I’m Karson Basham, and my project is focused on aiding future creatives on YouTube.
It was the early 2010’s. YouTube, as a platform for social interactions and high-quality videos outside of mainstream entertainment venues, was exploding new faces. Many of these were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, such as The Piano Guys, Lindsey Stirling, Stuart Edge, and more. They brought a whole new way of expressing their creativity and faith through their craft of videos. Sadly, they rarely are seen in the cultural zeitgeist today.
This project is centered around helping future creators who are members of the Church hit the ground running. Acting as a consultant/teacher, I would help them to not only create an identity around their content that remained unique, genuine, and cohesive, but to also teach skills that would help carry them on after I was no longer in the picture.
Motivations for this Project
J.R.R. Tolkien was known for many things, but one lesser theory he developed was that of Secondary Belief, which denotes that if a story is told well enough in craft, it commands a form of personal investment that connects to the spirit of man through a person’s Primary Beliefs (i.e. what love is, the nature of God, the purpose of life, etc.). With storytelling having evolved to take on so many different forms, including online videos, I believe that the more people who create videos eliciting that Secondary Belief, the more we can share the message of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who normally would reject it at face value. Thus I’ve made it my personal mission to create and teach stories that fulfill this objective.
Alongside this, I also wanted to find a more demonstrable way of showing the skills I’ve learned here at BYU-Idaho. Ordinarily I would have created a kind of film/video of my own, but with some thought, I realized that helping others to do the same would not only showcase collaborative efforts, but that if a company were to find themselves in a similar spot, I’d be of value to them and hopefully be included in their social media efforts.
How I Started
Thus, I needed to find creators who wanted to improve their efforts creating YouTube videos. Beginning the project was simple. First, I established two things:
- 1. The criteria for who could participate in my LDS Creator Program.
- 2. The criteria for how I could measure each individual’s progress through the program.
Then I developed these criteria further:
- 1. Who could participate?
- A. Willingness to actually create content now or at some point.
- B. Unless otherwise stringent, be physically near Rexburg.
- C. Be willing to be recorded in some way/shape/form.
- 2. How do we measure progress?
- A. Improvement of video quality and quantity.
- B. Improvement of KPI’s (i.e. watch time, viewer retention).
- C. Improvement of personal skill.
Once I found my six candidates by their volunteering, I met with each of them to establish goals using these criterion. Each person I worked with had diverse kinds of videos that they wanted to make, each at different stages of the creative process. Some had already been making videos for years, and others didn’t know where to start.
How We Developed
Over the next few weeks, as I learned more about each individual, I developed ideal goalposts that each could work on that respected their particular strengths and weaknesses. For some, that meant helping them develop a tighter channel branding that better showed what a person’s videos might offer a new viewer. With others that meant improving their advertising, finding ways to funnel people to their primary content through alternate methods.
Take two of my creators for an example. A comedic duo, J and Mick Dev, decided to create a show where they taste-tested foods and gave their thoughts. As video professionals, their content was pretty high in quality. So I decided to attack their advertising, creating short-form videos that linked to their long-form content.
On the other hand, I also worked with Zettie (or ZZ), who needed more precise branding to establish what she wanted a viewer to know about her channel. We consulted her own strong skills in graphic design and reviewed some options she had developed, eventually choosing one involving a peach motif and a positive “aunty advice” vibe.
Throughout every change and piece of content made, my biggest goal was to establish one constant with each person: that whatever they make, it be sincere and genuine. Algorithms are needed to play the game, but the audience will know if you’re a fake player.
Where it Got Challenging
Likewise, there were problems to overcome along the way. Initially I had seven collaborators, but one needed to drop out due to financial concerns just a few weeks in. Yet another, named Hana, suddenly found themselves without the technology needed to produce her videos. And of course, there are always scheduling and time errors. Cancelling meetings is one of the worst feelings for projects like these, so we did our best to establish goals to accomplish in the meanwhile.
By far the largest difficulty was the internalized hesitation that the creators faced. Many concluded that they weren’t cut out for creating videos before they even made the videos. Encouragement at experimentation and getting feet wet were my main tools against this. For Hana, my collaborator who lost the technology, I encouraged her to instead attempt live-action content; she was hesitant to show her face, but agreed that she’d give it a whirl. Simply believing in one’s self helped many make some actual progress.
Where We Achieved Success
Let’s list some of that progress here.
The BYU-I Scroll, our local university newspaper, asked for my input on how they could mobilize their social media efforts to appeal more to their target audience: the students of BYU-I. Their long-form content wasn’t doing well by comparison, so we diverged a bit and placed more focus on the short-form. Using shorts to advertise the news around campus with “The Viking Report”, including events, interviews and weekly news updates, we started gaining some traction. On average, from April 21st to the writing of this post, their highest performing long-form Viking Report videos averaged to about 99 views per video. But the shorts averaged 560 views per video, a massive 465% increase. Future postings will tell if they can keep up the trend on an upward slope.
Ripplik, our resident gaming creator, also produced the most long-form videos out of anyone in this program. Since the beginning of this semester he’s created 10 videos, each over 10 minutes in length. His posting periods used to have months between them, and now his consistency lends him a more present audience, with his viewer average staying consistently in hundreds of views. His graphic design skills have also improved with the design of his thumbnails, which appear more high-quality and professionally made, adding to a credible brand image.
Mahonri Yojimbo, our last creator, was fascinated with creating “lore videos” for his upcoming novels, “Gatewalkers.” After teaching him rudimentary skills in DaVinci Resolve (after I learned he was making videos in Microsoft PowerPoint of all things), he worked on producing his first of the lore videos. He learned what he wanted to do and how he could do it, and now he’s beginning what I can hope to be a strong advertisement for the success of his book.
The successes of each creator were all to varying degrees, but I feel that they all walked away with some form of growth and accomplishment.
Finally, as a hopeful boost to each individual’s audience, I created hand-out cards that could be distributed to interested newcomers during our Senior Showcase presentations. Advertising can take many forms, so I thought this would be one effective way to get it going.
Concluding Thoughts
To cap off this project, I first just have to note how grateful I am to have worked with the creators in this project. They are good, good people, and I wish them the absolute best of luck in the future. I’d love to collaborate again in the future.
It comes as no surprise that there were ups and downs along the way. Some creators were far more productive than others, but even the slower ones still gained skills they could use in the future, either for themselves or for their work.
I think this project was an excellent exercise in all that I’ve learned about collaborating with others, which is one of the most essential skills needed in the video industry. Taking on a producer role was refreshing; my abilities were actually of value to those who wanted them, and I think by making myself a more valuable craftsman, I’ll be able to keep harnessing those needs in my career. After all, what is work but doing something that needs doing?
I’m so glad to have worked on this project, and I hope you can enjoy every creator who participated in it. The included video(s) will be a more in-depth and summative explanation of the whole process.