Two longer YouTube posts this month – the first was another chapter reading, the other was a video discussing train sizes in a creative way.
Dreaming of No Laundry
I wrote this chapter ages ago and thought it would be a good sample chapter. I practiced reading the chapter aloud, making more edits in the process. When I recorded, I was more or less able to get a reading in one session where I didn’t feel I needed many edits. I received feedback from other videos that I should talk slower so I left a lot of the pauses in this one.
For the visual, I used a recording of a white duvet in a washing machine. This seemed to have a soporific effect and was apropos the topic of laundry. However, the video quality didn’t seem to hold up after uploading to YouTube. However, overall, I was pleased with the result.
For the thumbnail, I took a still of the laundry which happens to look a big like clouds – so the image works both for laundry as a topic and dreaming. I then added a few spinning phi logos.
Trains and Barbie’s Arm
I’ve wanted to present the concept of different sizes of objected managed by the next internet for a while. I remember the confusion of some people thinking I wanted to route a full-sized train in their homes.
To explore these concepts, I filmed toy trains. I knew I wanted to discuss trains on a human scale by comparing to a human arm. The opening came together nicely, but then I was stuck for a while. It didn’t quite work. Only at the end of the process did I realize in discussing different sized objects, I should have filmed different sized trains (model trains and miniature trains).
In thinking about what to do for a thumbnail, I realized I needed the phi logo. So I added stickers to the toy trains. This is why the trains with the phi logo only appear at the end of the video. The original thumbnail only had the trains cars with the phi stickers. However, I realized viewers were dropping off when the Barbie arm appeared. Thus, I put the Barbie arm in the thumbnail so viewers would be expecting something other than trains.
From the YouTube analytics, I gather the majority of viewers are railfans. This is wonderful as people who are interested in trains could be helpful in developing the next internet as the system would likely involve trains or technology similar to trains. However, my target audience is people who want to find climate solutions and I don’t think I have connected with them yet.