Hey everybody welcome to the still to be determined podcast. This is the podcast that follows
up on topics from the Youtube channel undecided with Matt ferrell I'm sean ferrell I'm Matt's
older brother and I'm a writer and Matt you want to say hi.
Hi. Before we get in the episode reminder. We
have ways to directly support the podcast you can visit stilltbd fm there's a link there
that allows you to throw some coins in a cookie jar there's also if you're on Youtube there's
the join button below the video and you can join and subscribe directly here. And directly
support the podcast in that way eagle eyed viewers on youtube will recognize that Matt
and I are suspiciously wearing exactly the same clothes we were wearing last week people
who are listening to this audio only via podcast. It was probably harder for you to recognize.
But I'm sure you heard the the green blue of my t-shirt and you were just like wait
that sounds awful familiar. Don't never know.
Yes. There's a reason for that this episode normally
of course we revisit the topic that Matthew has covered in his most recent video but not
this week this week we are doing something different. This is being recorded in the past
for you for me, it's the future. For you? yes.
Matthew I think it's the present but we are recording this in advance because of conflict
schedule conflicts next week so we won't be able to have an episode directly tied to Matthew's
video but I thought it would be an interesting conversation to talk about what is the life
of video. So. Wanted to find out from Matt things like how do the ideas start. How do
they develop how long does a production take and basically what is the start to finish
process for his videos which at this point I think it's easy to say that. Matt your videos
have a reputation for being highly polished that they are in my estimation at least and
I see this in a lot of the comments um tv quality like newsroom quality where somebody
would say and now to Matt with more about tech and then you'd be sitting there and saying
like. Hey here's how agra farming works so Matt a little bit deep background. You want
to talk about your background as how does the polish happen and how is it that you as
a single person understand. No hair.
What all the wires and cables around you in the room you're sitting in right now. How
they all connect and what they all do. How they do my my well do you know? Sean my
background goes like I've always been involved in the creative fields during growing up college
and grad school and my profession I've worked as a creative director at a video game company
for years. A Master's degree in video production shocker. It's like that it might explain a
lot so I've worked in theater and live performances and audio recording and audio engineering.
So it's like I understand all the different pieces and things you have to pull together
and as creative director I understand how everything from script to execution to. Ah,
post-production comes together and how you have to basically keep a consistent like feel
for everything you produce and try to achieve that level of quality I'm going for every
week um for a long time I did the channel completely by myself so I was doing all the
research myself writing the scripts myself filming doing all the editing very quickly.
Um, became not sustainable because I was working eighty to 1 hundred hours a week to produce
a single episode and I was working week to week literally so I was always under kind
of like ah an 8 like a gun trying to get the stuff completed so I could hit that weekly
cadence. Yeah. And the the initiation of the the of
the channel was really just a marriage of your interests in on the 1 hand the technical
stuff of like making videos like you had an interest in doing that.
It's change. Is this.
You had interest in tech in general and and I think it's safe to say I'm going to put
words in your mouth. Um that your interest in sci-fi and storytelling and kind of a vision
and of the future. Oh yeah.
Fed into like well what is the tech now and how is that how is that meshing with what
is going on in our lives right now. Yeah I mean the once again sean sean knows
this I'm a sci-fi nerd and geek through and through star wars star trek all that kind
of stuff I've always been obsessed with ah like futurism um like where things are going
and it's not just oh, that's cool sci-fi but like. Ah there's a glimmer of something that
I could see that actually becoming a reality in thirty years one hundred years you know
200 years on the road. Maybe we can actually do that kind of thing. Um, so that has always
been with me and being able to produce videos and knowing what to do to produce a video
on a vin diagram combined with my love of technology and consumer electronics. And my
concern about the environment. It's like when you put all those things on a vin diagram
where they intersect is what drew me to produce the videos that I produce it's like sustainability.
The environment technology video production. That's that's the intersection of what I do.
So then you start doing the videos and as you said it you were hitting eighty to a hundred
hour work weeks and I don't know why you thought that wasn't sustainable and yeah, ah, where
were you. Um, getting burned out really fast doing that.
