Writing & Video Production via YouTube
December 2023 - November 2024
In December of 2023, I began writing and planning a video documentary on one of my favourite video games Watch_Dogs 2.
Over the year that I worked on the project, I learned lots about writing, audio recording, and video prodction. I also had to create a sucessful marketing strategy to ensure that the video could find an audience - this included working with other creators, and members of the games cast.
For the video, I also conducted an interview with Shawn Baichoo, one of the actors from the game. For this I had to originally find then communicate professionally with his agent.
The video released on November 15th 2024, the 8 year anniversary of Watch_Dogs 2's release.
Writing
Writing the script for such a long video was something I'd never done before.
I started with a list form of the themes of the game that I wanted to cover, the events of the story, and the messages. I then worked over the course of around a month converting each bullet, one at a time, into a full paragraph.
Once I had the entire video written, I read over the entire script several times to perfect it.
Editing
Originally, I had to decide the presentation of the video and the style of how it would be edited.
I worked on the intro sequence first, creating a few revisions in different styles (but I knew I wanted to start with E3) Once that was done, I could work on editing the rest of the video, mixing between my voiceover and in-game audio when nescessary.
I wanted to make sure the video kept a good pace, despite it's nearly two hour runtime. I knew going too fast would affect the storytelling and would lead to too much information being taken on too quickly, and that viewers would not engage with too slow pacing. The goal was to find a sweet spot where I could leave spacing of in-game audio and ambient sound without it dragging the video out artificially.
My editing software of choice was HitFilm Express, simply because I already knew how to use it and it is free.
Promotion
This video was launching as the very first video on this channel, so I had to try to nail the promotion if I wanted people to see it.
Paid promotion was out of the picture, simply because this isn't the right content for it, and I wasn't looking for an artificial audience. My method of promotion was working with other creators, and members of the games cast to try and raise awareness before, and on the launch of the video.
My connection with Shawn Baichoo - one of the actors - from the interview I did with him, allowed us to arrange some tweets/retweets that helped get the message out. I also worked with creators The Hidden One and The Seal, both of which prodcue similar content and thus have an audience with the right interests. These collaborations helped get the video to the niche audience of people interested in seeing Watch_Dogs content.