unforum

[TheFallenSeven]

What makes a good Mytho YouTube series?

[The Totem]

I personally have up on trying to achieve a sense of reality for my series. I have a story to tell and the found-footage format helps it retain a relatable atmosphere, but it's kind of useless trying too hard to focus on making reality relevant. As for the creepiness factor, again, the first person POV helps with that. I agree with you so much concerning the entire post.

[TheFallenSeven]

Yeah, I think POV "was", or in some cases now, "is" convincing but I'm now steering away from it. The main reason being is that it is 10x...hell...60x easier to add something in, animation wise, to the video. I would sit in my basement for hours on a nice day and work with placing in an object frame by frame...it was the worst. But if people aren't doing the animation kinda stuff and have lots of costumes and props then I would fully take advantage of the POV footage.----I think I will incorporate some POV in my future videos but the camera will act as my eyes more so than me having a camera and me filming...but then again I don't know where my series is going sometimes


edit in: Also I think making stuff up on the spot is sometimes easier than planning out things, but that's just me.

[JinniaFlyer450]

I just had to jump in concerning the sub-subject of planning things out vs. making stuff up on the spot. Partially, it probably depends on what sort of person you are, but I am "planning stuff out" all the way. I just know that if I were to leave something to figure out later when it's REALLY needed...my first instinct when confronted with a problem like that is to go find a hole to hide in, which wouldn't solve the problem and would probably piss off any viewers I'd manage to pick up. The series would become another lost cause for people to shake their heads at. As such, I have the overarching plotline for my series plotted out from beginning to end, and I'm working on short summaries for individual episodes before I start going back to actual scripts.

This is just a way that makes sense to me, though. A lot of people who do work on the spot have excellent ideas and do really cool things. That just isn't me. If I don't have everything plotted out before I start filming, I will suffer deadline slippage.

[TheFallenSeven]

Yeah I can agree with that. It really depends on the person. For me I can picture something out in my mind so well but when coming to film it or edit it, it never turns out the way I want it or the image in my head just can't work for many reasons.
I've tried time after time to plan out for my series but things just don't work out for me. For my newest episode I'm working on I planned out every camera angle to every scene in the episode and I was going to cross it out as I complete each one...it may help or not...I don't really know yet.

Btw if you have any series that are your favorites (besides the big three channels) let me know because I'm always looking for new ones.

[Cyan507]

[TheFallenSeven]

A slenderVLOG, yes...but others don't have to be. Right now I'm pulling my series into the cinematic approach so I wouldn't call it a slendervlog but a slender related channel. I would like to see more cinematic styles for creepy channels...kinda like what MarbleHornets ClearLakes is doing.

[AdvantageFire]

Pavel Hall and OurGodEvil pulled a cine approach too if I can remember correctly.

[Cyan507]

[StanFishcer (OOG)]

First things first. Michael, I hope your eye is healing and you're feeling better. Spring Break is almost over, and I hope you're doing well in classes.

Second, on the subject of making do with what you got, I want to say this to those who want to start their own series. Windows Live Movie Maker and FlipShare was what I used for neveSnellaF, and while they're decent programs, they're not the best for series that are in the Slenderverse. FlipShare's good only if you have a Flip and/or editing a video where nothing significant (special effects wise) occurs. WLMM is very good BEFORE you save a video, but AFTER saving it, it causes the video to glitch. I don't know if anyone else has had this problem with WLMM; maybe its just my computer. WLMM should work, but if not, find a cheap editing software to download and go with that.

Third, on the subject of making stuff up versus planning ahead...its a mixed bag. I prefer planning stuff ahead, but sometimes you sit on an idea for too long and then you start to change it, and then you sit on it again, and change it again and again until you realize its been weeks and you've done nothing to update your channel. If you have this problem, then maybe its better for you to make up on the spot. However, making stuff on the spot can be tricky, especially if you start contradicting rules and stuff you've established prior. neveSnellaF was initially planned under the title F & W (Forbes and Whitaker) to explain an event Michael kind of glossed over: what happened to the families of David and Steve. The series involved myself and Mitch watching and reviewing Michael's videos, giving information the audience might have missed, we confront Mike (where he kicks both our asses), and then Mitch goes missing. Under my investigation for Mitch, I discover that his immediate family, as well as the immediate families of David and Steve, became possessed by either the Six or Slenderman (or Both), and they were forced to kill them in self-defense, but not only that, the sacrifice of their families were an act of initiation to get Mitch, David and Steve to be under Slenderman/The Six's influence. But due to timing and Mitch being camera shy (he didn't tell me until he saw the first two scripts), the show became a one man show and everything from the beginning was made up on the spot (including the title, neveSnellaF). I have regrets (namely A Fool's Demise), but at the same time, I'm glad it happened because I am proud of some videos such as The Return of Michael Hale and WARNING, namely WARNING for the creepiness factor.

