BEHIND THE SCENES of a YouTube video

I spend a very long time in the first minute of the YouTube video because I feel like the first minute is really the most powerful. You can lose 90% of your audience in just the first minute, and you're never gonna get them back to that video. So it's so important in any video you do to make the first minute as impactful as possible so people want to continue to watch. If you're not able to deliver the first minute, people are gonna click out, your video is gonna be dead, that’s it, you're done. So it's so important to spend the time to make the first minute of the video absolutely epic because that's how you get people to watch to the very end. Hint hint, that's what you guys should do.

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here. So a lot of people are asking me how I make these YouTube videos—maybe if I have a teleprompter I'm looking at, if I have a script I'm reading off of. So this video is one that I'm gonna make that’s completely behind the scenes of me actually making one of my YouTube videos, how I go about doing that, and just showing you exactly what's involved from beginning to end.

So right now, it is a Monday night, and I'm planning to get a video up on a Wednesday. My schedule so far is uploading a video every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I do my best to do this; I don't always hit this. This is my goal, but I try to do so. I try to do anything I can to make that happen. So it's a Monday night now, and I know that I need to film a video tonight to have tonight and tomorrow to edit it, to get it ready to post on Wednesday.

And now I'm kind of brainstorming topics. So what I have is I have a list of all the topics that people have suggested I make videos on in the comments in my channel. So I go through, so anytime you guys suggest a topic, I put it down in my notes in my phone, and then I revert back to that. I kind of think which video do I think would fit best for Wednesday slots compared to what my last few uploads have been.

And it's also a balance between keeping it like, you know, a little bit different from video to video as it is making a video that I'm actually into filming. Because one of my biggest things is I can't make a video if I'm not in the mood to make a video. I've tried to force myself sometimes to make videos when I'm just like not feeling it just because I'm like, "It's Tuesday night; I need to have a video up tomorrow." I operate like that, I just I can't bring myself to make a video when I'm not in the mood because just like I feel like the passion's not there behind it. The quality isn't there for me to make this whole thing enjoyable and worth it.

I have to do it when I am in the mood to make a video and on a topic that I really want to talk about. So tonight is one of those nights. It's Monday at I've gone almost 11 o'clock at night, so I'm gonna try to get a video out tonight because I'm actually like in the mood to make a video now.

So brainstorming topics, and one of the topics I think I'm gonna discuss because my last few have just been mindset, I feel like I want to make a real estate video. I don't want to make another generic like real estate agent video. I want to talk about how I made a hundred and fifty thousand dollars buying the duplex and exactly what's involved in that.

But actually, before doing that, I feel like I need to change. Like, I do actually sometimes like put on clothes specific for the YouTube video. So because this I'm feeling is not like really gonna do it, I'm gonna look change this shirt to a white shirt; I felt it looked a little bit better. But I try to make the clothing that I wear kind of match the style and the subject of the video I'm trying to make.

So if I'm trying to make a video about not working at 9:00 to 5:00, I'm not gonna wear a suit with a tie; like it wouldn't be congruent with the type of videos I'm trying to make. So if I'm making a video about real estate, I feel like at least I want to step up the game and be a little bit more professional. If I'm talking about money, real estate, something like business-related, if I'm talking about mindset, it doesn't really matter.

And all I feel like just like a t-shirt and a jacket is probably good, but yeah, when I try to make something a little bit more serious, I try to dress the part as well and at least just kind of be congruent with it. So the next part for me is to figure out what I'm gonna say and in what order. Everyone seems to think that I maybe have like a teleprompter I'm reading from or something—it's not the case at all. What I do instead is I go on my computer and I just make bullet points of what I want to talk about and in what order.

And that way it helps me keep on track and make sure I don't forget something important and also make sure I don't go on some weird tangents. Like right now, I'm just kind of doing this on the fly; I have nothing planned, but there is a small chance that I'm gonna go off on a tangent and then later either edit all of that part out or realize like, "Oh, I went on this weird tangent for a while; it doesn't really make sense." But I'm just gonna keep it in there anyway because it kind of flows.

So the next step for me is just to write down bullet points of what I'm gonna talk about. And it's late. Part of the things that you really don't see behind the scenes is that it is now 11:10 p.m. on a Monday. I am a full-time real estate agent from, you know, 10:00 in the morning until like 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. at night full time.

And on top of that, I also have a life, and on top of that, I also try to answer almost every single one of the comments and respond to a ton of Snapchat messages and Instagram DMs. And on top of that, I like to have friends and hang out—not drive myself crazy. On top of that, I still want to finish Stranger Things; I'm like two episodes deep right now but like I'm making videos instead.

