Video Review I want a real opinion for the video

[Badea Gabriel]

User name: Badea Gabriel
Title of thread: I want a real opinion for the video
Self review: I want a real opinion for the clip. I want to increase the channel and I don't know where I'm going wrong.
Channel review or Video review? Video review

Link to Video:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=708AMLWq7dk

Link to other review post: https://community.tubebuddy.com/index.php?threads/46865/

 

[Theory Guitar]

OK, first of all I love the filming so professional. But for me it just seems a little boring. If this had popped up on suggested videos and I had clicked on it I probably would have clicked off about a minute in. I know it is a recipe/tutorial so its harder to keep your audience engaged. I would say look at some other big YouTubers who do the same type of videos and see how they keep their audience engaged. Maybe go through it again and try to make it shorter time can make a big difference. Also the writing that comes up on the screen at the end is nice but it is hard to read because it is white maybe try a different color or a bolder font.
Thats my thoughts! Have Fun
-Theo

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

First Impression: Very cinematic, very pretty footage. The first couple of shots had me going... and then they just kept going. It ended up being a very long introduction. 59 seconds until the first instruction; 21 seconds of silent intro footage followed by ten seconds of logo and then another thirty seconds of introductory footage. I like and appreciate the calm style and flow of the video, but it is very drawn out. This video could have been accomplished in half the time without losing anything pertinent.

The Pros: Obviously the cinematic footage... that is a total strong suit. I would encourage attempting a few more camera angles... giving us some really dramatic angles and close up shots would keep the viewer intrigued and would offset some of that feeling of the video being drawn out. The setting is gorgeous too; I really enjoyed the backyard atmosphere but because the camera is always pointed down it's a little claustrophobic. If you are leaning into your camera skills I would encourage some b-roll that shows the sky, maybe some plants and stuff. Invite us into a little more of your space so it feels a little less sterile.

The Cons: It does feel very drawn out... you included shots of every single slice on every piece of chicken. That wasn't necessary. If you are showing me how to make chicken I want a couple things, the first being that I want simple instructions that I can follow along with while I am cooking. Once I've learned that I need to score the chicken I am going to pause the video, score all my chicken legs and then hit play to see the next step I am not going to sit and watch you do every little piece, you know? But I am also going to want instructions. You provided some onscreen text but I would change that font and I would increase the amount of instructions you provide. I want an explanation of what we are doing and why we are doing it so I can reproduce it, even if I am doing something slightly different than you.

Aside from the 'being drawn out' issue the other only glaring thing that really stands out to me is the audio. You are a camera person... and that is going to be a very positive thing for your channel. You need to lean into that. But you need to focus on improving your audio. The first 30 seconds of the video are near silent... horror movies actually use a similar approach to create an unsettling feeling for their audience and that is what you are doing there. I am sure you have reasons for not wanting to talk on camera, but understand that this is going to impair your video performance. The music selection was great, but without audio instructions (and/or better on-screen text instructions) I am going to have a hard time following along with your video when trying to reproduce what you are doing.

 

[MattCommand1]

So let me start by saying that this is a leisurely video with gentle music and the filming was done with lots of care. My question is: are you actually trying to teach someone to make fried chicken? It seems more like an exercise in food & cooking cinema. If it was an artistic endeavor to showcase your filming ability, it was very nice.

If you were trying to make a tutorial video of how to make fried chicken, I was left wanting. There are no, text, or spoken audio guidance of how to make it. I have to guess what the ingredients are. I have no idea of how hot the oil should be for example. I am left with many questions. There should be voiceovers or at least have some written text.

You can watch someone make fried chicken but for someone like me who has never done it, I need a lot more support. The panning shots of the chicken and ingredients are beautiful but burn up time. Some people may not have that much patience. I didn't watch the entire 9 minutes. After the first minute, I jumped forward to see if anything changes.

There is nothing wrong with using some artistic visual angles, but you have to be clear about what you are trying to accomplish here.

Also, I have been to KFC on and off through the years. To be honest, your chicken doesn't look anything like KFC I've seen or ordered. Part of me thinks your title is a gimmick to get views, not really emulating KFC. It could make people distrustful of you.

It is okay to be a little gimmicky in a title but you have to deliver on the promise. Your chicken looks just delicious to eat but it doesn't look like KFC chicken I've ever seen or ordered. Adding to the gimmicky element is the emoji in the title. That is a very tricky thing to add an emoji. It seems like you know it wasn't KFC-like chicken. Maybe that wasn't the intention but the emoji sort of implies that this isn't a serious tutorial to make KFC-like chicken.

