My first video

[fresh mason]

After about 40 hours of editing, script writing, researching and audio recording. I've finally posted my first video which is on why more roads haven't solved traffic in Auckland.

I generally thought the effort I put into the video made it worth while and that for someone who had zero video editing experience before making this video. I did a good job as a whole.

Obviously anyone's first video is not going to be perfect and that there are a few things that can be improved on. Any feedback on audio, content, thumbnail, editing, camera shots, graphics would be greatly appreciated and help me massively for future videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQJe2m7b8_8

[dusk wren]

Cool video! But that thumbnail needs work - can't read it at all.

it's also the same as your title, so it creates redundancy

[fresh mason]

What would be a suggestion that would be quick? Won't be able to spend time working on it until tomorrow

I knew that my thumbnail wouldn't be great to start with

but obviously have to have one

[dusk wren]

something like that

[fresh mason]

oh well

[dusk wren]

can remove the image, just put it there for fun. But you always want text to be readable, especially on mobile

even if you just make it white with either black outline or shadow

[fresh mason]

Did you make this or was this found somewhere?

[dusk wren]

I just made this now, busy procrastinating my script

[fresh mason]

where/how do you get the background for the text?

[dusk wren]

I make my thumbnails in Figma, so I just threw in a black rectangle

[fresh mason]

I'll start using that now

[dusk wren]

It's a free program similar to photoshop but less technical. Photopea (online) can do a lot more, but for simple thumbnails it suits my needs

ok last one, good luck!

[fresh mason]

I'll make one now and I

I'll post it here

[fresh mason]

How do I save the file?

Nevermind I worked it out

[dusk wren]

Great! Looks good

[fresh mason]

I'll go with the 2nd one

thanks for your help, definetely needed the critique

thumbnails aren't my strongsuit but figma makes it very easy

[dusk wren]

I'd probably still make the text slightly bigger, what I do is sit far back in my chair to help see what it would look like on mobile.

What's great with figma is you can easily duplicate thumbnails (frames), especially once you make 10+ videos and get to use the thumbail testing feature

so mine ends up looking like this

[fresh mason]

wow

Not the best thumbnail in the world but much better than my other one

Actually this one, zoomed out of it so it could fit to the exact frame

[fresh mason]

All sorted now

41 views in 5 hours, did post my vid on a few other discord servers which helped

[dusk wren]

I wouldn't recommend posting it outside of YouTube unless it's very niche servers or subreddits. You can run the risk of hurting the metrics. YouTube on its own does a great job of matching the audience with your video. So you can post on Twitter/Reddit/Discord, but yeah, don't always expect good results from them. This is just my personal experience though.

[fresh mason]

They're all apart of the niche, wasn't planning on doing mass adversting on random servers

[dusk wren]

ah ok got it

[fresh mason]

and also sent to users I know who might be interested

gotten a lot of support and feedback from them

I also did a test on search results and it shows up 3rd when I look up Auckland Roads, not that I'm going to obsess over that

[dusk wren]

Nice! But yeah the first few videos, focus hard on improving the following:

1. Thumbnails
2. Titles
3. First 30-60s of the video
   These alone can help boost your videos. The other part (making great content) comes with time.

[fresh mason]

Alright sweet

I'm happy my work is starting to pay off, had a few late nighters the last few days (only go to uni so I could afford to do this)

[dusk wren]

Well good luck 👍