[chongli]

Making videos taking time away from actually making stuff and making the projects take 10X longer. So I stopped.

Check out Kenji Lopez-Alt [1]. He’s an award-winning chef who makes cooking videos by strapping a GoPro to his head and going to work in his home kitchen. He has basically none of the fancy production you see on cooking TV shows. Yet his videos are very popular because he’s a great chef and he tells you the why in addition to the what and how.

I’m pretty sure he’s made his setup just about as close to optimal as possible in terms of minimizing the time he spends on the video production part while still looking great. I think his one bit of fancy production is that he has a nice spot by the window to set a cooked dish for his thumbnail photograph. I think a bunch of his cooking videos also do double duty to supply photographs for his cookbooks, but that’s unnecessary for the vast majority of video creators.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/kenjialt

[SkyPuncher]

Kenji isn't really representative of the path most people can take.

His reputation is almost exclusively from his superb cooking articles (and recipes). The Youtube channel is a side dish, not the main course.

[chongli]

I said his videos are very popular because he’s a great chef. Nowhere did I imply that you can go from nothing to famous person by strapping a GoPro to your head. I mentioned Kenji because he’s an example of someone who makes great videos with absolute bare minimum production effort. The person I replied to talked about how video production had gotten in the way of the enjoyment of the craft. I think Kenji’s videos are a perfect example of how to avoid that problem. That doesn’t mean following this advice will lead to instant wealth and fame.

Ultimately, there is no formula for fame because audiences are fickle and trends are fleeting.

[psanford]

Even with Kenji's minimal setup he still said recently he spends on average 6-8 hours per video on editing[0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxOlI6QB0oI

[chongli]

I think he’s been trying to cut that down very recently. His latest video begins with him not even on camera! I think he’s testing the waters and he’ll find that even with the most rough, sloppy edit his videos will do really well.

[drBonkers]

Do you reckon he uses the built-in microphone, or an external?

This channel is amazing. I learn best by simply watching others do, and this will surely help me advance my culinary art!

[chongli]

He definitely does not use an external mic. You can tell because of the reverb from his voice bouncing around the kitchen getting picked up on the camera’s internal mic. If he wore a lapel mic he wouldn’t have that problem!

But lapel mics cost money and they can be a pain to wear, especially when you’re cooking and need to keep your hands free without anything dangling into the food or the fire!

[123pie123]

I've just watched over an hour of his videos, he's very good.

Apart from the good format I found myself thinking the audio is extremely good