I did take the time to visit your channel and your oldest video is from Nov. 12, 2021. Your channel is very good looking and has a pleasant aesthetic. Also, I think you are doing very well for having posted your first video less than 2 months ago.

Your style is not really conducive to my viewing style but I can see how other viewers would enjoy your slow, methodical, visual artistic style. But that is just my opinion. I can see foodies really enjoying what you do.

You can try different techniques to see how people respond. It will be in your data.

 

[DianaWanderlust]

Hello Gabriel! nice video!

I guess you are looking at cooking as art and you want to show it as something beautiful and aesthetic. However, I would make the videos a bit dynamic and fast because people who want to watch cooking videos would like to get to the point fast. and probably drop that black transitioning in between the videos, I think it's very unnecessary.

good luck!!!

 

[The Jungle Explorer]

Okay, I am gonna grade your video like a school test, from A+ to F, and then I will explain why you got each grade.

1. Video Quality = A+
2. Audio Quality = C
3. Story fluidity = B

So, you did great on the video quality. Good lighting that offers nice rich inviting tones. Smooth motions and panning. Very cinematic. Great job there.

Your audio is just lacking. I am listening to your video using a $300 pair of Audio-Technica professional studio headphones and at 50% volume, I can barely hear any sound. Most people are gonna be watching your video on their smartphone and they are not gonna hear anything at all even at max volume. But I know why you did it this way? You were filming outdoors. We do not live in a quiet world, especially in the US. I live 30 miles in the middle of nowhere and I can seldom find a time where it is quiet enough to capture quality outdoor audio. Just yesterday I was out in the forest filing a herd of wild hogs and when I revered the footage, my mic picked up an oil pumpjack that was half a mile away and a jet flying overhead at 30,000 feet. It looks to me like you live in a city or urban area, so you will never have quiet outdoors. To avoid capturing all the background noise, you reduced your mic sensitivity way down. If you want to shoot outdoors, you have two options. Replace all your audio artificially with studio-created sound, or just mute the audio and add a music track. Your audio volume needs to be a LOT louder. 80% of your viewers will be watching your video on a smartphone with tiny weak speakers. Make sure they can hear the audio. Remember Audio, is actually more important than video. Video tells you what is going on. Audio is what helps you FEEL what is going on. Take any great movie like Star Wars (the original) and Last of the Mohicans, and watch it with the audio muted. You see quite rapidly that those movies are not that great without the soundtrack.

Your story fluidity needs to be smoother. You have some great shots, but you keep repeating them over and over again. You just need to show each shot once. Viewers only need to see you skin one chicken leg. They only need to see you score one chicken leg. They only need to see you bread one chicken leg. You do each of these actions three or four times each and it is very redundant. Some of your shots drag on too long necessarily. Modern audiences have the attention span of a Facebook Meme. They want the message delivered as quickly and as short as possible. When editing your video, try to reduce your shots to only what is necessary for the viewer to understand what is going on.

One personal side note, you made me cringe a couple of times with your knife work. I am a lifelong knife person. The first leg you skinned, you held the leg in your hand and sliced the skin with the knife edge pointed towards your hand just above your wrist. That is a violation of knife safe handling procedure. You never cut towards yourself, especially not right on top of your wrist. Later on, you do it a safer way by laying the leg on the board and slicing it down towards the board. Use that shot, and delete the first shot. I will guarantee you that if you leave that first shot in, you are gonna get nailed in the comments and they won't be as nice as me.

I hope this helps.

 

[Daily Dose of Fun]

Hello Gabriel!
Given that I am really into cooking and recipies I might be a bit bias, but I will try to focus on the content's probability of succes. I am also a new content creator, so also keep that in mind that I can not talk about personal experience only what I see from big YouTube channels!

The thumbnail looks amazing, you are focusing on the video's idea, the viewer knows right away, what to expect, which is great! However, I would say, that it is a bit boring, and not really connected to the subject. Why random grass filed? I would mask out the props and You, and put a nice looking kitchen or any colorful and bright background, probably more views.

Your CEO score overall is pretty good (even tho you could add chapters), but the content might not be edited in the best way possible. I would definitely add some sound effects, to make it more satisfying (think of ASMR videos for example, how much it adds to the video). Music is good, but some little effects can bring a whole new dimension, like the plates scratching, knife chops etc.

Visually if you can take the time when recording, you could add some new perspectives every now and then. Put the camera in a different angle, zoom in, be creative, it realy makes people stay!

Other than that the content is great, cooking is amazing, so keep up the good work! I really loved it!

