BANK HOLIDAY MONDAY BLOG: NICHE

Happy Bank Holiday Monday, to those who celebrate

I’m working today. Until lunchtime at least, then I’ll probably bunk off. Good weekend?

Sanja and I both managed to come down with some sort of gut rot, so we did bugger all over the weekend other than be sprawled on the sofa feeling sorry for ourselves. I’d love to say we watched something enjoyable and escapist, but we basically spent our time trawling through YouTube trying to analyse other videos. 

Yes: this is going to be one of those posts where I ramble on about Digi plans, which Sanja tells me are “boring”. Feel free to skip. It just helps me clarify my thoughts.

We’re very much in a period of experimentation. Not the sort of experimentation we were in a couple of years ago, where we felt like we were doing stuff that didn’t really satisfy us creatively… but now that we’ve kind of found a niche that we feel passionate about, we’re trying to refine that and make it the best it can possibly be.

It’s like a video game really. The toughest strategy game ever. I’ve never seen Sanja so passionate and fired-up about Digi, and I don’t think I’ve ever been this focused either. The unexpected lift we got from the Milton Keynes video taking off without warning was the rocket we needed under us to really knuckle down and give Digi its best chance. It sort of showed us that it is possible.

The biggest challenge in the last few videos was trying to balance what we feel is our USP – Digi’s humour, and mine and Sanja’s on-screen relationship and authenticity – with the factual spine of the video. That, for me, goes right back to Digitiser’s origins on Teletext.

Back then it was mine and Tim’s relationship and humour woven in around the factual stuff. Plus, I’ve always been at my best when I’m trying to make the person I work with laugh.

It's in realising I’m not a comedian or a performer, but a writer and storyteller at my core. I guess I never felt entirely comfortable just performing without being able to ride the crest of a story at the same time.

NO JOKE

Unfortunately, as a writer, I learned long ago that the first thing that ends up getting cut from a script is the jokes, because you have to at least default to the story being told, otherwise it doesn’t make sense. That’s why the last three videos perhaps haven’t been as funny as I wanted. It’s all because of time. Or lack thereof.

Eyam we ended up filming at the end of a day of seeing family, and were rushing to get it all done before we lost light. The UK riots one I didn’t really have time to funny up the script, because it was topical (yes: even that I wanted to be funnier). And Aldermaston we started filming later than planned, because Sanja had a headache in the morning, and we left late.

 This had a knock-on effect meaning that we filmed for about six hours without a break, which meant the equipment didn’t have time to get recharged, and by the end I was so brain-mushed and knackered that I forgot to switch my mic back on after I’d switched it off to save battery.

Hence, it just became a case of scrambling to get all the facts out, and not as much room left for us to just be us. 

Something we’ve agreed upon is to aim to give ourselves more time, which might mean leaving earlier in the morning with a break for lunch to recharge both ourselves and our equipment, or filming over two days (as we did with Canary Wharf and Sussex).

 Something I also need to be more disciplined with is not writing so much. I love the research, I love going down rabbit holes, I love learning new things, but I sometimes get so carried away that I forget to balance that with the need to deliver that research in a way that isn’t just a barrage of facts. I write too much sometimes. I mean, look at my blog posts.

We’re also acutely aware that many of you miss our old style of videos, but…

THE STRUGGLE 

When we first watched the Aldermaston video back together we both felt a bit deflated by it.

We talked about it, and realised that we were watching it through our fear of losing the audience – you lot, basically – that we’ve built up and cultivated over the years. It was clear that fewer Patrons than normal were watching it early, and I think we panicked a bit. Your interest is usually a sign of how the regular viewers will respond.

We love this community. We feel we owe you all a debt for bringing us this far. We consider many of you friends. And we’re both people pleasers at heart, so disappointing anyone is hard for us. But… we also know we need to let that feeling go to get us where we want to be.

We know not all of you will come with us on the journey – some would rather we were doing nothing but Corner Shop Corner – and we completely respect that, even if it does hurt when we’re told it.

 We watched Aldermaston again and realised what a brilliant video it is (horn: parped); yes, it’s about something, but it’s also funny and approachable, and not really that different to what we’ve ever done. There are even characters! Just with actual information woven in. Maybe a bit less info and a bit more fun would’ve benefitted it, but we’ve learned a lesson from the time crunch. It’s finding the right balance between focused and unfocused, if that makes sense.

Digi’s very much in a transition period, I think. Now that we’ve finally – after years – found an area and a format that really works for us both, we’re continually tweaking it. We analyse each video and ask what worked and what didn’t, and what we can do better next time. It’s experimenting, but not like the experimenting before last year, where it was more like flailing.

This is refinement of a shared vision. It's fair to say that when we were doing desk or sofa stuff there was no vision, even though many of you enjoyed those videos.

We’ve even talked about doing some shorter videos against greenscreen, just so we’re able to get videos out more quickly. Visiting places is all well and good, but it’s time consuming and expensive, and we’re currently only able to do about two a month. It would also help us to have some videos that are less of a commitment for new viewers, who can then work their way up to our epics!

VIDIOT

The latest video is the first one we’ve optimised through VidIQ… and right now I’m not hugely impressed with it.

