So I now had a goal in mind and felt like I was dead set in making it happen. I had just recently been inspired by documentaries by David Attenborough and I wanted to one day create documentaries like that but I only vaguely thought about a path through film making. I thought such a goal would be best acheived by going to university and becoming a Biologist. I had been dead set on this idea and quit my job as a salesperson and moved to the city where all the good universities were. But when I got there things didn't go quite to plan I had more trouble finding a job then I thought posible. I counted down the wad of cash of had saved up to prepare for this transition quickly dissapear an had luckily just barely made it but finding a super cheap place to live (The catch was that it was shared with 6 other people). So by the time I had moved into this place I was aout of money in another 2 weeks and had to borrow $600 off best friend who I had left behind. I made this money last another 4 weeks and desperately searched online everyday for jobs and was grasping at worse and worse jobs in the hope to get anything. I had applied for a job seeker allowance and it took several weeks to finally be approved.
I had just 2 days before I started receiving this welfare money applied for a horrible job that didn't suit me in the least, but I was desperate. Luckily I didn't get that job and no longer had to worry about running out of money and getting kicked out of the room in a house i was renting I now had a steady flow of cash however small and hard to live on it was, I could at least count on more coming as long as I provided proof of my job searching. But now I could at least not have to apply for any horrible job and apply for things that I would be okay with or would at least be easy enough to not be stressful and depressing like the job I had escaped from was.
Now it has been about 5 months since I started getting these payments and I still don't have a job, so yeah I couldn't have possibly survived on my own and who would have thought that it would be so hard to get a job somewhere simple like a fast food joint or a supermarket as I had been apllying for these places over and over to fill my job search quota while hoping for a job to open up as a salesperson at at video game store or something. Sure although I hated being a salesperson at least selling video games and other cool stuff would be at least a little more enjoyable then the job I escaped from and at least I could again start thinking about my goals, that I needed to become financially stable to pursue. But a position at such a place never even opened up for and opportunity to apply, let alone get an interview.
So now we are getting close to the last 3 months of my life during which I had made the most progress so far on my path to getting into the fim making industry and the closer I get to the video I am currently working on, that is probably going to be the most important one I make. I am going to go into much more detail as I get into my freshest memories and the most important period of my life when it comes to what this blog is about.
But next I'm going to devote a detailed blog post about a short period of time just before I quit my salesperson job where I made a very important video and my first video since I decided to stop making activist videos and began making videos about video games.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
The Early Years II
So here I was unemployed and with a bunch of time on my hands. At this point I had become more adamant in trying to save people that had not been convinced of my position. It made so much sense to me, I thought if I created videos persuasive enough while being entertaining and funny enough for people to watch them in the first place that didn't already agree withmy position. So I created what I couldn't have known at the time would be my 2 most popular videos ever and it wasn't because of it being particularly awesome, although my videos had been getting more professional and properly edited by this point. The reason was because as the equal oppotunity offender that I was a attack a group that was particularly aggressive towards my video and left hateful comments and show this video around until it was also getting in the hand of people who agree with it including the people I was against. This was because while I expressed my negative opinion against one group other groups that I disagreed with assumed that I was on thier side. Although I'm sure the reason was mostly that I posted it as a video response to another very popular video and ironically named it the opposite statment and even acted exactly like the guy in the original video with the same background and everything essentially everything a good parody should be. This video was so popular that I was getting about 2 comments posted on it daily and reached 10s of thousands of views the comments were a mixture of both positive and negative and people were constantly telling me about a factual error I made in the video while ignoring and refusing to comment about all the other valid arguments I made. It was actually hilarious to see people think that because they found one error in the video that it automatically made the entire thing invalid.
Anyway I continued making more videos and they started to get longer and often involved physical acting and parodies along with my usual talk in front of the camera. More of these video had fully written scripts rather then dot points I improvised from and although my channel became more popular due to my increasing quality it still wasn't anywhere near my fellow video activists many of who had a number subscribers in the 10s of thousands. I only had about 100 and no matter how many people were attracted by my one super popular video and how much my videos began to compare in quality to those of the big guys who were swimming in subscribers it never happened. I hardly got any more known and it began to feel like it was all a waste of time to even try.
Ironically it wasn't until I made another video insulting the same group of people as my last really popular video that it began to pick up. I began to communicate through private messages with someone who I was a fan of and eventually ask him to check out my videos and he did and he even said that they were great and then he even gave me a shout out in one of his videos. I was exstatic I finally thought this was it, this was the moment when people would start giving a shit about what I had to say and that I would finally start to get a following. I checked my email the next day and I had 30 new subscribers and I beleive this was going to be a daily occurance for a while and that I would finally get a real fanbase. But to my dismay, that was vertially all i got. about 45 total new subscribers from a shout ou from one of the most popular dudes in this Youtube community.