 

[Damon]

Actually the video quality, well, kill the fades and dissolves between shots. That looks quite amateurish. Use hard cuts between shots. When you watch a TV show or movie they don't fade pr dissolve between shots. A full length drama might have one fade in the entire movie. Most cinematographers only use a couple fades a year.

Seriously you'll improve the video quality greatly by using hard cuts. The beauty is in the simplicity. Complicating actually makes it look cheap.

 

[Amanda Summers]

The fried chicken looked so good I watched the onion ring video. You don't need to show cutting every piece, just condense it down like everyone is saying. Also, I click off right away when there is no written recipe in the description. My mother was the worst cook, except for my sister. She would read cookbooks all the time and it didn't help. But most people want to make the recipe themselves; so many cooking videos don't show the recipe. I like the outdoor cooking angle.

 

[MattCommand1]

Actually the video quality, well, kill the fades and dissolves between shots. That looks quite amateurish. Use hard cuts between shots. When you watch a TV show or movie they don't fade pr dissolve between shots. A full length drama might have one fade in the entire movie. Most cinematographers only use a couple fades a year.

Seriously you'll improve the video quality greatly by using hard cuts. The beauty is in the simplicity. Complicating actually makes it look cheap.

There is no hiding the fact I am an amateur video editor with or without a hard cut! I pretty much own up to being an amateur but obviously hope to get better with time.

But having said that, I never thought about looking at how TV or movies do cuts until you brought it up just now. I am going to pay more attention to that! Thanks for that nugget!

 

[Damon]

I never thought about looking at how TV or movies do cuts until you brought it up just now. I am going to pay more attention to that! Thanks for that nugget!

Remember that book you bought, "How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck?" It's in there. Check out the chapter where he talks about the murder scene in "Psycho." The most intense murder scene in all horror movie history and every camera except one was still, motionless and hard cut between every stab. The intensity is in the action itself, not some special effect.

 

[The Jungle Explorer]

Actually the video quality, well, kill the fades and dissolves between shots. That looks quite amateurish. Use hard cuts between shots. When you watch a TV show or movie they don't fade pr dissolve between shots. A full length drama might have one fade in the entire movie. Most cinematographers only use a couple fades a year.

Seriously you'll improve the video quality greatly by using hard cuts. The beauty is in the simplicity. Complicating actually makes it look cheap.

Great advice!

The only thing I will add to this is that to do hard cuts correctly, you need at minimum two camera angles. It is hard to do professional looking hard cuts using a single video stream. If you pay careful attention to movies and TV shows, you will see that when they do hard cuts, they always cut to a different camera angle. Multiple camera angles add great flexibility in post editing.

 

[Me Time]

Nice, step by step explanation. But it can be little fast. I feel the video is time consuming.

 

[Damon]

Great advice!

The only thing I will add to this is that to do hard cuts correctly, you need at minimum two camera angles. It is hard to do professional looking hard cuts using a single video stream. If you pay careful attention to movies and TV shows, you will see that when they do hard cuts, they always cut to a different camera angle. Multiple camera angles add great flexibility in post editing.

You only need one camera. All you need to do is stop the camera, move the camera, reframe the shot, and hit record again. Or shoot the entire scene multiple times from multiple angles. Many movies have been shot with a single camera:

Single Camera vs. Multi-Camera

A new director wonders if single camera coverage or multi-camera coverage is best for the marketing video she's shooting.

stevestockman.com

Think about it. When you're trying to make a movie and each camera costs $80,000 a piece, and you only have a low-budget, well, what are you going to do, make cheap, ugly YouTube-like videos just because you only have one camera?

 

[The Jungle Explorer]

You only need one camera. All you need to do is stop the camera, move the camera, reframe the shot, and hit record again. Or shoot the entire scene multiple times from multiple angles. Many movies have been shot with a single camera:

Single Camera vs. Multi-Camera

A new director wonders if single camera coverage or multi-camera coverage is best for the marketing video she's shooting.

stevestockman.com

Think about it. When you're trying to make a movie and each camera costs $80,000 a piece, and you only have a low-budget, well, what are you going to do, make cheap, ugly YouTube-like videos just because you only have one camera?

Very True. Repositioning a camera to get multiple angles of a single scene is definitely a way to do it, no question. It is just a LOT of work, especially if you have to reposition your lighting for each angle.

