June's Patreon Exclusive Video (and a postmortem about why I'm not uploading it to YouTube) (Patreon)

Surprise everyone, here's my monthly video for June! It's a Patreon exclusive!

TOP 5 Tips and Tricks for Disneyland!! By Garth Darfenin!
password: egghole

Normally, these posts are just bloopers/deleted scenes, but this one is the whole video! I wasn't sure if I was going to post it on my main channel when I started editing it, and sure enough, I felt the same way when I finished editing it.

So why am I letting you all watch it?

COMMENCE POSTMORTEM!

(Go ahead and watch the video before reading the rest of this post.)

Sometimes, you learn more from the failures than the successes. Actually, I'd say that's the case 95% of the time. 

I often try to recognize those failures early or keep those failures hidden (like Mr. Smock and my 360 camera video from way back when), but I liked this video enough to see it through to the end, and I liked it enough to feel comfortable sharing it with you all. 

Hopefully, you can come away from this postmortem with a bit more knowledge about my process. Maybe you'll even come away with something you'd like to implement/avoid in your own creative endeavors! I think that would be nice.

First, let's talk about what I was going for with this video:

There is an entire industry revolving around theme park tips on YouTube. Don't believe me? Try searching "*any theme park* Tips" in YouTube and see the thousands upon thousands of channels devoted to parks. 

I know this because I have watched many of them before going to theme parks. Uh oh. I'm the intended audience!

As is the case with many things I love, I wanted to parody it! There's a very particular  video format (selfie) and cadence (excited) and editing style (passable) that I love and wanted to try to emulate, but in my own strange way. 

I also thought it would be funny if some of the tips were legitimate, but I kept getting obsessed with something that doesn't exist. Then I could make the video title "Top 5 Tips for Disneyland!" and some poor, unassuming searcher might accidentally watch my weird video (kind of like "How to Make Jorts").

THE POSITIVES OF THIS VIDEO

Here are some things that I really like about this video:

• The name Garth Darfenin.
• The spur-of-the-moment filming. I rarely get to do that these days.
• The improvised stuff in Disneyland (which was all of it).
• The actively bad editing choices I got to make. It's really fun to go out of your way to make bad audio recordings/zooms/unnecessary text.
• There are parts that make me guffaw. And that's rare after I spend hours editing one of my own videos.

THE STUFF THAT MADE ME NOT UPLOAD IT TO YOUTUBE

I was gonna say "negatives" but I don't think that's exactly right. They can be split into a two categories.

Technical:

• I didn't get enough footage in Disney/Universal to make the egghole transition at the end really work. I wanted to have something closer to the scary tunnel section in the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and I couldn't quite get there.
• I couldn't quite get the audio choices to sound how I heard them in my head.
• I love making bad editing choices, but for some reason I couldn't make the bad editing choices look pretty. It's hard to thread that needle, and I don't think I did.

Personal:

• The drinking section is very funny to me, but even as a joke, I don't think it really lands with me.
• I was going for a loving pastiche of "theme park tip" videos in general, but I don't want people to think I'm making fun of any one creator specifically. 
• Disney is litigious. Please let me back into Disneyland.

Really, these all boil down to one major reason:

• I just didn't like it as much as I had hoped!

Sometimes, that's the most important thing! Whenever I make a video, there's always a point that makes me go "What am I doing...", but by the end, I usually like it enough to see the positives. That didn't happen with this video! And that's okay!

END OF POSTMORTEM!

I'm really grateful that I saw this video through to the end, because it has crystalized a couple thoughts I've been having. 

Namely, I want to focus harder on things I'm 100% passionate about! I'm finding myself with less and less time to work on these videos, so I'd like to use the time I do have to work on stuff that makes me feel excited! Not just about the concept, but about the process, and about the end result. It's been a minute since I've made something and said "I can't WAIT for people to watch this!" And I want to get back to that. So that's what I'll be working toward next!

Thanks for watching and reading!