BLOG: DIGI VS THE VATICAN

Hello gang.

Happy… ah, Wednesday. Apologies for the silence thus far this week. After the past fortnight or so focused on our chocolate video, I had to knuckle down and get some day job stuff done. I'm very behind on replying to messages, so if you're waiting on one from me... sorry.

We have begun work on the next video. It’s delving back into conspiracies – though this isn’t some fantasy conspiracy theory, but something that actually happened… and involves the City of London, the Mafia, the Freemasons, the Vatican and the CIA. So… it’s a biggun (hell-oh!)… but we’ll be tackling it in our usual tongue-in-cheek way. 

It spun out of people suggesting we do the City of London, but then I found another story while looking into it. I’m trying to stay focused, as there are so many tangential rabbit holes I could wander down.

Digi is doing okay. August was very quiet. Aldermaston hasn’t done as well as we’d hoped – dropping it in the middle of the summer holidays was a mistake, and it deserved much better. By comparison, the York one has done slightly better than we expected.

Both are up in terms of views from where we were before we adopted this new format, and we’re still putting on subscribers. We could be putting them on faster though! Anyway. We’ll get there.

 The past month or so has very much been a bit of an experiment for us, trying different approaches (though you may not have noticed) and doing a LOT of research. The last two videos were the first we’d done after signing up for VidIQ, and I took the course that they offer.

 We tried out some of the advice, and while it has been useful to a point… a lot of it we’re choosing to ignore. It doesn’t feel like it has significantly helped our views.

Regardless, we’re more focused than we’ve ever been on giving our videos the best chance they have – while also balancing that with keeping you furnished with the sort of nonsense you’ve enjoyed in the past. We want to keep Sanja and I – and our stupid bantering – front and centre, and I don’t feel we always got the balance right in the last couple of videos.

I feel I’ve focused kind of too much on scripted facts, which hasn’t left us time to do what we enjoy doing best, which is just wandering around commenting on things. Also, it’s EXHAUSTING having to remember all that stuff and say it on camera, so we’re approaching the new video a little bit differently. 

So much of what VidIQ recommends doesn’t really value free-thinking or creativity. One of their tips is literally to copy… copy successful video formats, copy thumbnails, copy titles… I get it – you’re trying to get your stuff out there – but that kind of thing is anathema to me. The new video we’re working on doesn’t break our format, but I’m going to be trying some new things, because I need to try new stuff to keep me interested.

OTHER BITS

In other news… I feel like I’m coming out the end of a very dark few months. We’ve sort of hit a new normal over the situation with my mum, and we’ve accepted where we’re at for now. 

With her in the nursing home – though she isn’t ever really going to get better from here – it is giving us more time to do stuff than we’ve had over the past couple of years. I know I’ve gone on about it in blog posts, but I don’t think I’ve really conveyed just how difficult things have been for the whole family.

Taking care of her in the two years after my dad died, we were seeing just how much of a buffer he had been, and that she was – perhaps – already displaying signs of the dementia that has now pretty much consumed her. We couldn’t work out why there were loads of us caring for her, and it still wasn’t enough.

Anyway. I’m feeling more optimistic about the future than I’ve done in a long time, and we’re just about ready to get on and finish Digi Level 2.

Those of you missing our characters and Found Footage will be VERY pleased. I’ve said before that the last couple of eps are kind of a greatest hits of every incarnation of Digi to date, and we’re going all out. We want it to be a glorious reward for those of you who have stuck by us though a difficult time.

That’s it for now. Some of you I’ll see for Biffo’s Brain tonight! More soon.

Paul