As mentioned in Project 1, the purpose of our reaction video is to test what kind of response (like/dislike & share), and the amount of response we could receive as being a beginner YouTuber, which is mainly shown that anyone could be involved in online screen making if they are willing to, whether you are an amateur or a professional filmmaker, as well as testing that if ‘acting’ is really necessary in order to make it more attractive, or it could be done alternatively by editing technique such as the Jump Cut?
Through making our first YouTube video, we had experienced ‘A Day in the Life of a YouTuber’, from planning, shooting to editing, which is slightly different from traditional filmmaking, that sometimes it rely on improvisation, and we have to finish the whole process in one day for instance, meanwhile, we have racked our brains to compose it creatively to attract viewers and increase the views. Since we both feel awkward while talking in front of the camera, where an introduction is required for the reaction video, therefore, we had decided to use the voice of Google Translate to speak for us. Also, to make it looks more ‘professional’, we had colour graded what we have filmed, and tried our best to cut it smoothly that not to interrupt viewers watching experience.
Views and response in 36 hours
However, after one and half day, we only got 23 views, 1 like and 1 dislike, it turns out that a simple post-production and merely tagging were far more enough to increase the view of a video, we may have to pick a more interesting topic, to promote it in various ways and to try include more elements in our next video (e.g. visual/sound effects, background music).
After the video test, I think I might have overestimated the interactivity of online video, that most of time responses from netizens could be pretty vague, in the case of YouTube, not much of the viewer would actually ‘comment’ to a video, that we tend to only press Like or Dislike after watching one, eventually the maker might not know how could they be improved if they had got a lot dislike.
Besides creativity and production skill, in this course I want to investigate that what else components are also essential in order to make a ‘successful’ YouTube videos that being well-known among a place, in achieving it, do we have to follow the trend, or it could also be done by making it in our own way to stand out from others? Will the interactivity means the same while everyone is hiding behind their allies?