No Monkey Business — Filming A YouTube Explainer Solo in Public
Picture this.
One man, one heavy bag of gears, and a sturdy tripod in hand - speed walking through a Singapore town in 84.2% humidity. The haste is not undue. The past few weeks had been full of searing sunlight followed by torrential downpours. Sometimes it would be the reverse, other times neither. But who really knows? Certainly not the weather forecast. This uncertainty compounds the surprising frustration that I was facing during the production of "Why Monkey Bars Started Disappearing from Playgrounds?", my first YouTube explainer video.
On paper, the concepts for such videos were designed to be research intensive and less so on production. Rather than elaborate production designs, the focus would be more on my delivery instead. Assumingly, I would be in my element, as I have a talkative nature, do not shy away from public speaking and the topics that I would be sharing have been personally researched by me.
Well, what I had hoped to be a one day filming session ended up being four days. Here's why.
A different dimension in presentation
I did mention that I am no stranger to presentations. In fact, the format of the video is very much inspired by how I carried myself in my university presentations - an engagement with the audience through animated body language accompanied by slides that were more pictures and videos than text and bullet points. Furthermore, I did not use scripts. Learn the topic, then let nature take over and recover if need to.
This was the mindset that I took into filming, and the experience was immediately different. Firstly, because there are other considerations to filming such as time of day and location, I had to write a script to help facilitate production. Filming various scenes would also likely take place in a different order compared to what will be in the final output. This is so that factors such as transportation or granting of access to scene locations can be accounted for.
Because of this new approach, it was difficult to get the momentum that I would normally enjoy when speaking to a live crowd, where the start is the start and the flow of presentation is orderly.
Sure, there are YouTubers like Tom Scott who do this magnificently with minimal location changes and scene cuts. He just finds a nice relevant place to speak and does it all nearly in a single take. He has a one-take 10 minute explainer about bottled water that is a masterpiece to watch.
But that was not my style. I didn't just want to do a TED-talk outdoors. I wanted to transport my audience to the very places that I am referring to, and add the depth that can't be replicated by simply showing a photo as I talk about it. If I can go there, I will. Though it did make the process more difficult.
This unexpected difficulty caused me much frustration as I did re-take after re-take. The words did not come out as smoothly. Tones and intonations were wildly off and I felt I was not myself - and that was perhaps the most infuriating.
The noisy soundscape of Singapore
As I continued to try and gather my composure to deliver my lines, I had to adapt to the disruptions beyond my control - the sounds of planes, grass cutters, loud motorcycles, barking dogs, hecklers (this was particularly surprising), and of course, thunder and rain.
I'll be frank - these disruptions brought me to the verge of tears. Not simply because they were present, but because I felt that I was not good enough in delivering my lines in the little opportunities that I had. With only a few windows of relative silence to film, each take is precious. There was a particular scene where I had done a dozen takes. On my final attempt, I felt I nearly had it - then the roar of thunder was heard. It ruined the clip. I quickly tried to redo the take so as not to let go of the mojo, but each time I spoke, the clouds responded in turn.
Shortly after, the sun was blocked and rain had started to fall. The gloomy weather was very apt for what I was feeling.
Finding Resonance Over Perception
This is not a story about how to persevere over adversity, nor is it a tale about "never giving up". After all, my attempts here are not about a life or death situation - just a guy making a YouTube video in the hopes of doing more and exploring the world in the process.
But this is a story about how my stubbornness has its pros validated every now and then.
The first version of the Monkey Bar video was shot on 20 March 2021. It was passable, but not great. And because I had only planned to release it in May, I had time to consider a reshoot. With a window of time, I decided to do so on 25 April 2021. It could be argued that on that day, I got all the footage I needed.
Interestingly, just the day before, I was conducting a videography workshop when I said that "done is better than perfect". I said this because creatives do have the tendency to be stuck trying to attain a level of perfection that is impractical and as a result their work never sees the light of day. Perhaps I should have heeded my own advice.
Yet as I brought the clips back to my computer and plugged it into my editing software, I was turned off by it almost immediately. There was a glaring issue of resonance. The struggles of adapting to the weather, sound and my own insecurities - they showed in my delivery and on my face. I could not publish this in good faith, as it would be a let down to my audience.
I quickly justified it in my head that I was not planning to publish videos at a breakneck pace - each video takes a while to research and make after all - so all the more it had to be at least decent. Over the next 2 days, having learnt from the past failures, I redid the entire video and just kept at it until I felt it was right.
And this is the result of that labour. Beyond this video that you are about to watch, it is the heightened conviction and confidence to do another - and boy do I need it when I run through the gauntlet all over again.
