I just posted a video about habits. I thought it’d be good to do I retro for each of the videos I make. I’ll just start with one before I get too crazy about doing this for every single video. First, here’s the video: “Staying Creative While Low on Time”
What went well?
I made this in pieces — That went successfully for the first time in a while. The definition of success here is just finishing it at all. I’ve done this before where I try to make a video and chunks and then do different pieces and sometimes I’ll even put some of it together before eventually abandoning it.
Stuck to 3 quotes and that was it — I can often go a little overboard trying to find enough quotes and examples for different topics. This always leads to bloat and makes it less likely that I’ll finish the videosI’m trying to make. Even with just three, this video is probably 2 or 3 minutes too long.
I drew one set of 8 images in 15 minutes sessions — This was good for just working towards something where I can find time to contribute to a larger project every day. 15 minutes is a good chunk.
This is a quote from Creative Calling by Chase Jarvis, way talks about the 5-day process:
Instead, stick to a simple, repeatable process:
Day 1: Finish one piece of creative work today, without judgment—whether it’s a story, a photo, or a minimum viable product. Just complete the work, create it quickly, and be good with it.
Day 2: Iterate on the work you did yesterday. Do a new draft or update the old one. Put the photo into Photoshop and make it better, add some polish to the lines of yesterday’s poem; just take yesterday’s baseline and make it better.
Day 3: Repeat Day 2.
Day 4: Repeat Day 3.
Day 5: Decide it’s good enough and move on. It’s not perfect, not ideal, but damn, it’s pretty good, right? Good enough to put out into the world.
What could be improved?
There was a time that I got a comment and I skimmed it and I saw the word “mate”. What I thought as someone was addressing me as a mate with some encouragement but then when I actually read the comment it said that I should have some yerba mate tea.
This video kind of has that issue as well. I recorded in kind of a low-energy state while sitting. I’ll probably be more wary of that next time. I want to bring too much energy but I need to bring some energy.
What to try next time?
First, I’ll try to record standing. I’ll also continue to try this format with 8 panels. I do want to do something where I take the blue vector imagery I’ve been experimenting with on Twitter and try to do a video in that style.
I also will try to get back to a weekly cadence for videos. I want to not care about metrics and things like that. At the same time it would be nice to get to 1000 subscribers. I think that’d be a nice number to feel like I’m not quite shouting into the void.
And it’s a good time to link to MKBHD’s video where he is so grateful to have 74 subscribers after 100 videos. One of the best ways to show my 500 subscribers that I’m grateful is to make more videos of higher quality.
Oh yah…
Another thing that went well was introducing Booster, our new puppy.