Highlights From My Journals This Week:
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This week I journaled primarily on these 5 ideas:
Too often I focus on my desire to be more diligent, but I don't measure where I'm currently at, so I have no hope of making effective strategic improvements. I want to keep doing these two things, though they seem small, they measure my steps:
1) Journal (nearly) every day, so that nothing goes uncared for for too long.
2) Use Google Calendar to keep track of where I put my time.
As a videographer trying to put a lot of time into my dream of being a YouTuber, I don't share the same schedule of most of my friends. I receive video work on Sundays and Mondays most commonly, and then I try to funnel all of my other work into Thursday. This doesn't always work so smoothly, but the hope is that I can set aside 4 days per week where I can focus on YouTube, starting with Tuesday. Basically, I dislike thinking of Monday as the first day of the week because I want the first day of my week to feel like I'm hitting the ground running towards my main goal (being a YouTuber).
First of all, the sunset happens a lot earlier than I expected! So I've definitely been indoors too much.
Watching the sunset seems like a great way to conclude my week. It puts me into a reflective headspace. I think about my previous 6 days, and I try to do some rough planning on how to make my upcoming week as good as possible.
This is an idea I had through songwriting, and I thought it would help as a content creator, too. Some of my worst songs are the ones with really dynamic things going on lyrically. For example, the whole song might be sad, but then the bridge flips 180 degrees to redeem the sadness. I realized that none of the songs I love listening to are written like this. Instead, my favorite songwriters would allow their song to just be sad. Then they might write a separate happy song and you (the listener) could feel that their body of work is dynamic, though their individual pieces are focused enough on one thing to be likeable or understandable.
Similarly, I don't want my YouTube videos to have bunny trails which lead the viewers to feel they've lost the main point of the video. I've got 5-15 minutes to make one point. If I want to make another point, make another video.
I developed this Thursday based on how I created my most recent YouTube video "I Learned Sax In 7 Days" :
1) Find An Idea
In my notetaking software Milanote, I have 54 ideas written on my YouTube board. I have that many ideas or more in my Library Of Ideas board. That's a lot of ideas in total, but those ideas don't serve me very much as they are. An idea has value, but there's no way to know how valuable an idea is without digging a little deeper.
2) Journal / Outline The Idea
Outlining an idea is different than scripting a video. Outlining isn't figuring out exactly what I'll say in the final video, it's simply exploring the idea further. Outlining could be thought of as creating bullet points.
As someone trying to understand storytelling better, what character(s) could appear in this story I'm trying to tell? What is the main point behind this idea? What do I have to say? Does this idea match my style?
3) Film Visual Storytelling Or VFX
With an outline to guide me, I can begin to think about how I could SHOW not TELL the story I'm wanting to share.
4) Script The Final Video
After I've filmed and edited some vfx and visual storytelling, my brain is far more capable of picturing a final product.
I play the final video in my head and write down the dialogue that feels most natural, making my script.
5) Film Talking Head
With my most recent video, I did step 5 on the same day as step 4. That way everything was fresh on my mind. I also used my favorite teleprompter, and so this filming process only took about 25 minutes (which is a lot less than it used to be).
6) Final Editing And Adding Voiceover
Now I add my talking head shots to my other visual storytelling / vfx shots which would've hopefully already been edited! Mix in any additional editing tricks and export.
That's largely where my mind was at this week!
Cam
