How I Make a Video

In this post, I’ll explain the process behind how I make a video. 

Idea Generation

If I’m lucky enough to have an idea for a video spontaneously occur out of nowhere, I’ll write it down in my notes app as I go about my day. Here are some samples of pages from my notes app. 

You can see it’s a very sporadic style of writing down the raw materials that will make sense to me later. I’m sure you all have a very similar form of note taking. 

However, many times I start the day with no idea what I’m going to do. It’s only if I’m very lucky that I have an idea ready to go. 

That being said, coming up with an idea is for me the most difficult part. I’m freshest in the morning, so if I wake up and know I want to make a video that day I pretty much just pace around and think until I come up with something that satisfies me.

There have been days where it takes all day to think of something. Watching the time tick by and knowing I have nothing is a horrible feeling.

I do also have physical, pen and paper journals. Here’s a few pages where you can see me eventually flesh out this video. 

FILMING

I shoot all of my videos with my iPhone 13. The first portion I tackle is the narration. This is the segment of the video where I sit at my desk and explain what’s happening. 

I write out what I’m going to say in a document and dress up in my outfit. 

Here’s a picture of where I film these narration portions. I rest the phone camera right on the desk where you see the blue circle and speak directly to it. My monitor acts as a “teleprompter” where I have written everything I’m going to say. You can see on the screen is the blog post I’m currently writing.

I don’t usually try to recite the entire thing in one take unless I have to. Normally, because of the nature of the editing process and what that type of video requires, I can afford to take it line by line.

So I say the line over and over again until I have a take I’m happy with. Then I move onto the next line. 

I use to record this using the back-facing camera so I could see myself on screen. But eventually I decided to turn the camera around and just hope I was in the right place. This way the video quality would be measurably better.

I also recently started filming these in “Cinematic” mode, which blurs everything but what’s in the foreground. I think that makes it look a lot cleaner.

Once I have the narration recorded, I have the “skeleton” of the video. Around the skeleton I will fill in the fleshy bits, i.e. myself performing a reenactment of a scenario I’m describing. 

My character is wearing the pimp outfit. When I dress as another character, often my partner, I try to dress as visually opposite as possible.

So if I’m in the pimp outfit, I try to make the other character look “normal” (baseball cap, fuzzy sweater, etc). 

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with some more difficult performing.

This video was my most recent, and also the most difficult I’ve ever tried to do. 

You probably wouldn’t think it since on the surface it’s much simpler and kind of unremarkable compared to most of my content. 

But I had to write and perform essentially a 90 second monologue in one uninterrupted take. I’m not an actor, so this is difficult for me.

Here is what my camera roll looked like. When I counted up all of them, I did about 130 takes of this before I got it exactly the way I wanted it. 

Eventually I took off that jacket because I was sweating. LOL. And also somebody told me once that this particular white shirt looks like what they put on you in the psych ward which I thought was really funny.

The hardest videos for me to do are the single shot, acting-intensive ones. But that's also why I've been trying to introduce them more, because it's something I want to try to explore that's out of my comfort zone.

EDITING

Editing's the most fun part for me and the easiest. Usually I have the entire thing edited already in my own head based on what I've shot so it's just a matter of putting the puzzle pieces together.

I edit in Premiere Pro. Here's a timeline drop from my recent video "Being a Landlord is Like Being a Superhero"

That was an easy video to edit because it was only two tracks, narration and video. Filming was the hardest part because I had to drive all the way to my old apartment complex, which is on Verdugo Rd in Glassell Park, LA. 

I didn't want to shoot it where I actually live now because I don't want someone to try to come to my house and kill me.

Here's a timeline for another more traditional video:

POSTING

Once the video is ready to go, I airdrop it from my mac onto my phone.

There, I upload it to both TikTok and Instagram separately. The algorithms on both apps treat you much better if you use their in-app editor to add captions and text.

I just take the TikTok version and upload that to Twitter cause nobody cares on there.

Then, done! Now I just have to hope it's a banger!