Some of its tips helped, I think, but they’re lessons I can take with me without paying a monthly subscription. The intro of the latest one has a higher retention rate than we get on average – and that was because I followed VidIQ guidelines. So, that’s something.

Admittedly, the idea for the nukes video was mine, but it hasn’t done particularly brilliantly so far, despite following VidIQ's SEO, so it may be that we fall back to trusting our instincts. We were a bit deflated yesterday when it went up, after the week or so of intensive work we did on it, to see it just kind of sputter out of the starting gate.

Some of that might be because it’s August, some of it might be because it was perceived as another heavy video following our UK riots one.

Impossible to say.

Side note: the UK riots one got penalised by YouTube and stopped getting pushed out because it had an uncensored photo of my black eye in it, and because the right wingers angrily stopped watching after the first minute or two, before for the more balanced point of the piece. 

But I’d be lying to say it’s not frustrating for both of us when we watch competitors covering the same area of content in a much more half-arsed way, and getting half a million views. I dunno what the trick is, or what’s holding us back. Too many pivots? Too old? Wrong topic choices? Either way, VidIQ’s annoyingly AI-led guidance hasn’t made a difference.

Certainly, the kinds of content that VidIQ recommends we create is a long way from where I want us to focus, and I sort of instinctively hate the cookie-cutter approach. I mean, their video lessons LITERALLY tell you to look at what other videos and thumbnails are popular and copy those, or just continually repeat the same topics.

There’s a section in our VidIQ where it just suggests nothing but video ideas based around Ashens, because our vids with him are among the biggest on the channel.

Suggested titles:

• Lost and Found: Searching for Ashens' Favorite Discontinued Products
  Ashens Takes on the Supernatural: Exploring the Scariest Ghost Legends in Video Games.

• DIY Disasters: Ashens Tries to Replicate Viral Hacks and Fails

• Ashens' Top '90s Toys and Memorabilia Unboxing: Nostalgia at Its Best

Good ideas, maybe, but not exactly ideas for Digi…

I still need to go in the direction I’m being pulled, I feel the need to lead and not follow. My day job is spent writing scripts for others, most of my free time is spent doing stuff for other people, and I need this for me. We LOVE making these, and we’re trying to shut out the noise and advice telling us to make them differently.

 We’re trying to listen to ourselves more and stay focused on how much we enjoy making them. 

BRUTAL DELUXE

Something I realised recently is that the last couple of years have, inevitably, changed me. Life has been so brutal and relentless that I think I’m finding it harder to just lean into making stuff that’s purely funny or throwaway. It may not be forever, but I guess I’ve seen and been through so much utter grimness in recent years - as well as lovely stuff, like becoming a grandad - that my priorities have shifted. I'm not who I was.

I want to make stuff that matters to me more, and feels more substantial. Not that there was anything wrong with the purely escapist stuff we were doing, mind – this is more about what we need for ourelves. Digi will always be funny – it’s in our DNA – but I need it to have something more underpinning that. YouTube is full of so much throwaway stuff – god knows we watch enough of it – that I want each of our videos to feel like an event. A decent meal, instead of a snack.

It’s part of why I’ve not been able to find it in me to finish Digi Level 2 yet, because it’s so much more frivolous and light-hearted, and I’m not who I was when we started it. I’ll get there with it. Just need a bit more time.

Sanja was editing the intro to ep 6 of Digi Level 2 last week, and she was shocked how different I seem in it to the way I engage with the Aldermaston script; so much less focused, less energised. Admittedly, part of that is because Gannon interrupted me constantly, so I never got into my flow or get any of the information out – and consequently, we may have to re-shoot that intro somehow! But also just because I’m now covering topics that connect with me on deeper level.

Talking of Gannon… this might be controversial, but we’ve talked a lot about Cheapshow. I’ve spoken on here about it too, obviously.

Even on this latest video we still got comments and messages mentioning Paul and Eli, and I do think there are still those who see us as a Cheapshow spin-off. As I’ve said before, I leant on Paul a lot in those early days, but he has such a strong energy and comedic identity that my own instincts got swamped a lot of the time. He warned me when we first started working together on Digitiser The Show that he “tends to take over, and can be a lot”, adding “So just be aware of that”.

He's my friend, and this is no criticism of him – it’s what has made CheapShow a much beloved thing, and I needed someone like that in the beginning. But… it sort of resulted in a CheapShow-ification of Digi that we still clearly haven’t entirely shrugged off.

We're trying to.

THIS WEEK

Anyway, we’re off to Yorkshire this week.

As well as taking some much needed downtime, we do have a vague plan to film something up there, rather than waste the location.

It’ll possibly be something just for Patreon… but we do also have a topic – that, yes, is far lighter and funnier than the recent few, by design – that we may do a video on. Note: it involves eating. I’ve deliberately kept the script to a minimum to allow more room for our usual improvisation. Again, it’s all about refinement and experimentation.

As I’ve said before, we have a long, long list of videos we want to do, we just have to work out an order to do them that works. Some are madder, some are darker, some are a mix. We’re going to keep trying to find a balance, though between the Ghunting and the Britain Is In Crisis video we’ve had all the extremes this summer.

Thanks for sticking with us through all this.

Paul