accordingly with little reference to the script which made it easier to film the video in only one try.

Editing was the truly difficult part. Even though I had the physical actions of playing the voiceover audio to indicate the start of an audio clip, it was still difficult to time the lag between playing the audio and when the actual audio started to play. iMovie, although considerably better than Movie Maker, didn’t help and actually caused some of the slight delays between the reaction and the audio.

I’m very proud of this video. It truly is a directorial triumph in my eyes, which is funny because I only attempted the one-take wonder to make it easier to edit. Regardless, I’m considering this video a success that needs to be celebrated more.

BTM: Fear

Camera: Samsung Camcorder

Editing Program: Windows Movie Maker

Other Equipment: Public School’s Library Computer

If there is one thing you need to know about me, it’s that I’m hilarious. The second thing you need to know about me is that I know an asinine amount of trivia about U.S. presidents. The third is that I am not the best at prioritizing.

Now my terrible prioritizing skill only really affects me. I almost always get everything done by their deadlines, but my methods of doing so can be unorthodox if I am not smart with my prioritizing. That is why this video was edited at the very same time I was finishing up my eighteen page thesis about British local politics. When I say this video and my eighteen page thesis were finished at the same time, I mean I had both the Movie Maker and Microsoft Word  programs open at the same time on one computer screen and I would interchangeably work between the two projects.

Actual photo of me writing my 18 page thesis on British local politics.

Why was I did I do this to myself? Well it was a Monday and I didn’t have a video ready so I had to edit this video so I could upload it when I got home, but my 18 page thesis was due in like two hours so I had to get that done too. Obviously that meant I had to do both at the same time and believe it or not, but I finished both of them in time for their respective deadlines.

However the result of this conundrum is a video-editing disaster. It’s just lucky there are only three instances where the video cuts at the wrong time. Other than that the audio is too low, the video is the wrong size, and the jump cuts are too…jumpy. There’s no rhythm to this video. It’s all over the place and that’s partially because filming went very poorly. At this time, I still relied very heavily on scripts and I had no script for this video. That led to some very funny moments, but overall I should’ve tried to hide the fact I didn’t have a script better. It brought the video’s quality down even lower and it could’ve/should’ve been fixed in editing, but my insistence to write an eighteen page thesis at the same time ruined those chances. It probably didn’t help that I was using a public school computer for all of this as well.

Pictured: The Interior of a Typical American Public School

But I have learned from this video. I rarely use a script for “Real Talk” videos now just because I liked how natural this one felt compared to previous “Real Talks” where I used a script. My jump cuts are a lot smoother now and I hide my faults better in editing. Overall, this was just another step in my journey into making better videos with better quality. You can’t be a success unless you learn from failure.

Another thing I learned from this video is that I am a multi-tasking god who should be worshipped and feared for my ability to successfully write eighteen page papers and edit a video on Movie Maker at the same time.

Maddie Gudenkauf: Multi-Tasking God

BTM: Top 5 Starkid Fan Problems

 Camera: Samsung Camcorder

Editing Program: iMovie

Other Equipment: Mountain Dew and way too much cold medicine

Apparently I cannot do anything Starkid related unless I’m jacked up on cold medicine. The same occurs for this video.

I have a bad habit of getting insanely sick during my breaks from school. Unfortunately, I also try to make 10+ videos within these limited breaks so that I don’t fall behind on my YouTube schedule during the school year. That means that I usually make the poor choice to film despite being absolutely sick which in turn lowers the quality of the video considerably.

I mean my acting is usually subpar when I’m completely healthy anyway, but when I’m sick and trying to act…well, we get this video.

Actual ending to the video because I’m a professional.

The idea is good. It’s relatable, it applies to a smaller fandom that doesn’t get many videos about their fandom, and it can be funny if it was done right. However, it wasn’t done right. It was done by me who was deathly ill, hopped up on cold medicine, and far too confident about my mediocre video-making abilities.

If I had just waited a year, this video would be significantly better. Not only have I improved my editing skills immensely, but I’ve also decided to no longer force myself to make videos when I’m sick. It’s not worth it. During the editing process for this video, I was desperately scrambling for anything worthwhile in the footage while continually face-palming myself for all of the mess-ups and the fact that I never actually filmed an ending. It’s just a lot more strife than needed to film while sick for both editing and filming purposes.