I use my primary camera for the main angle and use last-gen flagship smartphones for other angles and B-roll. Hollywood may use $80,000 cameras, but this is YouTube, you can buy the OnePlus 7T for $150 in excellent condition and it shoots flat out amazing 4K video. The only time I use a cut-away is when I make a mistake during shooting. I shoot everything in a single take most of the time. If a speak a line wrong, I generally just speak the line over again and keep going. I record all audio on a separate mic to have constant audio. So, in post, I just cut out the mistake and cut away to another angle for a few seconds to disguise the mistake. This is a technique I learned from watching TV shows and other top-level YouTubers. The main purpose of the cutaway is to give the impression that the video was shot in a single seamless take and to cover up the fact that you are shooting different takes or correcting mistakes. If you only have one camera from a single angle and try to do this, you can see the splice, unless you use a crossfade transition, which helps some.

 

[Damon]

Cutaways also help tell the story. While they can cover a mistake or jump cut, well, if I'm talking about worms, cut way to shots of some worms. If I'm talking about the crack in my boat trailer, cut away to the crack in my boat trailer. That isn't a mistake. It's evidentiary editing. While you're talking in a doc-style interview, provide evidence for the very thing you're talking about.

Also, a $150 ain't gonna give me the look I want. I need a true cinema camera since I want a true documentary film-style. as such I use true cinema cameras. I too don't have $80 to spend on a camera, but I still use mostly single camera shooting.

In the end the point is you only need one camera and a willingness to work. Two cameras is just as much work. I also record audio separate from video as well as well as shoot in ProReZ HQ. I hate in camera colors.

I have second camera as well, but on the boat it's impossible for me to move the main camera. The main camera looks at me, the second camera gets B-roll/cutaways and extra footage while the fishing action is slow, then I record an interview with myself at a later date at home in the "studio." Cut all that together gets me a documentary style film while the lion's share of the footage is from a single high-quality camera.

 

[Damon]

Also, just like you say, two cameras, well, that's backup. Thus the practice of b-roll. If one camera goes down, you have another to back you up. You just take the footage off the b-camera or the b-roll of film. However, today's cameras are so reliable even at the entry-level, and we're all using entry-level gear. You point is well taken, and should be well heeded, a pair of cameras of any type that you can afford will give a ton of coverage no matter how you shoot. That's your main point, if I understand you correctly, right?

 

[The Jungle Explorer]

I think it is all in what you are trying to accomplish. You are going for the cinematic approach and that certainly requires much better cameras and lenses. I normally do things live and raw when shooting outdoor videos event, such as fishing. Let's call it the "Organic Approach." I am gearing up for a fishing show in the future and to prepare I watched all of the seasons of Wicked Tuna and Wicked Tuna Outerbanks and paid very careful attention to camera angles and shots. What I saw was that there was a mix of cinematic shots and raw organic shots, and the raw organic shots were pretty much garbage compared to the cinematic shots. The reason why is that they are shot live and one inferior equipment such as GoPros. All the cinematic shots are completely staged and shot by a professional production studio in a calm harbor, not out at sea during the real live-action.

So, at the end of the day, what I discovered from watching those shows is that, getting the organic shot in any quality, is better than not getting the shot at all, even if you are a multi-million dollar Nat-Geo production. GoPro's are garbage cameras compared to the $80,000 professional cinematic cameras that the Wicked Tuna film crew uses to shoot the stage shots in the harbor, but the show is about what happens out at sea, and you are not gonna put a million dollars worth of equipment on a fishing boat in 20-foot seas, where it can get damaged, lost, and soaked with saltwater. What was observed in that show is that the camera was positioned around the boat in key locations and one cameraman with a decent camera and a GoPro on a stick. In one episode the cameraman actually falls overboard and his moan camera goes to the bottom of the sea. The ship captain says, "Well, there goes five thousand dollars to the bottom of the ocean", which tells us that this cameraman is not shooting with an $80,000 camera while at sea, but just a decent quality camera.

On my fishing boat, I plan to use an 8 station 4K security camera system to cover all key areas of the boat. Since I do not have a film crew, and am both the cameraman and the subject of my videos, I can't be both manning cameras and fishing at the same time. I need everything to be captured all the time in order to catch the organic live-action shots when they happen. Like Wicked Tuna, if I want cinematic shots, they will have to be staged in a studio setting at a later time.

My boat camera plan. I will have three more camera than what is show here.

 

[Damon]

Yup! That's exactly how they do it on Wicked Tuna. Hey, let's start a thread for other fishermen and outdoors channels. Can you duplicate your camera plan on a new thread in the YouTube discussions? I'm afraid when hijacked this poor fellow thread, ut this is great information for other who may want to know how to shoot in different styles on their boats.

 

[The Jungle Explorer]

Great Idea!