It's a lot of work; it’s not just like I can go and film for 10 minutes and edit for 10 minutes and post a video. It is a lot of work to do all of this and make this happen for you guys and to make a really polished video that you guys can watch that’s actually gonna be helpful. So like a lot goes into it behind the scenes that you don't see.

This is one of those tangents, by the way. What I don’t have a script, I don’t have bullet points of what I'm gonna talk about; this is what happens. So now I'm gonna get my computer out and make those bullet points. So this is just to give you a quick outline of what it is that I kind of do.

I might see this and then I'll go and describe it to the camera in a way that makes sense. I don't want it to seem rehearsed; I never want to write out too much on this so that it seems like I'm ever reading off a script, and I do not want that. I want to come off naturally from myself as if I were actually talking from me to you.

So I basically just make a bit of a gist of what I want to try to say, and then I will talk to the camera and say exactly that. It's never me reading word-for-word from something because then I feel like it sounds almost too robotic and it doesn’t sound real, and it sounds too acted and scripted, and everyone hates that.

So, I'm not. Yes, so actually I was just about to film and I realized that my camera battery wasn't charging; I forgot to charge it. So charging it here, and in the meantime, what I always like to do but you guys seem to love, I respond to all the comments because for me it's not so much like you're some, you know, random viewer who's watching my channel. For me, I'm still just as amazed that anyone is watching my videos.

So if someone ever takes the time to comment, and I—I don't get to every single comment; I just—I physically can't do that, but I do my best to respond to almost everybody. And I do it because I really care about everybody in the comments, and I don't know, I feel a connection with a lot of the people that I see commenting like over and over and over again. Each and every one of you is amazing, and you know, I'm so blown away that people watch my channels.

So, you know, responding to comments, that's what I do. One of the other things I usually do is I take forever trying to figure out like the best angle to film from. So like right now, you can see it's like right there, but I will usually spend, no joke, I'll be like, "Should I do it from here?” or “What about there?” or “How about from over here?”

And I’ll come up with like these million different angles. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to this, and I'm almost afraid of like having too many videos in the same spot and having that just be kind of redundant and boring. So in this case, I like the angle that I've currently had set up.

I'll do one more video from this angle, and then the next one, I just want to switch it up. I don’t want it to be the same background, same camera angle, same everything for every video. I just wouldn’t want that. I feel like that's visually not as appealing. So I’ll do one more video at this angle, and then that’s probably gonna be it for this side.

Okay, so now that I got the camera here, and you can kind of see me a little bit right there, so I got the camera going. The next step is to mic up. A lot of you guys asked me what mics I use, and I use this Comica, whatever it is, mic. It's like this wireless mic here, I will link to it in the description because it's actually a pretty decent mic.

So this just hooks onto the camera, like you know, obviously not like that. And then this is what I have, and then I have the little lapel microphone here. So I use this, and I try to clip it on somewhere where it's not going to be like too in-your-face, but I could still pick up my voice.

So anyway, it's Comica; it works really well. And yeah, so one of the things I realized with this is that I filmed one video, the entire video, and I loved it; it turned out perfectly, and I realized the audio didn't work. So now I test it— I turned out like I put this in the wrong thing.

So now every single time I test this out, I go and then I click record. “Okay, now testing this, hopefully this works,” and as you can see on this guy, it's picking up some audio. Good, okay, so it works; that’s it, we're good to go.

So one thing you may not know, but I'm very sensitive to noise and distractions. And when I get in the mode, in the zone of making a video, any little thing that distracts me totally throws me off. That could be something like getting a text message or hearing a car alarm or hearing something loud outside—throws me off entirely. So I make sure always my phone is on airplane mode.

I don’t want to get anything; even if I hear someone, maybe like even if they’re a hundred feet away or if I hear this—it's one of these like private jets that is flying over right now—totally distracting to me. I'm one of these people where like, I got to be in complete silence to make a YouTube video. Terrible; I'm trying to get over this. But just to give you an idea, like when I get into it, I really get into it, so I try to make it like as few distractions as possible.

The next thing I do is I spend a very long time in the first minute of the YouTube video because I feel like the first minute is really the most powerful. You can lose 90% of your audience in just the first minute, and you're never gonna get them back to that video. So it's so important in any video you do to make the first minute as impactful as possible so people want to continue to watch.

If you're not able to deliver the first minute, people are gonna click out; your video is gonna be dead, that’s it, you're done. So it's so important to spend the time to make the first minute of the video absolutely epic because that's how you get people to watch to the very end. Hint hint, that's what you guys should do.

And by the way, sometimes it takes me multiple takes to do something like that. This was done in just one take, but sometimes I'll say something, and I'll realize I can do this again, and I’ll do the whole thing again. And I never do it word for word; I just improvise. But sometimes I say something, and I'm like, "This was good to say, I want to say that again," but also incorporate this over here or also be like the whole thing just sucks; let’s do it again.

