Alex: Hello Floatplane, here today we are going to be looking at
how the heck do we make videos here?
It is actually quite a lengthy process. Well, it depends video to video; but also there are heaps of people involved at every step.
So different people are going to be telling you how those different things work.
And the first thing is me, I'm going to tell you how we come up with video ideas.
It is really quite simple uh, you sit on the can and you're just kind of like wow, I wonder.
Or in some other situations, like the one that I have right here.
Arty will just call out in the middle of a Floatplane exclusive, hey,
what if we put a computer into a television? And then you guys like it a whole bunch of times
and I need to put it in the stupid writers leads even though I don't actually want to do it.
Alex: The first step of an idea is we chuck it into our Trello board,
so for instance here we have AIO in a TV, and there are two things that you need to bring to this meeting.
We have to have a title idea, and a basic idea of what the video flow will be.
At this point in the writers meeting we will discuss the quality of the idea.
There are definitely some videos that just come straight to writers meeting
as a fully fleshed out yeah, let's do it!
But there's lots of stuff that's also more like a nugget of an idea.
Like maybe you're like this would be cool, but is that 12 minutes of everyone's time?
Like do millions of people want to see that for 12 minutes? Maybe not;
maybe it's only like five minutes of a video, but you can flesh out a much larger concept when you have everyone in the meeting at the same time;
from there it gets approved and goes into pre-production.
Alex: Also, we have a whole business team and sometimes they are also responsible for getting us leads.
Shahrad: Hi, I'm Shahrad; I'm the senior account lead at LMG.
My job basically is to be the line of communication between the brand that wants to sponsor the content.
I try to find a sweet spot and the balance between having a good integration for the product
and having good content, because at the end of the day, even if it's sponsored,
content is king, because if it's shi***y content, it's a lose-lose.
And the biggest part of this process is talking terms with the brand,
and try to come to an understanding of what we can and can't do during a video;
such as talking points, what they need covered with the products, live service,
what the deliverable is gonna look; all the boring small stuff that goes into a contract, while keeping LMGs interests in mind and protected.
Try to come to an understanding with the brand as well, and compromise, and get together;
and make beautiful sponsored content. Alex: Once the idea is approved we do what we call a scrum.
This is a really quick meeting between the writer, so myself, probably Linus and Labs,
or anyone else that is going to be involved with the project. This is a really short meeting where we just simply go over, what's going to be in this video?
What is the scope? What can we chop off? What absolutely needs to stay in there?
And we just want to make sure that everyone's on the same page;
there have definitely been some situations where a video has been largely written,
only to find out that wires were crossed,
and different teams thought that this video was going to be a different thing.
Having just a five-minute meeting can completely avoid that,
and can be really good for just being like, what what are we actually doing again?
It's a very important step surprisingly. Now in this scrum meeting there are a couple things that we have to decide on.
We need a good title and thumbnail; if you do not have a good title and thumbnail for a YouTube video,
you do not have a YouTube video. A little bit unfortunate, but you can make the best video ever;
but if you have a bad title and thumbnail no one's going to watch it,
and all of your work is going to be for nothing. The next bit that we need to look into is the intro.
We need to make sure that the title and thumbnail, and the intro are all cohesive
and we can just hook people in, have them immediately want to watch the video;
because again, even if you have the best video ever;
if it does not hook people and they just leave, the YouTube algorithms gonna be like
I don't want to serve people that, and then whatever beautiful stuff you have in the middle of the video
does not matter, because no one has made it there. The next thing we go over is just clearly laid out beats,
we come up with a basic idea of the flow of the video; and this can be really helpful for two reasons.
For one it just helps you know what the flow is, but it also makes it really easy to go in
and start bits that you don't necessarily need everything for;
so maybe I'm waiting on Labs testing for a video,
I don't want to just sit around, so maybe I can start in the middle of the video and be like
I can write these couple paragraphs about the architecture of a processor.
I can talk about maybe like what are the implications of new AMD CPUs being really expensive?
Before I have all of the performance testing that I might be putting at the start of the video.