#Blessed

But despite the poor quality of this video, it’s still relatively successful. I would like to thank the Starkid fandom for that. Like I mentioned above, the Starkid fandom doesn’t have a lot of options for videos about their favorite theatre company/improv group/band/whatever so they’re kind enough to watch anything and treat it with utmost kindness. This video is one of my most popular non-reactions both in views and comments and I have yet to receive a negative comment or dislike on this video. (Sidenote: That’s not an invitation to start posting negative comments. Don’t be mean, kids.)

So thank you Starkid fandom for being so unbelievably kind and awesome. I’ll be sure to create more Starkid content in the future when I’m not hopped up on cold medicine.

Want to see another video where I filmed while clearly sick? Luckily I have two for you! One is for Project for Awesome 2013 and the other is just because I made a poor life choice again.

BTM: How to Be Evil

Camera: Samsung Camcorder

Editing Program: Windows Movie Maker

Other Equipment: Jill: the plastic baby doll

In hindsight, this video wasn’t very good. There’s no background music, the transitions are sloppy, and the lighting is horrendous. However, it was only my 21^st (or 22^nd*) video and I had absolutely no video editing experience prior to starting my YouTube channel so I’m going to blame inexperience for the poor quality.

*By my official count of my videos from the video manager option, this is the 21^st video. But if you watch the video, my channel already had 21 videos when I filmed so logically this video should at least be the 22^nd video.

It’s a conspiracy!

But the remarkable thing is that despite the low quality, this video is one of my most popular non-reaction videos. Now I know the internet can be innately evil, but I don’t think people that willingly strive to be evil would use a tutorial video from YouTube so I can’t attribute the video’s popularity to demand.

So evil.

The only thing I can attribute the popularity to is the fact that it falls right behind my second most popular video of all time. It’s a typical mindset for a bored YouTube user: they watch one entertaining video and if they like it enough, they’ll check that user’s channel for more videos. It makes sense that they’ll check the most recent video and since “How to Be Evil” was the most recent video, it got the popularity it didn’t deserve.

It’s actually an excellent lesson in video popularity. If you know that a video is going to be popular, like a Doctor Who reaction video, then plan a not-as-potentially-popular video to go after it to get views. Alternatively if you put another potentially popular video behind a popular video, you can try to rope in more subscribers by showing off that you make awesome videos. But that can also turn on you because those new subscribers might expect that same quality from you for every video and you’ll lose them if you aren’t consistent on your video quality.

Either way, I just find the whole ordeal very interesting. When I made ‘How to Be Evil,’ I wasn’t expecting it to be popular but the mere placement of the video made it very popular. It just shows how YouTube success is a game of strategy, not luck.

BTM: My #DearMe Video!

 

Camera: Samsung Camcorder

Editing Program: Adobe Premiere

Other Equipment: My car

The #DearMe trend was very fast. It started on March 3^rd which was a Tuesday and by the time I posted the video on the next Monday, the trend was practically obsolete. But I still wanted to participate because HELL YEAH WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT so I filmed it on Sunday morning in my car and edited it on the same Monday that I posted it.

I didn’t want to film in my car, but I had nowhere else I could film on such short notice. One of my roommates stayed in the room the entire day and I felt awkward filming something so personal with someone nearby. So I grabbed my camcorder, went to my car, set the camcorder on the wheel, and filmed. The wheel and my chair had to be adjusted for a good angle, but it wasn’t too much for accommodations.

Really the struggle of the shoot was the random people passing by my car while I filmed. For previous videos shot outside, I’ve gotten used to people staring or stopping to watch what I was doing, which is actually common since I live in areas that don’t really see any filming. But for this video, I think the personal nature of the subject made me extremely aware of everyone walking past. In the 15 minute duration of the shot, I spent about 8 minutes acting like I was doing anything but filming to prevent people from realizing what I was doing.

But thanks to the miracle of video editing, I was able to create something somewhat emotional. If you watch the actual footage I shot, it wasn’t as emotional as the final product. In fact, I spent a portion of time trying to find the source behind an odd noise occurring in my car. So the final video is basically every emotional thing I happened to have said with some sad yet hopeful music behind it.

Although video editing may have saved the video and turned it into something somewhat watchable, it couldn’t save it from the poor timing between the trend’s duration and my YouTube schedule. Next time, I might have to sacrifice my YouTube schedule to meet a trend’s deadline.

(Side note: This was also the video my good friend Stephanie was referencing in this video.)

