Last week I was invited on a little treasure hunt by a guy I’ve interacted with on Instagram, namely @freakin_bikes He sent me a link to a video he had made explaining where to find the treasure and asked if I’d like to go find it as it was personally tailored to me. Intrigued of course I said yes. The other caveat was that I’d have to video myself opening the treasure so he could see my reaction.
So I set off in my best outfit, plaid/check shirt of course, my GoPro fully charged and a vague sense of where I was going (not much different to normal then). Now, I am not a professional videographer so I was playing things by ear and making it up as I went along. This I thought would show genuine spontaneity rather than me story-boarding or scripting something and it looking wooden and false. You might still think that it actually is just that though! Best if you just see for yourself so here is the video I made of what happened
As you can see if you’ve taken the time to view the video I had a great time and my reaction is real. The brilliant caricature that @freakin_bikes created for me is below, I can honestly say I didn’t deliberately wear that shirt!
I really enjoyed the process of recording the video, or “edit” as the kids are calling it (yes that’s probably now out of date and marks me down as an old duffer) even the post production and putting the various clips together wasn’t that tedious but then it was a pretty straight forward ride to tree, film me opening the treasure, ride away from tree scenario. The biggest thing of course was thinking of something to say on the spur of the moment and not coming across as a complete loon. This last of course is for you to decide.
Boyed with the success of that first video, after all I got a huge 78 views in the first 24 hours and some people actually followed my Youtube channel! I thought I might try a product review next. If you don’t know I do product reviews
- A) where have you been
- B) click on the links on the menu bar above or to the side
- C) why are you here anyway?
This product review thing is a whole different ball game to the first video though. A lot of companies send me stuff to look at for free and even though I make it plain that if i find fault with or don’t like the product I will say so I think its very important to show the product in its best light. By that I mean fitted or worn correctly and used for its intended purpose. Facts that are stated in reviews must also be correct and properly researched, if for example I’m giving a little backround on the company or stating a weight or tolerance this must be 100% correct so as not to mislead anyone. With this added pressure I had to come up with something to say, say the right thing, for example I kept calling the company in this video 76 products rather that 76 projects! That saw a few retakes I’ll confess. Also taking in between passing horse riders on the bridleway was also frustrating. all this of course makes editing the whole thing together a lot more time consuming. The software I am using didn’t help as it doesn’t support transitions between scenes or a nice title sequence so it all looks a bit amateur. But I’ve since been told this makes it more genuine rather than a paid for advert that you get a lot of on youtube. I can assure you I don’t get paid at all. I’m no Juliet Elliot making a living out of being an influencer, although I’d love to try that lifestyle.
Here is the 76projects (right 1st time!) review video
after the second video I put up a poll on my instagram stories asking if anyone thought It was worth me continuing with the video thing. usually if i pose a poll question I get over 1k of replies, this time I got 12, 5 for carrying on, 7 against. So while it was conclusive it wasn’t a very wide audience. Given my general glass half empty mentality I assume people were being polite by abstaining from voting no, so…
If you have got this far and watched the two videos can I ask you a few questions?
- would you like to see more product review videos along side the written reviews on this page?
- Is this style of shonky production something that you value more than a slick docu-advert?
- what free (or reasonably priced) video editor should the amateur look at?
Thanks for reading/looking and i look forward to seeing your answers and hearing your advice
UK GRAVEL COLLECTIVE 