Flame My First Video?

[wet sonnet]

you gotta make it a story. Who's the character? what's their goal? What's the conflict? And what's the resolution?

e.g. You're the character. You're trying to make it to a mountain and ski a run without falling. etc

then change the title and thumbnail to match.

https://youtu.be/0u-7bx7Qn3w?t=719
and https://youtu.be/0u-7bx7Qn3w?t=1429
This should be your intros to the video with (coming up) text on the bottom. It's infinitely more interesting than you laying on the ground saying hi :p Start with the most interesting part of the vid first. Then go back in time to the start of the story.

[wet sonnet]

Watched a bit of the video. Audio quality is more important than video. If you can get a cheap lav mic or some way to up your commentary, it'd go a long way.

4 mins in and you talk about how you got woken up by a tow truck. But you give away the conclusion right away and say "It wasn't a problem". I'd watch some vids about how to be a good storyteller, which usually involves starting the story off with the most interesting part "Guys, I just woke up at 4AM, scared to death that I was about to get my ass beat, or lose my car" Then you tell the rest of the story. It makes people curious on wtf happened and how did it get resolved?

You also don't need it, but if you can get footage at all of the truck, ideally with you narrating in a whispers as it's happening, that's gold content. If not, you can recap after the fact with a story but the story has be to told in an engaging way, not matter of fact.

This is a good example what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDp9hVDL49Y

Also you'd then change your title to something like "I Almost Lost My Car! My First Solo Ski Trip" then a thumbnail of your your face near the car, with some mountains, something like that. People love thumbnails with human faces. We're naturally drawn to human faces.

---

This is a perfect example of a great travel vlog. The thumbnail and title are intriguing and tease something interesting that happened.

The video itself opens with who the person is (the protag), their goal (going to an old samurai town), and the conflict or problem in their way (a sudden storm).

I think the content and thumb+title mismatch a bit cause he changes the focus, but both are still intriquing regardless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTOQIr2qQe8

[honest ibex]

you bring up interesting points, i'll definitely keep them in mind for the upcoming videos. I felt like it was difficult to maintain a balance between being overly direct and rambling.

For the intro, I get what you're saying. I attempted to implement that idea with the small portion of skiing at the beginning but i could see where either of the clips you referenced would have been better suited.

The audio is atrocious, i am aware lol. A mic is first on the list of things to buy before the next trip haha

The storytelling bit also makes sense to me. It didn't even occur to me to set up a "scene" like that, i just went back to bed after the threat had been assessed lol. I suppose i'll learn to think in terms of what clip would be better e.g. me talking in the morning or being dishevled in the middle of the night.

Admittedly, it took me an ungodly amount of time to decide on how to phrase my title. I went the safe route and emulated "real" travel vlogs with a less clickbaity title. If I were to use a title like you suggested, is the 40 second clip where i talk about that enough to name the whole video about it? I did think of similar titles but i ruled them out because they were just fractions of the video and not the focus

I appreciate your taking the time to watch and critique, this was my first time ever having to focus on the way i spoke, angles for the camera, and learning to edit the video etc. The next one will be better.

This last question is mostly opinion based, but do you think a single higher quality video per month will suffice for steadily attracting new viewers? I am also planning on shortening the coming videos but I just wasn't sure how to for this one. I think flying will cut out a large section of time.

[crimson flame]

the part at 24:35 is much much more interesting than the current hook/intro you are using imo
then you could use the "send it" as a recurring theme in the video

also I would try to post more frequently than once per month unless you are visiting places that are highly searchable and people want to check them out from a video beforehand