BTM: Mercenary – Panic! At The Disco (Fan Music Video)

 

Camera: DSLR (Canon Rebel), Samsung Camcorder

Editing Program: Adobe Premiere

Other Equipment: Tripod, Four 8GB flash drives

This is by far my most elaborate production. It was for a class that dedicated an entire month to a single video and to be honest, it was tough being my friend during this month because I was obsessed with this video. I drew up a crude storyboard, I wrote a short story to go along with the piece, and I even went location scouting with the song playing on a loop.

I loved every minute of this production. It felt like the real deal. But even though I planned for every detail and treated it as seriously as I could, most of my best shots were still either accidental or improvised on set. I like to think it was my good direction that seemed to set up these perfect shots, but let’s be honest the most common saying that came out of my mouth during shooting was “It’s in my head, it’ll make sense later!”

Luckily, it did make sense later. My actors somehow understood my madness and Stephanie did an amazing job as assistant director/cinematographer so everything went incredibly well. We only had to return for one night of reshoots due to a technical error so that was awesome. I spent about eight hours total editing this video and I loved every minute of it.

People who had taken the class in earlier semesters told me I would hate the song by the end of the class, but I actually fell more in love with it. It indicates the first time I got to be a real director and was able to make something that felt tangible. It was also the first time I really got to play around with Adobe Premiere and my new DSLR camera so that helped me feel even more professional compared to my usual camcorder/iMovie combination.

This video helped me realize that I truly loved making videos. I love walking around in a Batman costume looking for a new place to shoot, I love organizing people to make a shot work, and I love working with such fun, talented people that really put their heart into my project even though I only paid them in McDonald’s and friendship. I never treated a video this seriously before and I can’t wait to do it again.

That being said: if you would like a music video (or any video really) to be made, contact me at maddnessbusiness [at] gmail [dot] com. I would love to hear from you! Videos are still being released every Monday on my YouTube channel TheMaddness22.

BTM: How to Survive a Writer’s Block!

Camera: DSLR (Canon Rebel)

Editing Program: Adobe Premiere

Other Equipment: Tripod, Monopod, Wheely Office Chair

My original idea for this video, which was a class assignment, was “How to be a Superhero”. It would’ve combined my love for superheroes with my affinity for comedy to make a hilarious yet heartfelt video about how we’re all superheroes deep down in our hearts. However, it just wasn’t working for me. Every time I tried to script and storyboard, it just never worked right.

After spending about a week and a half trying to figure out this “How to be a Superhero” video, I turned around and ended up spending about twenty minutes planning this video. It’s the most I’ve ever prepared for a video before and I think the result was tremendously successful. Even though the Mercenary music video was my first full-fledged production, I feel like this video is a huge improvement from it.

However despite the video’s high quality, there were still multiple glaring problems with the production. The biggest one that comes to mind is that I completely forgot to film a scene. Despite all of my storyboards and scripts, I still managed to miss filming a small scene that would only take a couple of seconds. The result is that I expanded the cemetery scene to fill that open space and made it a much bigger deal than the one-shot gag I had planned.

I’m an editing prodigy.

Another mistake I made is the end scene with my blonde-wigged alter ego Bertha. It was the first time I had attempted a scene of that editing magnitude and let me tell you, I have to give major props to that Orphan Black lady because that is hard. I filmed it by myself and it was impossible to get the timing down. The two characters spoke at the same time, reactions were all off, and half of my shoulder disappeared in the editing process. But the important thing is that I’ve learned from my failure and in future attempts with that kind of scene, I will be more aware of the timing and try to learn from this first attempt’s mistakes.

The marketing strategy for this video was sort of a surprise. Usually for a video, I’ll just write something clever that relates to the video on my GooglePlus, Twitter, and Facebook page and just sort of wait for views. However I’ve started a new thing where I try to post a picture from the video’s production on my Instagram to try and get people excited for my video. It never works because Instagram just isn’t my forte, but it worked for this video. I had posted a picture of Sydney, Allison, and me at the cemetery after we finished shooting with the caption “having fun at the funeral for my hopes and dreams!” I didn’t think much about it because I say that sort of thing all the time, but it ended up earning 11 likes on Instagram, 30 likes on Facebook, and 3 worried text messages from friends and family. After seeing how so many people reacted to this picture, I based my entire marketing strategy for this video around it. I even created my thumbnail around the concept!

Overall, this video was a learning experience. I played around with the audio, tried out new editing techniques, and found what got people excited. I just have to learn from the mistakes I made so I can continue to improve future videos.