In case you were curious, I’ve recently started doing YouTube videos. I’m going to be talking about the writing process, linguistics and writing, book reviews and whatever else comes to mind. So far, I’ve done videos on pantsing (vs planning) a novel, how to use sociolinguistics to give your characters more variety and a channel introduction. I’ll be adding a video about conlanging (yes, a real word) to the mix sometime this evening.
It’s an interesting process, to go through and script out a video, get everything set up, film, edit and upload to YouTube. I enjoy it more than I thought I would, with one exception.
Sitting in front of a camera is a little terrifying.
I’ve done theatre before. Presentations before people. Gosh, I worked in retail with no problems for a good long while! I can do improv, I can talk relatively comfortably with people, for all that I’m an introvert to the nth degree. So why, then, is talking — by myself — in front of a camera so different?
The finished videos don’t look terrible. They’re pretty neat, actually, excepting the fact that I sound weird when I hear my voice through a recording. True, I sound a little formal.
The making of the videos, though… that’s the hard part. I guess the only thing for it is to practise. Which means that I might have to make more than one video a week. Practise makes perfect, after all.
I just wish that there were something else I could do — research, interviews with interaction, anything — to feel more comfortable. Oh, well. The introvert will have to play the extrovert. Again.
Sigh.
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