So I began working harder and made videos as if they were a TV series and had a pin up board that I would pin something on to to represent each episode some of my videos involved using much more elaborate props and physical acting. The scripts were also stronger and funnier. I created about 8 or so videos in this style and although the few people who saw them said they were great I didn't gain hardly any more of a following and by the time i'd reached 200 subscribers, mostly due to another video attacking that special group, at an incredibly slow rate of about 6 months since I had 150, I had just about decided to give up. Not just was I discouraged from the lack of progress I made but I also had a new job as a computer salesperson that was sucking the happiness and motivation out of my life. I hated the job, because it didn't suit me at all. Here I was a socially awkward person who dosn't like most other people forced to deal with them all day everyday. It was around this time that I created my first music video with me acting a several characters in live action and maybe it could have become popular if not for the fact that IT'S AUDIO WAS REMOVED DUE TO COPYRIGHT!!! So there is was trying whatever I could to get it seen by telling people to play the song with it from another source. But of course no one could be bothered doing that, it was just a silent video and as soon as people realised it would take a moment of extra effort to watch it properly changed to a diffenrent channel. That was the last big straw that had been pulled. Since something that I had worked so much harder on then ever before had flat out failed. I had given up.
A whole year passed and I had vertially forgotten my hobby and degenerated again to a state of depression and laziness and didn't feel like doing anything creative or constructive. I just played video games and essentially went from creating
entertainment for people to just watching other people provide it and be jealous of their success. I had even taken up drinking and became a bit of an alcoholic as it was only when I drunk that I could start to think creatively. Not so much because the change to my state of mind caused me to be creative, but actually made me feel happier which in turn led to creativity. I felt like I was trapped in an awful life and was desperate for any means of escape from this real life grind. So that is when I began to get ideas of going back to school and studying a subject that I was really interested in related to what I had been making videos about all this time. So after realising that such a change to such a life would be difficult but posible and the fact that the last year and a half was the most unproductive and stagnant time in my entire life I decided to quit.
and then...
Anyway I continued making more videos and they started to get longer and often involved physical acting and parodies along with my usual talk in front of the camera. More of these video had fully written scripts rather then dot points I improvised from and although my channel became more popular due to my increasing quality it still wasn't anywhere near my fellow video activists many of who had a number subscribers in the 10s of thousands. I only had about 100 and no matter how many people were attracted by my one super popular video and how much my videos began to compare in quality to those of the big guys who were swimming in subscribers it never happened. I hardly got any more known and it began to feel like it was all a waste of time to even try.
Ironically it wasn't until I made another video insulting the same group of people as my last really popular video that it began to pick up. I began to communicate through private messages with someone who I was a fan of and eventually ask him to check out my videos and he did and he even said that they were great and then he even gave me a shout out in one of his videos. I was exstatic I finally thought this was it, this was the moment when people would start giving a shit about what I had to say and that I would finally start to get a following. I checked my email the next day and I had 30 new subscribers and I beleive this was going to be a daily occurance for a while and that I would finally get a real fanbase. But to my dismay, that was vertially all i got. about 45 total new subscribers from a shout ou from one of the most popular dudes in this Youtube community.
So I began working harder and made videos as if they were a TV series and had a pin up board that I would pin something on to to represent each episode some of my videos involved using much more elaborate props and physical acting. The scripts were also stronger and funnier. I created about 8 or so videos in this style and although the few people who saw them said they were great I didn't gain hardly any more of a following and by the time i'd reached 200 subscribers, mostly due to another video attacking that special group, at an incredibly slow rate of about 6 months since I had 150, I had just about decided to give up. Not just was I discouraged from the lack of progress I made but I also had a new job as a computer salesperson that was sucking the happiness and motivation out of my life. I hated the job, because it didn't suit me at all. Here I was a socially awkward person who dosn't like most other people forced to deal with them all day everyday. It was around this time that I created my first music video with me acting a several characters in live action and maybe it could have become popular if not for the fact that IT'S AUDIO WAS REMOVED DUE TO COPYRIGHT!!! So there is was trying whatever I could to get it seen by telling people to play the song with it from another source. But of course no one could be bothered doing that, it was just a silent video and as soon as people realised it would take a moment of extra effort to watch it properly changed to a diffenrent channel. That was the last big straw that had been pulled. Since something that I had worked so much harder on then ever before had flat out failed. I had given up.
