In an effort to test my new skills in the real wild, I decided that our next challenge should be to create a video response to a video on YouTube. I figured given Shawn’s dwindling free time, it would be a video that could be put together fairly quickly, and didn’t require any materials to purchase, so it would fit right in the budget.

Unfortunately, I believe this was the last time that Shawn actually created one of his own videos. He has been in a few of mine since then, but this was really the beginning of the end of “That’s Paul and Shawn’s Show” and the start of “That’s Paul’s Show”. Fortunately for me the acronym works out pretty well regardless of whether or not Shawn’s a direct participant.

Shawn chose to respond to a video he found on Reddit in which the protagonist (who has downs syndrome) demonstrates how to make a and cheese sandwich for dinner. Since he’s clever like that, you might also notice that the video length is 42 seconds. Life, the universe and everything indeed.

Being a huge vlog brothers fan, I decided that for my video response I’d reply to one of their videos for my part of the challenge. They had recently done a video that had a bunch of monarchs in it. So I decided that my video would ask the question “where did all the monarchs go”. I sang this. There’s a reason why I don’t typically sing. It’s short, I promise. They never did accept it as an official video response. What a bummer.

At one point during my video  I say I started my videos “directly because of them”. It’s because it was while watching their videos that I actually went from that “I have an idea” moment, to “I’m going to do something about that idea” moment in my brain. I had seen a few of their newer episodes, and liked them so much, I decided to go and watch all of them. I don’t know how many there were when I started watching, but there’s currently 968 of them. I have seen them all.

It was during their first few videos that it all made sense to me. They didn’t start with fancy editing. They didn’t start with cool special effects, or well written scripts. They started with an idea, and the nerve to make that idea into something. They let it evolve and practiced their craft so that it’s where it is today. I decided that if they could do it, I could do it too. I had an idea. All I needed was the nerve. And a video camera. And a LOT of practice.

I still feel like I’m in the practice stage, but I definitely agree that at some point you have to decide that what you’re working on is “good enough”. So I set us up with a weekly schedule. Started off our idea, and went to it. Things haven’t gone the way I expected, but then again, things never do. I do think that things have gone better than could have been expected, and I still truly enjoy making my videos. So all in all, it worked out pretty well.

Given that I’m in the future now, and can critique my own work, there’s a few things that I’d probably change if future me got to direct instead of past me:

• I would have put the “click to” link at the end of my video. Hardly anybody watches the rest once they’ve clicked away
• I used the term “Craziest I can put on the internet”, and that was probably not the term I was looking for. I try to keep my show pretty PG
• Would definitely not have sung. Ain’t nobody got time for that
• A LOT more video would have ended up on the cutting floor

Some things you may or may not have noticed during the video:

• The opening text “3 wrongs don’t make a right, but 3 rights make a left”. It doesn’t actually mean anything. It just sounds silly
• For any venture bros fans I do a pretty decent monarch impression at the end IMHO
• Stuff that only Nerdfighters would know. “Jokes” means “Cool”, DFTBA is “Don’t forget to be awesome” and the finger guns (with sound) is the geek sign for the vlog brothers

New on the Shelf

• Bob-omb
• 1up mushroom
• Pacman ghosts
• California Raisins figure
• Army Men

Thanks for watching, and DFTBA!