Breaking it down into different sections can make it nice so that you know the flow, Finally, we want to try and decide on a good conclusion to the video.
You don't want people to watch it and just at the end be like "what?"
You want to make sure that what you have set up in the intro of the video,
and the body of the video is satisfyingly concluded at the end
instead of it just being like a thing that happened.
Up next we just introduced writer pod check-ins.
Basically four or five of us will get in a little group for
two, three minutes at the start of the day and be like hey, what's everyone working on?
Does anyone have something that's super time sensitive that needs extra people to go on work on it?
Having just a quick meeting at the start of the day allows us to be like
hey I have a bunch of time here today, does anyone need some help?
And it allows us to sort of distribute our resources as are needed; for instance,
last week Adam had a project where he was selecting people for cable managing their setup;
but sifting through all of them would take absolutely forever.
I had a little bit of time, because I was just waiting on Labs and stuff like that;
so I was able to hop in and be like, yeah I can do a morning of just going through people setups;
and that makes the whole process better for everyone, because Adam didn't have a lot of time
and I just happened to be at that point. From there we just simply go and write the script,
sometimes this involves making an entire huge project, which will take
months and months of procuring items, getting them in, testing them;
sometimes it's just googling for a day. At the end we end up at script review.
This is where myself, Linus, anyone else involved like
Labs and a couple other people will come in and have a look at the script
and make sure that first of all, everything that we said in the scrum is there,
and also that it's just a good flowing video; this is also a time for Linus to come in
and put kind of his voice into it.
Maybe not necessarily like he wants to change the tone of the video, but more so just
he wants the sentences to work like how he speaks.
The time for a script review can vary wildly, like for instance I did a vlog with these Qualcomm laptops the other day;
it was pretty much just me and Linus sitting down and being like, yep, that's what we're gonna do.
Cool, let's do it. Sometimes instead it will take hours.
Like if you go in there with a four thousand word doc and needs a bunch of little fine details
and tuning, and stuff like that; it might be quite a long time.
It's also the sort of thing where if you have more experience as a writer,
chances are it's gonna take way less time. Once we're done with script review it is the end of pre-production,
and we are going into production; which Nicole will tell you about.
Nicole: Hi, my name is Nicole and I am the post-production supervisor.
Once a video script reviewed, James then sets up the shooting schedule week by week,
and then we'll have a meeting to discuss it along with the business team;
just to figure out if everything's going to make sense from a release standpoint.
Typically these meetings take about half an hour once a week, and then we'll just kind of quickly run through everything that's happening that week,
and everything that's coming up in terms of questions we need answered from different departments;
and whether everything is on track or we need to reevaluate and reposition things.
It's like a never-ending game of Sudoku. Once all of those details are sorted out, then it gets passed to Colin and James
and they take care of the rest of the pre-production. Colin: Hi I'm Colin, a production assistant.
After James, Steve and Nicole determine the priority of videos that we're shooting,
we lead into the daily production meeting. So usually that's me, James, Bell, Vance, and Andy or Andrew;
basically we just determine the schedule for the day, and how we can prioritize Linus's time the best.
So on the day of the shoot, or the day before the shoot we do a preshoot meeting;
basically, that's me, the writer, and the shooter of the video
we go through basically everything, so there's no questions left at the end;
so that's determining the set, determining how many cameras, where we're shooting,
what sort of the scope is of the video, what style of video.
There's one word that I try to haunt people with, its surprises, and will we have surprises on the shoot?
I don't like them. So basically we just do that so everybody's on the same page,
and then we can kind of make sure that the shoot goes as smooth as possible.
So the meetings take about, ten to twenty minutes depending on the video;
something like a seated A roll video will take ten minutes maximum,
just because there's not much movement involved, it's more or less just talking about
the actual set, the look that they're going for; something like a vlog
it depends if it's a scripted vlog, or what we call a Yolo vlog,
where there's no script, and it's basically just come to set we're gonna do this thing.