Initially getting your ideas and for for topics and did that change has that changed over
time. Oh that's shifted. Um it was originally just
what was going on in my life at the time like I was doing videos on my tesla I was doing
videos on my solar panels. You know I bought a new electric lawnmower. It was like literally
things that were going in my life were inspiring the topics. And as time went on that start
to evolve into ah looking at the comments and hearing what the ah the themes were and
the comments I was getting on my videos of like what about you know, solar. You know
what about does solar work for all homes does. What about batteries that you can put in your
homes for this and so I started seeing these themes come up and would try to answer those
questions that I was seeing come up again and again. Um, and then today it's a combination
of comments plus I'm constantly combing news articles on sustainability and environmental
technologies. And so when I see ah a news article that pops up that's like a really
cool piece of tech I'll add it to my idea board. So. It's a combination of viewer comments.
What's going on in the news and just what's what's catching my eye at the time I'll put
onto an idea board. So You have an idea on your idea Board. You've
got some loose idea around a theme.. What's the next step. Do you just start doing Google
research and going deeper into it looking for places where companies are actually using
something. And then go from there or do you very quickly move into a deeper dive on a
specific company or tech. Um, it starts more high level. It's like typically
I'll go into that idea board which like right now there's literally over 100 things on that
list right now I'll go into that idea board take 1 and I'll do a little cursory kind of
google searching to see. What's actually deeper in there to see if there's more there and
then I'll also do a little bit of a vetting process to see is there an interest in this
beyond my interest like do I think my viewers will be interested in this topic and if it
passes those 2 criteria like Criteria criteria where. There's something more there and it
looks like there might be viewer interest in it then it becomes like it moves on to
my process of okay, let's actually make this a video. It's literally like you go to youtube
and you can do a search for it and if you see other videos. Um.
How do you determine that there is viewer interest.
Can go to google trends and do a search on Google trends and see if there's kind of ah
a bubbling interest on google searches just things like if you see lots of articles popping
up on different news sites about the same thing. It's like that's a sign that there's
interest there because there's a lot of people talking about it. So that's typically kind
of what I'm looking. 4 So you zero in on what you're gonna talk about
and as you said you previously would do all the research yourself at what point do you
say? Okay I now know I'm gonna make this video and then do you immediately hand off. All
or a portion of that to somebody to help you do the basic background research or do you
work in concert with that person. What happens there and where and who are these researchers
you might use. Yeah I still do some of the research myself
because there are scripts I write myself? Um, but there I now have a couple of guys
1 his name is Antonio another 1 his name is casiano um, these they help me with the real
deep background research. So once I know there's a topic I want to do. I may not know what
the angle is of the video like what's the angle I'm gonna take on this story I will
have them or myself will go and do a really deep research like try to find all the articles.
The research papers the things that really kind of like start to flesh out what's happening
on that topic and from that we have a conversation. So if it's myself I just come up with the
angle on my own. But if it's like casiono antonio they come back to me with kind of
an outline of what they found and I kind of look through their outline look the research
they found and together. We kind of come at. Okay, we think the angle should probably be
this. Let's look at ah. Airships and blimps from this point of view and let's go down
that thread and so then then what they do is they take that deep research and they start
to tease out and put together a first draft of a script and then they send that to me
and I look through the script I'll make a ton of comments I'll give a lot of feedback
I'll start to integrate some of my home points of view into it. Hand it back to them. They'll
do a revision and the final pass is always me I always do a final pass on the script.
Um, if there's any gaps I see or anything I think it needs to be moved or removed or
something like like that I'll I'll do the final edit and final pass on every script
and that's how we end up with what I end up sitting down to film.
Right? And that sounds very much like a ultimately that's a producer role like if this was a
Tv show. You'd be. You're talking about yourself as producer.
Yes, if I'm not writing if I'm not doing the research and writing myself because there
are still scripts I do that on but without those guys. It's like I wouldn't be able to
hit this weekly cadence with highly researched topics the way they're they're turning out.
