Making the Video That Revived My Channel

The director's commentary for "The Possible Quiz".

0:00 The Idea

13:19 Writing

24:23 Recording

29:23 Editing

37:16 Watching The Possible Quiz

3:49:17 The Aftermath

Chalek (a.k.a. hismario123) asked some cool follow-up questions, so I decided to post my responses here!

Q1. With The Possible Quiz, when did you realise that the video would be over an hour long, and what made you realise that this video would be so long?

A1. Really early into the note-taking process, I realised that I wanted to do a play-by-play of my experiencing with the quiz. Given that the streams themselves spanned 8 hours even without my commentary added on top, it was clear that the final video was going to be pretty lengthy.

Q2. Also with The Possible Quiz, what was the ratio of you writing and you filming and editing the video?

A2. I don’t have the exact figures, but to ball-park it I probably spent about 40-50 hours writing the script (including research time), the recording session was about 10 hours in total, and editing was about 200 hours. I put more time into making this video than I’ve put into any other project (unless you count my channel overall) or even video game (maybe excluding Apex Legends lol). That being said, many videos of mine surpass the 100 hour mark in terms of total time spent on them 😅

Q3. How did you decide what would appear on screen at what time?

A3. I essentially felt it out. When I'm writing my videos I very vividly visualise what they'll look like, so I have a decent instinct of knowing when I'm going to be visible and when I'm not.

Q4. What advice from those videos you watched about growing on YouTube did you put into The Possible Quiz?

A4. One of the biggest takeaways I got from all that YouTube advice was about focusing on tailoring your channel to best suit your audience. So the way I’ve applied that has been on how I format my programming rather than any specific video (hence why I decided to hone in on the storytelling on games/internet culture and make my channel less of a mish-mash which it arguably was before). As for specifics applied to that video:

• I made sure the opening was very strong to hook viewers by setting up the stakes and expectations for the vid
• I constantly teased what was coming up next in the video (hence the consistent references to future questions)
• I tried to ensure not a single moment was wasted
• Summarising all of these, I used retention hacks :P

Q5. And finally, did you know when you said "cut it close" you could've said "nailed it"? I didn't notice any comments asking about that so I thought I'd ask

A5. Damn, I should have thought of that. Can’t believe you’re the first person to bring that up 🤯