I spent a lot of time on the first few minutes of the video. This, I'm not gonna do multiple takes on just because I wanted to be as raw as possible, so I'm just gonna keep what I just did. But to give you an idea, I mean, I will do it multiple times just to try to get it perfect, and that's one of those things that is so hard for me to overcome—is that the video is not going to be perfect, absolutely sucks.

I do not like that; I want the video to be perfect, and it's not. But what can you do, right? So now I finished recording that video, and after every video I make—I'm gonna make this a real, real one—but after every video I make, I think it sucks. "This sucks, this is my worst video ever." And I think because you guys will be seeing this video after I posted the “How I made a hundred and fifty thousand dollars buying the duplex.”

You guys will see this video after I'll post this on Friday. The other one will post on Wednesday. In my mind right now, and I'm making this as real and authentic as possible, in my mind, I feel like the video jumped too much from like BAM, this point, this point, this point, this point, this point, and I didn’t feel like it led in the way that I wanted it to lead.

And I felt like it was a little bit all over the place and didn’t flow. Maybe it's in my head, maybe I'm just self-conscious about it, maybe too hard on myself. But I will put this into my computer, start editing this, and maybe I can like fix a few of the things I think it went off topic.

I try to keep my videos—I try to edit them down a little bit, but let’s see how long this is. And upload it right now, like, "Okay, so two things happen." So you think some day I filmed this, realized it wasn't recording. But what I was filming is that my mic died. Thankfully, it happened at the very last eighty percent of my video, so I have to figure out where the video sound cut off and then try to redo that.

So, I kind of got in the zone there the very last bit, but oh well. You can get upset about it, but nothing that can do. Saying, I gotta do it again. So now I upload the videos to my computer, which tends to take forever since these files are so big.

So now I have all the files here; you can see I got each one of these is six minutes and like 40 something seconds, so you can see like I filmed a lot. So obviously, I'm not gonna use all of this. I'm gonna end up condensing a lot of it down to try to keep it short, sweet, and to the point. And like I said about the first minute being the most important, like you can see here, "What's up, you guys? It's Graham here."

So as many of you already know, my full-time. So like that's one I’m sure I can do like another one here. "What's up, you guys? It's Graham here, so as many of you all did it again; let's keep going." And I'm like, "Mess up, you guys!" It's Graham here, so as many of you already know, my main...

What's like? And I'll just do it again, like, like, and this, and by the way, this is it. So like it's not perfect. It's not like, "What's up, you guys? It's Graham here," so as many of you already, so you could see it's not perfect. I put a lot of effort into making these when I feel like sometimes I could say something better, and I do; this always ends up happening.

And I'm editing, and then I realize, “Wait, time is it? Now 9:30?” is when I'm finally finished up with editing this video. Got it down to 19 minutes and 24 seconds. The whole thing, when I was done with it, was close to 30 minutes. I got it done in 19:24, try to cut as much out of it as I could that I didn't feel was entirely useful for this video.

So I saved it onto my computer, and then I uploaded it onto the YouTubes. And then, oh, in addition to that, I described a quick picture of the duplex. You know, must run up the thumbnail. Usually, I'm gonna spend like 20 minutes making a thumbnail perfect. With something like this, I just took a bit of a shortcut; I just found like an old picture of this, put a title on the top, I think that'll be good enough for this video.

Went ahead and then I uploaded it and scheduled it to be uploaded tomorrow at 3:30. So I think that’s pretty much it. I completely finished editing the video, uploaded it on to YouTube, and I have it scheduled to be posted today, which is Wednesday at 3:30. And that’s it.

So now I got to get to editing this thing, which I'm gonna start today on Wednesday. I should have it ready Thursday night to be, you know, uploaded then and then be ready to be posted Friday at 3:30. By the way, like I’ve tested analytics, and it seems like 3:30 is my prime time for most of you guys watching.

So for whatever reason, I get way more views when I post at 3:30 than when I post at like 2:00 or 2:30 or nine o'clock in the morning or later. So I've just basically tested that out and figured out that like 3:30 is my prime time. So as always, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really hope you appreciate this type of video.

And again, if you ever have any other suggestions for any other videos you want me to make, comment down below and let me know. And if you haven't subscribed yet and you're watching these types of videos and you haven't subscribed, go to subscribe because also according to my analytics, 56 percent of you guys watching this are not subscribed. Please, please, I beg you, thank you, click subscribe.

It just—it just do it for the Jurassic Park; do it for the Jurassic Park. I would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you haven't added me yet on Snapchat and the Instagram buzz, I'm pretty much daily. So if you want to be a part of it there and see what I'm doing, feel free to follow me there. And thank you again for watching, and until next time.