Right? Well again, you go back to the idea of of an 80 to a hundred hour work week if
you try and slice that into manageable workweek time. You're literally talking about 3 to
even possibly four people. Or more in order to make it a ah manageable number for yourself
and for you I imagine part of that is also the changing of the hats you need to make
time for recording so there you are being director and performer. And then on top of
that producer and initial researcher scriptwriter. So the changing the hats I imagine you've
broken up your week into different days or different roles because otherwise chaos would
rain. I can't even imagine how chaotic would be to say like oh from 11 to 1115 I have to
do this and then I have to do something completely different from 1115 to eleven 30 have you
sliced your week up in that way to say like Monday is my research day Tuesday is my script
will be review day. Yes.
To a certain extent like I release videos on tuesdays so tuesdays for me I may record
an episode on that day but I tend to leave my tuesdays open so I can reply to comments
so I can keep my eye on how the recent video is performing and respond to things in real-time.
So I try to keep my tuesdays kind of loose for that. Um, Mondays tends to be a recording
day because it's starting to fresh week and I can record a video but I've even started
to break up my week. Not not by the week but by weeks where I'm doing things in batches
like just last week I recorded 4 episodes last week so I basically recorded one month
of content in one week and now for the next 2 to 3 weeks I'm gonna be focused completely
on vetting. Yes I mean I be I wish I could do that I'm gonna be vetting topic ideas helping
to revise some scripts and write a couple scripts on my own over the next 2 to 3 weeks.
Living on a beach. Yeah. And by the time that 2 to 3 weeks is up I'll
probably have 5 or 6 scripts ready to film and so I'll probably film another 3 or four
at once over a course of a week and then I'm doing this I'm trying to do this batch cycle
because it removes some of that task switching which is really hard to do but even in doing
what I'm trying to do here. Um, yeah.
I still have to I still have to review edits from my video editor. You know a couple times
a week I'm still having to get at random times I'll get a script from 1 of my researchers
that I have to stop and review so I can give them feedback in a more time-appropriate way.
So it's like there's still task switching that throws me off of kilter every once a
while. But. Um, right right.
But this batch process that I've kind of landed on is working much better than my old process
for sure. Yeah, so we've gotten you up to as you just
brought it up yourself. You're doing your video recordings. Maybe there's a day or several
days where you're putting together your videos. These are not ready to go live the next day
you couldn't You would not be willing to publish that.
New. And immediately. What's the step that it what's
the next part of that life cycle for that video where does that go.
Um, well this is where the magic I think happens and a lot of the credit I have to give to
sonny who is my video editor. He is astonishedly good I I love him as a human being and I love
him as a video editor. He's such a great guy. Um, the video edits are tough. Because I like
video edits that hide the cuts a lot of times in Youtube videos. You'll see just jump cut
up or jump cut or jump cut I'm I'm old school the way I learned and the way I was trained
was you want a highly polished thing. You do not show the edits so I like to have lots
of b-rolled I can cover up a lot of those edits and make it seem fluid.
Right. I Think that's the Tv I think that's the Tv
readiness that I that I see and other people see which is we have grown accustomed to seeing
on Youtube somebody like suddenly jumping and the audio if you were just listening audio
wise you wouldn't notice anything but video wise you do see those jumps.
Yes, yeah. Sounds fine. Yeah.
And it is a little it adds a a chink that makes it seem more amateur it just absolutely
yeah. Can you hold a 1 second.
Sunny This is the perfect example of a part you would want to edit out.
Angry Angry dog. We had a delivery that required a signature
I knew it was coming but I thought it was gonna be a little later than it showed up.
She's angry. While you were gone I said to sunny. This
is an example of a part. You'll want to cut out. So.
Yes, actually I have a different editor that does the podcast. But yeah, um, okay, so where
were we we were talking about the video edit. Let me just roll back to my question so you've
talked up to this point about the the life of the video up to you filming and you're
and you're filming your handful of videos potentially in one week these are not ready
to go live. You are not going to push the button and put them out as is what's the next
part where do they go who do they go to. Yeah, the the videos this is where the magic
really happens in the videos. It goes to Sonny who is my video editor and I Love this Guy.
