You’ve got an idea for a show. You’re going to be the next big YouTube star. Fame, following, and riches are coming your way! You just need to turn on a camera and hit the red button; right? Not so fast! While you may see the finished product on screen and think it looks easy, there is a ton of work that you don’t see. As I have some experience in this realm with our show Surprise! It’s a GUITAR, I’m going to walk you through the process of putting a single episode to air. 

Let me rewind for a second. Before going through the pre-production - production - post production process; let’s talk about the idea. First and foremost, it has to be something that you are genuinely passionate about. Let that love shine through. BUT, also keep the audience in mind. Ask yourself these questions, Is it going to hold their interest? Are they likely to watch until the end? Will they share the video with like minded people? These are all important concepts to factor in. For example, Cort and I fully produced an early iteration of Surprise! It’s a GUITAR (henceforth known as SIAG for the duration of this post) that didn’t work. We had to go back to the drawing board and start again. After re-tooling the concept, we came up with the format that you know today.

SO? What goes into an episode?

STEP 1: I need to acquire a guitar and hide it from Cort for (sometimes) months at a time! I look for items that are unique in some way and have an interesting story. I then learn as much as I can about the instrument so that I can share it with Cort in the Reveal segment. 

STEP 2: I find the story or angle for Story Time and write it out. While I’m writing, I keep the eventual edit in mind (i.e. what is going to accompany my words on screen). This will also influence how I steer the conversation in the Reveal.

STEP 3: Production! Finally, we’re going to turn on some lights and cameras! NOW, you may think that we shoot an entire episode in a day. But we don’t! We “gang tape” segments. For example; we’ll shoot four Reveal segments one day, and four Story Time segments the next. We swap out shirts between each segment, et voila! Movie magic!

STEP 4: Tone Check….MORE PRODUCTION! Tone Check is a little trickier as there are additional moving parts….namely achieving and recording a proper guitar tone. Once we have that rolling, then it’s up to Cort to perform. He spends a lot of time at the pre-production stage to create a musical roadmap. This involves choosing (and learning!) songs that make sense for that guitar, and that make sense in relation to one another. Because of the complications of shooting a Tone Check segment, we’re only able to shoot a maximum of two in one day.

STEP 5: The edit! Post-production! Putting it all together! This has gotten somewhat easier with time as each of the segment intros have been previously created and exists… now we can just drop them into our edit timeline. We’ve also figured out a few things that work in terms of making Tone Check easier to edit. But with that said, it still takes quite a lot of time to edit. The Reveal must generate some intrigue and include interesting banter. Story Time not only requires words, but pictures and videos to go along with them. Simply sourcing those can take hours. Tone Check is the most time consuming to edit as you’re dealing with a performance, two main sources of audio (dialogue and guitar) that cannot compete with each other, and a ton of awesome riffs to review….and you can’t keep them all! You have to be pretty ruthless in what you keep. Included in the edit is sound, music, graphics, text, color correction, etc. It’s much more than slapping some clips together.

STEP 6: Upload to YouTube. And it’s not simply uploading; you also have to create a snazzy thumbnail, write an eye catching title, include a snappy description, set your chapter times, include any links that you want your audience to check out, add hashtags or location data…there’s a fair bit that goes into an upload.

STEP 7: PROMOTE. Once the upload is complete, then you need to let everyone know it’s available to view. Mostly this will be done via social media channels, but can also be achieved through other online forums of like minded folks. 

STEP 8: Repeat Steps 1 to 7

And even if you do all of this properly, there is no guarantee that your content will find an audience or that you’ll gain views and subscribers at a rapid rate. In fact, it’s very unlikely that it will happen! BUT, if you believe in the content that you’re making…STICK WITH IT. Your audience will eventually find you. But you need to keep it up. 

I get it. It’s no small task to bring a show to life. A single episode of SIAG takes several days of effort. Cort and I are the creators, writers, actors, prop masters, camera men, lighting techs, sound engineers, screen writers, producers, directors, editors, colorists, social media managers. There are many hats to wear, and we wear them all. Keep in mind that we’re doing this WHILE running a for-profit video production business. BUT, we love it. SIAG is our favorite thing to do. It’s our baby, and we treat it as such. Our hope is that the viewer can see that too. They should see our enthusiasm leap from the screen. Because otherwise; what’s the point?