A whole year passed and I had vertially forgotten my hobby and degenerated again to a state of depression and laziness and didn't feel like doing anything creative or constructive. I just played video games and essentially went from creating
entertainment for people to just watching other people provide it and be jealous of their success. I had even taken up drinking and became a bit of an alcoholic as it was only when I drunk that I could start to think creatively. Not so much because the change to my state of mind caused me to be creative, but actually made me feel happier which in turn led to creativity. I felt like I was trapped in an awful life and was desperate for any means of escape from this real life grind. So that is when I began to get ideas of going back to school and studying a subject that I was really interested in related to what I had been making videos about all this time. So after realising that such a change to such a life would be difficult but posible and the fact that the last year and a half was the most unproductive and stagnant time in my entire life I decided to quit.
and then...
The Early Years I
Welcome to Setzer's Videography, this blog will essentially be my public diary of my attempt to hopefully make it big in the world of Video production. Starting from where I am right now which is a nobody on Youtube making videos using content that belongs to other people and editing it into something cool and new. Hopefully someday my youtube channel will become well known and I will actually make a living out of my hobby and even have the resources to create my own content.
I am going to start by daily talking about each video I have made so far and analysing what I think of it, how it compares to videos from people who do have some fame and rationalise ideas as to how I can get it out there.
Today I am going to talk about my oldest videos that are no even availible publicly any more because frankly if I really want to make it in this world I'm going to have to not allow my personal beliefs and view points to be well known, because frankly people are judgemental assholes and would not bother to look at your work if they know something about you that offends them.
I am part of a minority and my youtube channel was originally about me expressing my views and opinions about something that many people would be offended for me to even bring up. No I'm not Gay, no I'm not a Pedophile, no I'm not a necrophiliac, no i'm not a murderer. But to some people i'm something that is actually somehow worse then all of those. I will let you try and guess what that could posibly be and I would rather keep it as a separate alias from the one that is trying to get a career in entertaining people that could be turned of by simply knowing who I really am.
Anyway the point is that the past 3 or so years were spent making standard video blogs on Youtube and went from the the humblest of beginning where I simply uploaded a video talking about how I agreed with someone's position and was record using nothing but my Mum's handheld video camera. I accidently uploaded it directly from the device sideways. This was because I didn't even think to use any video editing software. So my first video was a dude talking who literally looked like this :). I was actually quite ashamed of the n00bness of this video and shortly after deleted it and decided I was too shy and nervious to show my face and so only filmed myself showing my forehead which is what this picture is from
. Anyway my next few videos were me doing short unedited comedic skits of me making fun of the secret thing that I disagree with.
I then continued to make videos where I would write a couple of dot points on a piece of paper and then try to speak to the handheld camera for several minutes in one take, it was tedious as I would often have to start over from the beginning and even when I would finish there would be a lot of uhs... and ers... as fillers as I was trying to figure out what to say next.
By this point was was discovering a lot of other people that agreed with my point of view and had been making videos about it for a whole year before I started. Yes, Youtube was only a year old back then. It was this support and sense of community that inspired me to make more and more videos and eventually I started making jokes about how I hide my face and then when I finally got a webcam, I began the video wearing a teatowel around my face since I was finally in full view sitting in front of the camera and this one didn't need to be held and 10 seconds in removed the towel and finally revealed myself and began making the video normally like everyone else.
The whole experience was fun though and I really enjoyed having the identity amounst the community as the guy who only showed his eye and forehead and enjoyed the joke I made a my expense about the whole thing. So I now had to find a new way to make my videos unique amounst the now many others that there were. It turned out that the minority that I was a part of was a lot more outspoken against the majority we were persecuted by. So at this point the production of my videos slowed down to barely 5 a year, due mostly to the fact that I was now out of school and had a 40 hour a week job.
Working life sucked especially in the bottom of the class chain job I was in. No need to hide this one, I was a grocery assistant at a supermarket. That place made me depressed most of the time and rather then wanting to do something constructive with my rare time was always wanting to just chill out and play video games. While I was working there I studying a networking adminitration course that I hope to lead to a career in Information Technology and was at the time pretty dead set that this was what I wanted to do and was actually inspired and encourage to this career path by IT Crowd. I thought it would be cool to be considered intelligent by people even if I reenforced my nerdy and outcase social status.