I mean, I don't know any other way to say it. So those can take a little bit longer because we might want to walk through the sets,
and then also for intros, if it's sometimes the video will just start on Linus sort of standing there;
but sometimes we try to do skits and stuff and those can take a little bit longer.
So after pre shoot meeting, that's when we begin to build the set.
Usually it's just me and the shooter, determining the lighting, camera positioning, everything we need;
and then at that point I'm bringing props and all the items to sets.
The writer will usually come on set sort of as we're done,
and then so we try to get it to at least 90%,
and then the writer will kind of come in and just do like, all like the fine details of it.
I guess a part of building the set as well, is after we do pre-shoot we are determining props;
so sometimes we do have to go make prop runs, which are actually kind of fun sometimes, because you get to go to like a thrift store
and just kind of look around, and then sometimes things are a bit more open
so we can kind of design the look of anything.
So that's the pre-production side of things, and now I'll hand it over to Andrew and he can tell you about the production side.
Andrew: I'm Andrew, I'm one the camera operators here.
Now, depending on what set the writer wants to use, we've got different amounts of setup that are required.
So if we for example use the build corner set, there's not that much setup really required,
because the lighting is all, it's already there. We just move the key light in and out, you know
it's generally kind of more, set dressing kind of is what you kind of need to do.
Whereas if you go to somewhere like the bedroom set, you need to do a lot of setup.
You can be pretty creative in there with what you want to do, and it's a dark space too, so you kind of have to do quite a lot in there.
Alright and then we get into shooting the video; if it's a standing seated, slash seated A-roll, so this is terms that we use internally
they're not like technically correct for people who are NVIDIA production and stuff like that,
but they they do the job for us. They're normally quick shoots, they're normally on a tripod;
so a lot of work goes into the prep to make it look a certain way,
and then it's kind of you roll camera, you monitor your audio;
because people move different amounts, so you'd really have to monitor it and you know,
like we're all guilty of every now and then,
thinking it sounds fine to us, but then later on we get a call from Nicole saying
"oh there was it was a real scratchy shoot we hear". And you're like oh f***.
it didn't sound scratchy in my headphones, but like it- Sometimes you just need to be super careful.
Those shoots generally take half an hour, of Linus time this is;
so there's a lot of setup involved but- Of him being on set, getting the prompter going
for anywhere from half an hour, to an hour. For a vlog, sky's the limit really.
Sammy: Hahahaha. Andrew: It depends on the writer, it depends on the project,
depends on the scope, depends on how scripted it is.
we could have the EasyRig on, get all our gear on, the EasyRig on;
I've had it on all day, like into OT kind of thing;
like you've just you just keep going for as long as you need to go;
If that's the kind of shoot it is, generally speaking you're doing something kind of fun and engaging so it's not that big a deal.
When we finish the shoot, it's all wrapped up and we're all patting each other on the back, and all that good stuff you know, good job-
Cam op's job is then to go to the ingest station. There's a folder made for the project, and you simply ingest the fold-
Into the right folder. Somebody will hit shoot complete, or shoot done on Trello.
Nicole gets notified and then she assigns an editor. Nicole: Now let's talk about the post-production side of things,
once footage is ingested, it ends up in a B and L roll Queue,
L roll in our case stands for Linus roll, so that's things that Linus might want to see visually;
some additional graphics that might be created by the editors.
For videos that are more of a vlog style, they won't immediately have writers adding
guidance to the script; because it's a lot less structured.
In those cases, first assign an editor to the video just to kind of cut down on the fat
and to create a structure, for writers are able to look over the entire thing and add guidance to it.
Depending on the style of the video, I'll assign it based on individual editor strengths, or styles that they're familiar with, or prefer to edit.
Oliver: Hello my name is Oliver, I am a Editor / Camera Operator.
So once Nicole has assigned a video to the editor, that is normally through teams;
We have a teams comms chat, we are tagged and we have a Trello card that is assigned to us.
Now depending on what kind of video it is, so whether it's a scripted A-roll;
those generally are very quick and easy, and don't require something called the mid edit review.
