Starting youtube, of course I have to play KSP!

[Rufledt]

Hi everybody,

My wife and I recently started doing videos since we already play video games, and i'm going to start doing some KSP! Probably not long videos as we lack free time. We just posted a short vid, more to follow so check back here occasionally!

Let me know what you think, and any tips would be nice. I'm a noob at talking/editing and all of that, and I still haven't figured out how twitter works...

[Gnou]

To be honest, without offense, this first attempt is lame.

But dont be afraid, it is very common!

The good leg, the story.

Man can feel a story is coming. The intro does his job, the good old Charlie ambience is in-place and man is ready to hear more.

The broken leg, the speech.

Horrible. Sure, it is a hard job, but really... Horrible.

The silent movie's way could have been a far better option, which also offer you a nice playground with camera effect.

But more important, this option would have give the vid' a nice coherence.

Keep going!

[Rufledt]

if you think that's lame, you should see the stuff i DIDN'T upload!!

The whole talking thing is where i feel the least comfortable. when things start happening I can't think enough to speak right (calling the VAB the control tower, or just sputtering incoherently) also I hate the sound of my voice. lots of issues. I dont' really want to go the silent movie route since I'm planning on doing longer videos than 1 minute, this was just a clip when I was trying to practice recording (get audio levels right, try to speak which I failed at, etc...). I wasn't even going to upload it but accidentally missile-ing the VAB and then nearly dying was too fun to delete. Building the rocket, on the other hand, took a few minutes and I may have said half a word and made a bunch of weird noises I didn't realize I was making... weird...

Reexamination of the video shows the failure was staging related. Does anyone else get that thing when you use symmetry and the one you clicked doesn't follow the rest of the duplicates? It may have something to do with the mods, i'll probably try to do vanilla KSP for the videos just in case.

[Gnou]

Damn' I never thinked once it could have been a real accident!! ^^

The whole talking thing as you said is a full job, acting. It is really hard if you dont have learn the basis.

To be honest, I cant remember any video where it was successfuly done... YouTuber's talking are usually pathetic and just kill their video doing so.

(Your own is not "lamer" than what we can see in other vid's ;o)

But whatever your narrative choice, the most important is having something to say. A storyboard is a very good way to build your scenario.

As you intend to go for "little movie", talking will be even harder along the clock. You have to carefully spare your speech along your timeline.

Void is your enemy. But worst than Void is filling in the blanks (more exactly...when people see you are doing so!). You have to play with blanks. Dont forget that image speak too.

Good luck in your project.

@bout your technical issue,

It is very common that 1 part of the group appears "unlinked" in the staging but this lead only to a little asynchronous start.

In your case, you have 1 vertical separator inside your launching stage so... Little staging mistake!

Also you have your chutes and escape system in the same stage. They have a high chance to break during the process. I suggest you to separate them.

[Rufledt]

Yeah staging is kindof a problem of mine, half the time I forget to check or I move stuff I don't realize. I made another vid on that just yesterday, but I must admit a couple of the fails in that vid are staged (not all, though). The first fail involves a 1st rocket design (as if in career mode) where the parachute and rocket get staged together and the thing flips. I've done that (more than once) but the vid part was staged, so I have done it just not that time lol.

Im trying to improve the commentary, but I'm no actor. Like, not even close. My newer vids are also getting better audio/video as I learn to use the software/find better free software, too. Keep watching, I just might improve. Or I won't, IDK. I'm still hella uncomfortable with speaking into a mic, too lol

[BagelRabbit]

Hello Rufledt!

I must say that Gnou was being a bit harsh. That wasn't bad, especially for a first attempt!

So, here's some tips you can use in the future, if you want:

• Watch other KSP YouTubers, especially people doing more-or-less what you do, and note what they do well and what they could do better. This will actually help a lot!
  
• Pretend that your microphone is your good friend and speak to it conversationally. I named my microphone "Sam" and drew a little happy face on it. I know it sounds weird, but it really works.
  
• Start off making videos where you know about everything that will happen. If there are staging errors, add them deliberately (it's cheating, I know, but it will help your commentary). If you showcase a craft, play with it a lot before you make the video and have a more-or-less solid 'flight plan.'
  
• Then, make a brief overview of what you want to cover. Writing a script is okay, but I don't recommend it. Instead, write out some bullet points about what you will cover and fill in the rest with spontaneous dialogue. If there are some difficult terms for you, write them down! It helps a lot.
  