So next I got an apprentiship as a printer repair techinician. Not exactly was I was aiming for but took it because it included taking a general IT course as part of the training, so I could have quit after my 4 year apprentiship was up and become and IT Guy (I always thought that title sounded cool). But I failed the apprentiship and got booted out after 3 the month probationary period.
Between that job and my next one I had a lot more free time and began the second part of my journey towards becoming a filmmaker. Well okay I not actually a filmmaker yet but I am writing this blog in case I finally get there and I can have a record I can look back on when I actually do become famous and maybe even make into a biography and there are still many more parts to this story before I actually catch you up to where I am now.
So in the next part I will conclude the rest of my journey through being a video activist and then toward making videos to entertain people genrally and doing it for fun not just because I believed in a cause.
I am going to start by daily talking about each video I have made so far and analysing what I think of it, how it compares to videos from people who do have some fame and rationalise ideas as to how I can get it out there.
Today I am going to talk about my oldest videos that are no even availible publicly any more because frankly if I really want to make it in this world I'm going to have to not allow my personal beliefs and view points to be well known, because frankly people are judgemental assholes and would not bother to look at your work if they know something about you that offends them.
I am part of a minority and my youtube channel was originally about me expressing my views and opinions about something that many people would be offended for me to even bring up. No I'm not Gay, no I'm not a Pedophile, no I'm not a necrophiliac, no i'm not a murderer. But to some people i'm something that is actually somehow worse then all of those. I will let you try and guess what that could posibly be and I would rather keep it as a separate alias from the one that is trying to get a career in entertaining people that could be turned of by simply knowing who I really am.
Anyway the point is that the past 3 or so years were spent making standard video blogs on Youtube and went from the the humblest of beginning where I simply uploaded a video talking about how I agreed with someone's position and was record using nothing but my Mum's handheld video camera. I accidently uploaded it directly from the device sideways. This was because I didn't even think to use any video editing software. So my first video was a dude talking who literally looked like this :). I was actually quite ashamed of the n00bness of this video and shortly after deleted it and decided I was too shy and nervious to show my face and so only filmed myself showing my forehead which is what this picture is from
. Anyway my next few videos were me doing short unedited comedic skits of me making fun of the secret thing that I disagree with.I then continued to make videos where I would write a couple of dot points on a piece of paper and then try to speak to the handheld camera for several minutes in one take, it was tedious as I would often have to start over from the beginning and even when I would finish there would be a lot of uhs... and ers... as fillers as I was trying to figure out what to say next.
By this point was was discovering a lot of other people that agreed with my point of view and had been making videos about it for a whole year before I started. Yes, Youtube was only a year old back then. It was this support and sense of community that inspired me to make more and more videos and eventually I started making jokes about how I hide my face and then when I finally got a webcam, I began the video wearing a teatowel around my face since I was finally in full view sitting in front of the camera and this one didn't need to be held and 10 seconds in removed the towel and finally revealed myself and began making the video normally like everyone else.
The whole experience was fun though and I really enjoyed having the identity amounst the community as the guy who only showed his eye and forehead and enjoyed the joke I made a my expense about the whole thing. So I now had to find a new way to make my videos unique amounst the now many others that there were. It turned out that the minority that I was a part of was a lot more outspoken against the majority we were persecuted by. So at this point the production of my videos slowed down to barely 5 a year, due mostly to the fact that I was now out of school and had a 40 hour a week job.
Working life sucked especially in the bottom of the class chain job I was in. No need to hide this one, I was a grocery assistant at a supermarket. That place made me depressed most of the time and rather then wanting to do something constructive with my rare time was always wanting to just chill out and play video games. While I was working there I studying a networking adminitration course that I hope to lead to a career in Information Technology and was at the time pretty dead set that this was what I wanted to do and was actually inspired and encourage to this career path by IT Crowd. I thought it would be cool to be considered intelligent by people even if I reenforced my nerdy and outcase social status.
So next I got an apprentiship as a printer repair techinician. Not exactly was I was aiming for but took it because it included taking a general IT course as part of the training, so I could have quit after my 4 year apprentiship was up and become and IT Guy (I always thought that title sounded cool). But I failed the apprentiship and got booted out after 3 the month probationary period.
Between that job and my next one I had a lot more free time and began the second part of my journey towards becoming a filmmaker. Well okay I not actually a filmmaker yet but I am writing this blog in case I finally get there and I can have a record I can look back on when I actually do become famous and maybe even make into a biography and there are still many more parts to this story before I actually catch you up to where I am now.
So in the next part I will conclude the rest of my journey through being a video activist and then toward making videos to entertain people genrally and doing it for fun not just because I believed in a cause.
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