He's he's He's a good human being and a very talented video editor this is where it gets
challenging because ah, you've brought it up here. It's I'm. Old school in the way I
was taught on how to edit videos and you don't want to show the Cuts. You don't want to show
the edits you want to mask them all with b-roll to make it look very polished and finished
and if you notice on most Youtube videos there tends to be lots of jump cuts and that's the
kind of thing I want to avoid in my videos and so that makes this part. Challenging part
and sunny does an amazing job with it. And how much of the stock imagery stock video
the there is sometimes incorporation of companies promotional videos their own pr stuff I know
that. They probably provide you with when you initially reach out to a company if you're
talking about a specific company I imagine you reach out and they provide you with probably
a pr packet. Um the incorporation of all of that that's left in in Sunny's hands
Yes. Yes, like it used to be obviously all me and when I first started working with sunny
I would try to give him I would try to find a bunch of the bee role myself and would give
him like links and things like look here look here look here today I don't do any of that.
It's little I record my talking head footage and. I pass the files off the script off to
sunny and he does a better job at finding broll than I ever did. So. It's like he's
better at it than I ever was so it's like sometimes he finds footage where I'm just
like how how did you find this and it's like listening to sherlock holmes. It's like.
Right. Went to the company's website and I saw this
video there and I followed the link over to here and I looked in the source and found
the link on this youtube thing which made me realize it was actually owned by this other
company and somebody it's like Sonny what are you doing? It's like he keep fine. He
goes on rabbit holes to find incredible stuff and that's 1 of the challenges with Youtube
too is like who owns. Um, yeah.
Yeah, and then he's like and that's how I know Elvis Presley is alive.
And but yeah, it's it's it's the challenge with what I do.. It's like how do you? there's
There's the rights issue. Yeah, obviously you don't want to use videos. You don't have
the rights to so typically what we're doing was we're sticking to Youtube videos that
are basically Pr material because there's never a question about using that stuff. Um,
there's times where like you mentioned I reach out to companies directly like do you have
anything additional that you can share with the press and they will typically give me
like a press kit or they'll give me versions of the video that without text on top of it
companies like Tesla and things like that they typically have press kits available that
are free to use for the press. Um, yeah.
Um, and then we also have subscriptions to stock photography sites like adobe and video
blocks and things like that where we can pull additional like aerial shots of solar parks.
It's like that kind of stuff we can just find on those stock photography websites. So it's
a combination of a little bit of everything. Um, yeah.
But it takes a lot of sleuthing to pull it all together.
And what you've described at this point is really Sonny had to learn your voice and once
and once he learned what your voice was. He's able to do that on his own and really like
it. My Stalia my voice and style.
It all seems like and again going back to that is ultimately the role of the producer.
A producer is putting their voice around the entire package even if there are other people
involved and that's I think what has maintained the consistency here is that it does seem
to be your voice coming through. Right? yep.
And the other thing I would want to point out is like there are things I've always wanted
to do my videos but when I was doing it by myself I didn't have the time so I would have
to take shortcuts and 1 of the things I always wanted to do in my videos was to be a little
more thoughtful with the music that's being used adding sound effects. Things to make
the videos feel a little more alive because a lot of times these videos have no sound
at all to them and so since there's somebody that's dedicated on editing these videos for
me like Sunny. He's doing all of that we're using more music we're using more sound effects
and the videos are looking a little more polished than they did before because he's completely
focused on that. Before I would be like I want to put sound effects I just don't have
the time to figure that out right now heads have to move so it's it's been very helpful.
So sunny works on a work schedule where he's getting effectively large amounts of work
from you multiple videos potentially at 1 time his return to you must be spread out
over a period of weeks I imagine you don't have a turnaround with him where he's getting
you. All 3 videos back within a week I imagine it's like on a weekly basis. You're getting
things Back. You're giving an initial run. Yeah, you get and you're and you're giving
it an initial watch through and if there's any final polishing that is needed. He's taking
care of that. I get about a video a week I get about a video
a week from him. Yes. Yeah, he sends me updates like as he's working
throughout the week he'll say I've checked in all my edits if you want to check it out
and leave some comments and I can we use final cuts I'll open up final cut I'll look at his
edit and I can leave markers on the timeline like change this change this I don't like
this clip or this is awesome I'll leave him. Feedback and he can make adjustments over
the over the course of the week And that's built directly into the editing
software. So you're effectively looking at the same project as if you're sitting in the
same room. Yeah, it's actually kind of ah a good and
bad thing because it's like because I'm a video editor myself. It's like when I open
up the phone up project I can just go in there and go tweak tweak tweetweak tweak and tweak
stuff myself I try to avoid that as best I can I try to leave feedback because if I'm
tweaking things and he doesn't know what I changed. It's like.