• If this isn't working, it might be best to go Danny2462-style and just add in text boxes to describe what's going on. You seem to be pretty good with adding in text boxes at the right moments, so this could probably work for you too.
  

Above all, remember to have fun! That's what really matters.

Oh, and I'm going to shamelessly plug my channel as a Thing to Look At. I regularly do short little videos with commentary, and I started off kinda 'meh.' I've gotten better though, thanks to the tips I mentioned above! My channel can be found here.

Best of luck!

-Upsilon

[Felsmak]

Writing a script is okay, but I don't recommend it. Instead, write out some bullet points about what you will cover and fill in the rest with spontaneous dialogue. If there are some difficult terms for you, write them down! It helps a lot.

I actually write full scripts for all my videos, and then I read them word for word. But then again, my videos probably don't count as proper commentaries anyway.

On topic: If you find it difficult to speak into the microphone while playing, then maybe you could record the footage first and then record the audio track separately? Gives you time to come up with stuff to say.

[Gnou]

...I must say that Gnou was being a bit harsh...

I agree.

[Rufledt]

Thanks for the tips!!! I don't think Gnou was beeing too harsh, he said "Keep going!" not "YOU SUCK!!"

I thought about recording audio separately, or maybe writing a scrips, but what i've been doing so far has been to just record and keep talking, and then adding to the commentary with text for comedy and stuff. I've been using this method for everything, not just KSP vids. I love danny's stuff but I doubt I could do the exact same style of videos and ever get as good as his. He set the bar too high! I'll mull it over and try some stuff.

I'm definitely going to put something on my mic to make it friendly looking. So far i've been putting a balled up sock on it as like a wind breaker, a happy face would be FAR better!

I'll see what I can do to improve future vids, subscribe to see how it goes maybe?? (my own personal shameless plug! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTQk1ZI9XgdfnqV3GRkbRsw )

[DonLorenzo]

What I do is basically talk all through the videos, but when there's nothing left to say about the things on screen (which are then usually pretty boring as well, like long NTR burns or timewarping to a certain point) I either cut the video and resume later when more interesting things are happening or I talk about some bit of (rl) space news or a random thought I had.

Now my channel has 430 subscribers and the most popular video has 2.5k views so maybe it's not a recipe for success, but I did get really comfortable doing hour long monologues in front of my computer

[EtherDragon]

Keep on pluggin! You'll get experience and ideas quickly enough. Like people said, if you don't have anything to say - it's probably because there isn't anything interesting going on, and that detail can be cut.

I also find that shorter videos (20 - 25 minutes) are much easier to fully narrate than longer ones (30-45 minutes). But sometimes, you just need a longer video format to do something right (see Alien: Isolation, most videos for that are about 45 minutes long)

@DonLorenzo, if you have 430 subs now, you're just a month or two away from 500+, probably.

[Rufledt]

Thanks for all the help! I'm starting my planning now so I can hit the ground running when 1.0 releases in a couple days. My current idea is to do a career mode play through, but not like most of the other play-throughs I've seen. I'm planning on doing a bit less with instructional type stuff (since other people have that covered) and more of the short clips/text commentary kinds of things in that clip. I want to keep videos shorter than 15 minutes, focusing on fitting some excitement into each one, but without losing the greater story arc (like going to the Mun, then Duna, then a jool mission, etc...), instead of the long 30 minute type play throughs I usually see. Does that seem like a good idea? Obviously i'll lose some of the 'story' cutting out a lot of it, but i'm hoping they will at least be entertaining. How does that sound?

I have a longer KSP vid on my channel (also elsewhere on this board: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/115941-Countdown-to-1-0-How-not-to-launch-a-rocket-in-0-90-0%21 ) which shows what I might do for individual launches, but it's not a career mode vid so it's still a bit different from what i'm thinking.

This basically means i'll cut all the 'grindy' stuff out where i fly the same craft to all the different nearby biomes and cutting where i'm just waiting or burning but not doing anything particularly interesting, plus I'm coming up with some ways to use the text to add interest to the duller parts. Similar stuff seems to cut minecraft videos in length by 50-75%, maybe it could do something in that ballpark for KSP but without losing the entertainment aspect. Hopefully it all works, we'll see in a few days!

Edited April 25, 2015 by Rufledt