ASK & DISCUSS
INDEXShort Lessons from Top YouTube Channels?
12 years, 1 month ago - Marlom Tander
I have two sons and, being of a certain age, they have discovered YouTube.
First it was lego star wars, asdf, then Yogscast (British), Element Animation (British, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7YJSrjC6GM), TheFineBros and others. I can't say I paid much attention at first but after a bit of "Daddy, Daddy look at this", got sucked in.
What strikes me is that the focus is on story, gags, and wit. Script, basically. Production values range from awful to excellent, but for my boys, those are entirely secondary.
None of the channels my boys love seem to have had much, if any, input from trained film industry people, but are made by people with an idea and a DIY self taught set up:-)
Questions...
1) Why aren't film makers, who are making good stuff, getting enough views? (If your first series views won't pay for series two, it doesn't have enough views)
2) Is it a problem with the concept of the web series, or the promotional abilities of web series producers. I went and looked up lonelygirl15 - the original web series, and while that has a very respectable channel views of 280M Yogscast is nearly 10 times that number.
3) Is it a matter of timing - the web series for grown ups needs the YouTube volume audience to get a bit older...
4) Is it mistakes in timescale? The "Big" channels seem to have 1-2 year initial periods when their creators plugged away for not much response, and indeed, not expecting any, kept costs down. Are web series makers too short term (and thus burning their resources too fast).
5) Is it mistakes in genre? Youtube doesn't suit...(though this might be a different way of asking Q3)
Thoughts?
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12 years, 1 month ago - Tom Green
It's not just YouTube, it's that whole net thing of -
- short attention span
- grotty formats (both video and audio)
- massive competition from other content providers
This affects video in exactly the same way as music. Your sons' preference for story over production values is the same as the preference for a catchy melody over production. If your tune is being 'sodcasted' on a crap phone on the bus, it's the tune they'll hear, not the production, or, often, the lyric.
Therefore the biggest mistake content providers make- if looking for high viewer numbers- is to make long winded and just plain long videos that may look beautiful but don't have the pace and story to retain attention. That's fine in the cinema - or even tv- but for now rarely works on YouTube. That may change, but for now, if you want viewers, keep it short, snappy, and funny. And don't worry about production. Nobody cares if you got the grading right if the story's boring...
12 years, 1 month ago - Karel Bata
"The figures I've seen suggest payments at $1 per 1000 views"
Hrmm...
Gotta be more complicated than that. I would have guessed that what really matters to YT (or rather their advertisers) is the number of click-throughs. And when talking about YouTube it's worth noting that it's easy to be misled by the number of 'hits'. Do people really stick it out to the end? Reality is you're lucky if 25% are still there.
I wrote something about viewer retention here: http://bit.ly/YT-Retention
A shame other users' stats aren't made available to us - a lot worth learning there.
12 years, 1 month ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin
Series 1 paying for series 2? Remember Rickrolling? A fad a few years ago where people would try to trick you into playing a Rick Astley video? Something in the region of 100M views of the video, so how much would you think Pete Waterman who owns all rights got paid by youtube? He should be minted, right? $11 he's on record as saying. Mind, for the last year the figures were separately listed, youtube cost Google a year on year loss of half a BILLION dollars. Costs have got cheaper, but the volume of videos keeps rising, they wont be in gravy just yet.
The vast majority of stuff on youtube is completely unwatchable shite. Getting spotted and then going viral, the odds are stacked against you. Most filmmakers want to do something they're not embarrassed by when trying to get a job. If you want to stand out through quality it takes money. Not saying you can't make a breakthrough quality viral vid that makes back the cost of the production sandwiches, but it's far from a foregone conclusion.
12 years, 1 month ago - Anthony Rossello
tl;dr. :) Interesting topic with lots of angles to consider.
I think YT is a poor venue for a series geared toward more mature audiences. I just think 'pop culture,' 'cats,' and dilution now. I can't even find some of the early popular YT videos anymore-I tried looking for the 'literal videos' recently and found many imitations before eventually finding the real ones (I just looked again and found the originals easily - but now I'm bombarded with 'pipe wrench t-shirts' ads while watching 'Take On Me'). Man, I'm sounding old here, aren't I...
To your question about what works for grown ups, I find it hard to compare what's resonating with younger audiences and what would work with an older crowd. I wonder what the numbers are for Seinfeld's series, for example. Broadly speaking, it seems distribution channels are a huge factor in kickstarting a series. Assuming a series has appeal (per the excellent points made in above posts), who is talking about the series and who are they talking to?
Having never heard of Yogscast until your post, I just checked Wiki and it seems it came out of the whole World of Warcraft phenomenon which, to me, places it in a completely different category than a series coming from 'scratch.' It turns out that lonelygirl15 was also started by a 'connected' group, who presumably knew how to spread the word. But in lonelygirl15's day, there were roughly 20m unique visits/mo. Now, there are 1b (!) unique visits/mo.
So, maybe that's just it - there needs to be a way to break through the noise.
12 years, 1 month ago - Marlom Tander
Good Geek Week comment - took my boys to Percy Jackson on Wednesday and they were impressed to see Yogscast flash up as a Geek Week channel, then told me all about the Dungeons and Dragons movie Yogscast are making as part of Geek Week. "A movie Daddy. It'll be really good". It'll certainly be interesting.... :-)
12 years, 1 month ago - Radar Music Videos
Pete Waterman was talking about publishing income not revenue share. If RickRolling happened again, he'd have the facility to issue take-down notices through YouTube if he wanted to. But more likely he'd opt to to let them stay up and take the rev share on them. Which would be a lot more than $11.
YouTube are putting all their efforts in channels - notice Geek Week? They are beginning to compete for - and are getting - TV audiences. They happen to be going for kids because that's where their early adopters - content makers and audience - reside. But no doubt in time (and when we all have smart tv) they will be catering for the 30 something, south london dwelling, indie film maker audience.
Good points well made Marlom Tander and good for you for sharing.
12 years, 1 month ago - Marlom Tander
I suspect Pete W was either ahead of the curve, or exaggerating for effect. And perhaps that video wasn't in the Partnership program. The figures I've seen suggest payments at $1 per 1000 views as typical for most partners, with maybe click driven extras on top.
On those metrics someone like Yogscast is pulling down several tens of K a month...
What I'm wondering is, is trying to stand out through production quality a bit like a medieval monk saying that this "printing" thing is all very well, but it just doesn't have the quality of the hand written work. Correct, but missing the point?
Youtube is about being no better than you have to be on production. High Production values are for TV and Movies.
I'm getting a script idea already, or, to be precise, an idea for a series of quick and dirty shorts, the profits from which will fund my movie...
Anyone out there any good at lego animation?....