Right. Um, yeah.
He's not going to understand my voice so I'm always trying to make sure I'm giving him
feedback so that he knows what I'm liking and not liking and he's learned. It's like
his videos are all like ninety five percent there almost every single time.
So you're getting the video back from him in a final form. He's like I'm done with this.
You're like I agree it's ready to go live typically how much time between you getting
that final product and it going live how much time is there. Are you getting these projects
on Friday and it's going live on Tuesday or is there more of a.
I typically we wrap up his portion of it on wednesdays and then they publish the following
Tuesday and the reason that we need that big Buffer is a lot of my videos have sponsors
and sponsors have to see the cut of the video to give final approval on their segment. So
typically what happens on Wednesday is is i.
More room there. Export the vinyl videos I put them up somewhere
where the sponsor can check them out and make sure their portion is good to go and they
give me feedback and usually Thursday or fridays is where I'm published I'm putting them up
on youtube scheduled ready to go on like Thursdays or Fridays. So I don't think about it over
the weekend and they just launch automatically on tuesdays.
So it's going live and you've got a community of patreons around you supporting the production
of all this how you don't have to give specific numbers. But what is your Patreon community
look like now how large a group are we talking. Um, it's a few hundred people now. It's almost
a few hundred and it's it's bigger than I ever would expected and my patrons are awesome
I just like for my higher level patrons I hold a monthly zoom call. So I've actually
gotten to know a bunch of them like Rob van de wau who is 1 of my original producers.
He's helped me on videos write scripts um I've actually become friends with a lot of
them. Um's they've been incredibly supportive. Not just with money but with you know, moral
support and feedback and story ideas but they kind of the amount of money that I get from
page found not to get in specific numbers. It covers sunny like the patreon money the
way I look at that money is it's helping to fund a lot of the production itself. So it's
like it's paying for sunny. It's paying for those stock video subscriptions. It's helping
to pay for some of my research researchers money. Um, so it's it's helping to kind of
give me a nice baseline to make sure I can cover the costs week to week of what it takes
to produce the videos. That's all it's very interesting because I'm
always involved at the literally like the last stage it. It goes live I watch it then
you and I have a conversation I'm not involved in any aspect of everything you've just described
and it's. And it's fascinating to me if you consider our conversations then post release
part of the life cycle of the video each of these episodes is actively engaged with and
worked on and discussed over. So.
A couple months. Yep. More than a month it's yeah it's really it's
it's a very interesting part of of what you're doing I think that the the skill that you
show and the talent that you've pulled in around it is easily seen so this is just me.
Complimenting you on putting together something that's ah, very good quality but also like
clearly finding an audience so head tip to you.
Thank you and you are but you are part of that Team. You are what you are part of that
team I mean this this conversation the post conversation I do see as an important part
of the conversation. It's the videos are a a conversation between me and the viewer.
So I'm always looking through the comments in this podcast is meant as a way for us to
kind of just discuss openly you're you're coming at it from the every man point of view
which is what I Love. It's like you. Yeah, this scares me.
I am very happy to be the man on the street coming in and saying but I don't understand
solar panels because I don't I don't I am scared so our listeners should tell us what
they think about this if any of you have any thoughts about.
Ah, yes. What we've talked about about the lifecycle
here. It would be great to hear from you. You can find the contact information in the
podcast description and of course on Youtube. The comments section is directly below the
video you can weigh in in either place. Don't forget, there are ways you can directly support
the podcast. surprise surprise we just talked about 1 there's patreon. There's also still
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to support us directly from Youtube please be sure to give us a rating a review share
us with your friends all of this really does help the podcast. The podcast helps the channel
the channel helps Matthew and then Matthew literally helps a village of people. Put together
these videos. Thanks so much for listening everybody. We'll talk to you next time.