I love cinema and I love YouTube. And this is my try to take both expressive formats and do something that would be unique. At least to the best of my abilities.
I want to make interesting things that won’t be for everyone. I put creative satisfaction way above any financial considerations. And while it’s not often comfortable situation, it’s the way I tend to operate and maintain happiness and meaning in my life.
Why am I saying this? I don’t want to create just another YouTube channel that is there to just make money. It’s not enough. I want to tell interesting stories that can enrich me and other people.
I figured it might be a good idea to establish some guidelines for my work here. It’s easy to lose my way or convict myself into some decisions that might go directly against my values. So, this is me making those decisions before they happen. Unclouded by incentives and temptations, that will naturally arise as the channel grows…
Identity of the channel
It’s just me, one person, doing this. I’m doing this in my free time. So don’t expect to have weekly releases. I want to make thick videos that will be worth your time and I won’t release them until it’s good enough in my head. There will be just a couple of videos every year. Quarterly releases would be nice.
What interests me is telling old stories of various expeditions and individuals at the last frontier of their age. But I don’t want to just tell the story. I want to connect it to bigger theme that resonates with my life experience. These videos won’t be documentaries in common sense. It’s rather “story based on” type of storytelling. And while I’ll try to keep basis of each story as close to reality as possible, it’s essential to make this distinction.
This won’t be documentary channel or journalistic one. I think that the whole medium is super subjective, and people don’t realize (or admit) how much storytelling and visual conventions affect meaning and understandings of real events. I don’t want to play impartial witness; I want to embrace this subjectivity.
Aesthetics
I want to play with possibilities. Generally, I like slow dark cinema, and you can expect that this channel will be some online variation on that.
And while the language will develop over time, I’d like to try to pursue some bold aesthetics choices. For example, I feel like most of the channels are too descriptive, literal, simply boring. It’s because the incentives are often not to tell the best story, but to release it as video as well as audio-only podcast to make most money from it. But the result is just bland, mediocre storytelling.
I don’t want to go this route. And I have one idea I want to try. I want to avoid any adjectives in the voiceover. It will be probably impossible to do, but I want to try and see how close I can get.
It turns out that it’s quite hard to write this way, but it’s so satisfying creatively! And on top of that, it gives the picture meaning again! Because I’m tired of image being just illustrative afterthought to a video. This way, the composition and image become the adjectives, and it’ll be literally essential to the whole experience. You cannot understand it without it.
Conduct of the channel
I think that brand partnerships are wrong. I understand the logic and incentives behind it, but if I can choose for myself, I don’t want to ride this wave. There won’t be any on the channel.
The reason is simple: there was always clear distinction on TV about what is programming and what is ad. Creative people focused on making the best possible thing and marketing people added their own thing.
But when a journalist makes some reporting on YT and then also reads brand copy, it seems straightforwardly wrong to me. Is he there to make a good journalistic reporting or sell me some stuff? His incentives do change.
On the other hand, I don’t see regular ads on YouTube that much problematic. They are separate from me, and I don’t have any active role in it. The main thing is, yeah, that they are annoying as hell. So, while I’m open to exploring ads as a form of income for the channel, I don’t want to flood it and ruin your experience.
I hope that the main thing that will help me to make this financially sustainable will be you. This is meant to be mainly subscription supported channel for people that see value in my approach that would like to help build it together. This aligns our interests together. If you consider it, there will be some perks and deep appreciation from my side.
About AI
I believe this is most interesting part of my pledge, because we all surely feel dizzy from AI slop all around. I hate it. And I don’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s my approach to my work on Scary Interesting channel and it won’t change here. So, what does it mean specifically?
I don’t want to use AI for any scriptwriting, nor image or video generation. And I won’t include AI in my postproduction as well (editing, sound effects, color corrections etc.). AI is simply banned from anything that touches any creative decision.
There are, however, some aspects that inherently require AI. And I can’t affect that. I can just disclose it. For example, you watching my video on YouTube is result of AI algorithm connecting us. Love it or hate it, YouTube is just big library powered by AI.
There are also some minor things I use in my workflow that are powered by AI. For example, object selection and masking in Photoshop. It was a tedious process when I needed to isolate something from a picture. Now I can do it with one click. I think this is permissible use, because it doesn’t involve any creative decisions and the result is literally the same as if I did it myself.
Another thing is, for example, translation. I’m not native English speaker, and while I know enough so I can get by, there are limits and I often use help of online dictionaries, look for correct phrases online, and take advance of suggestions and corrections. I believe many of these are now AI powered as well. I don’t use it to write my stuff, but I wouldn’t be frank if I didn’t mention how it helps me to be grammatically correct.
Conclusion
If you feel like I didn’t explain anything enough, let me know. I’ll gladly consider any changes or clarifications of my points of view.
Lastly, I encourage you to give me feedback any time. I need to know if you feel that I strayed from my pledge or if something does sound insincere suddenly. I’m only a human and it can happen to anyone. I’m counting to you that if that happens, you’ll help me to get back on track!
Anyway, thanks for reading this! And if you share my worldview and like my work, please consider supporting me and subscribe.
Hubert