Mid edit are normally used on Vloggy type videos,
in those cases there's not much scripting you can do;
except for perhaps the intro and some of the beats in the video.
Normally takes about, maybe like eight hours. So one workday to cut through like a vloggy type of video;
but if we're talking about like scripted A-roll, it normally takes about like maybe two to three hours.
Linus kind of just like goes right through the script and it just like punches out the video;
so those are a lot easier to cut through. Once mid edit review is done and we've received the guidances
the next step is just implementing those guidances;
probably take like another day or two?
So we got to add music and we also have to do like an audio balance, make sure all the audio levels are checked, and Just you know
get all those editing technical things out of the way. Normally for the scripted videos we normally just don't do mid edit;
so we would just implement all of the guidances, and comments from the script
and go straight into writer review. We would have the writer next to us, kind of just watching through the video
and making sure that we've implemented all of the guidances or fixes from mid edit review.
So if there's anything in writer review that needed to be fixed, we would implement those fixes, and then the writer would
check to make sure that all those fixes are good; then we would send it off to LMG review.
LMG review is basically a Linus watching over the video, and normally that would take by the next day; he would have already reviewed it,
or it could take up to a week. It really depends on Linus's schedule.
I would say generally it takes maybe like two to three days on average before he finally gets the video and reviews it.
So once LMG review is completed, depending on the video we would send it off to brand.
Now sometimes if Linus is too busy, and he cannot get to LMG review
but the video needs to be sent off to brand;
so what we would end up doing is a sensitivity pass, and basically that's just to check if there's anything that we cannot show to brand.
So for example phone numbers, or any like account information, or private emails.
So we have like Edzel, Steven, or Colton. [to do a sensitivity pass]
Once LMG review is completed we would then send our video off to ECC.
ECC squad is basically our facts checker; they would double check if there's anything in the video that is just factually not correct;
and we have a 24-hour Window for them to go check,
and once 24 hours has passed we would then check if they've left any comments.
And the writer would check over these comments to either
see if it's worth taking any action upon them,
because sometimes they're more just suggestions rather than fixes; or if there's actually things that we would have to either get a new audio pickup or just
change some graphics or stuff like that.
So there are cases where we actually don't upload to ECC,
in those cases it's more embargo videos, because we are contractually not allowed to show the video.
So once ECC is finished we would then proceed to QC.
QC stands for quality check, this is basically when we have another editor check over the video
and see if there's any technical editing mistakes.
Once the video is uploaded, I'm back!
From here It's pretty simple, you just go into the YouTube editor, put in the title, make sure that you have the correct Sponsor spots down in the description,
put a little actual description in there, have your product links and stuff like that;
and just give the video a little once over. It is incredibly rare, but we have had situations where
YouTube has just not uploaded stuff correctly, and maybe at 10 minutes 43 seconds the frame just goes.
And then you have a really bad time, because uploading a video after it's already been released can be a huge pain in the arse.
It's also entirely possible that I am not involved in the posting of the video;
because if it is a fully sponsored video by a brand,
the business person that is responsible for it is the one that will be merching it and putting it live.
And we have to make a post to our forum and to Twitter,
so that people can discuss it without the absolute nonsense that is the YouTube comments,
or you can just go to Floatplane, those- That has the best comments really. Sammy: Wooo!
Alex: And once that's all done we just simply go click publish and boom! You have a video.
Now for the next 15 minutes or so it is typically good to just watch it, and make sure everything is fine.
Maybe in the first little bit some people immediately start commenting.
Ah, the something's on fire! And then you have to go, and your day is probably gonna be really bad.
But most of the time that doesn't happen, and you just watch it
and there are a bunch of bots that come in, and are like "first" and "Porn, watch it";
And then you have to go through and click those, and be like hide user from channel a bunch of times,
an annoying thing that I actually have to do pretty regularly.
And speaking of regularly, I hope that you all are regular today.
Sammy: Hahahahaha! Alex: Uh, hit like, get subscribed and
don't hit like on that other video, because I don't want to make it. Sammy: Hit like!
Alex: See you later, have a good day. Sammy: Hit like on it!