Speaking of creepiness, creepiness is important, especially if you are going for a mytho series. Its better to have a monster that is, for the most part, unseen than to show the monster in its entirety. But its also important to have character(s) that you can care about when creepy shit starts to happen. I may have failed in this department with my own character, especially in the beginning, but if your character(s) end up being like those pricks in Unfriended or The Gallows, your audience will just be rooting for the death of your character(s). Unless your intent was to create character(s) everyone hates, your audience is either not going to watch your channel, or they're watching it for the wrong reasons.

[TheFallenSeven]

First: NewMerchant--Thanks! I'll check them out

second: Cyan507--You actually gave me a really good idea with what I'm going to do with my second channel in terms of vlogs so thank you!

Stan Fishcer (OOG)--- Thanks(hope classes are going well for you too!), and yeah the flip is overall an okay camera to film a slender series with. I never had a problem like you did with the shakiness/glitches that you got when putting it in wmm but maybe others have had that problem. I feel like mostly characters(Especially like-able ones) are hard to put in my series because it's kind of a solo problem but I really wish I knew more people that know about this because I think most ppl would think I'm nuts when it comes to this slenderman stuff(no offense to anybody on unforum---I don't brag about myself running in a forest all by myself and acting sick and pretending to see something HAHA!) but yeah, characters are important.

I have an interesting question for anyone...would you rather see more people in a series but the consequence is bad acting? That question seems a bit difficult for me to answer but I think I would be okay with bad acting if I can find a bunch of people who were into this, hmmm...

[StanFishcer (OOG)]

It depends on what you need from your actors. If one of your actors needs to cry for scene(s), try to find someone like David who can act and cry on the spot. If you need someone to act surprised at a dead body, either put horrifying makeup on the corpse actor that will scare the live actor to look shocked or find someone who knows how to be shocked. If you can find people who are into acting or would be glad to do it, that's fine, but it's also important that you find actors who won't mess around too much if you're really stressing to just get the shot and be done. If that's not a problem with you, then go for it.

[Cyan507]

It's the same thing with any other film, the camera you use doesn't need to be 4K 60fps, if your concept and execution are good, people will appreciate it for what it is. However if you go down the vlog route I'd highly advise investing in some form of decent editing software. Windows Movie Maker is the worst programme on the face of the earth. Also download Audacity, which is free, you can make great glitch sound effects there from nothing.

Also, don't promise your viewers IG or OOG when videos will come out, take your time making them. Put your all into it and take the time to play it back enough times to spot any mistakes you may have made or make something better. Don't rush things, 90% of channels do this. It's quality over quantity. If you make promises like that you'l give people false expectations and shoot yourself in the foot.

Running a slendervlog is enough work as it is, if you want to make it an ARG the workload doubles, just so you know.

[awakeasaurusrex]

I've got to say, at this point if I never see another video of some SlenderVloggers running around in a public park in the dark with maybe a 2 second shot of Slenderman at the end, if that, it'll be too soon. Long roaming-about-the-woods videos commit the cardinal sin of churning out content without actually providing substance.

At this stage, I think my suggestions for new vloggers would be the following:

- Get multiple videos filmed before you release the first one, so you can give yourself a buffer of videos to release as the series is ongoing.

- Have a plan. Know how your series is going to start, how it's going to end, and what you need to shoot to get it from the beginning to the end.

- Have a modest plan. Don't come up with an idea which will take multiple years to unfold, because unless you are incredibly lucky you will never complete such a thing: some crucial cast member or other collaborator of yours will end up with other commitments or moving away, or your own life will become so busy you don't have time to do justice to the project. In all candor, you'll be incredibly lucky if you're able to keep working on the series at a reasonable pace even a few months after you start out.

- Have a really modest plan. Consider how many videos you really, truly need to make to tell your story. Plan on doing the absolute minimum possible, and then if you have the opportunity and resources to make a few more, great, but prioritise shooting the essentials first. So many series pad out their running times with filler episodes where almost nothing happens (aside from the aforementioned running around in the dark and incoherent crying) that if you go with an all-killer no-filler approach you'll immediately stand out from the crowd.

- Have a really, truly, exceptionally modest plan. Strip down your story to the very basics you need to make it work, and then make sure you can guarantee having all those basic elements in place - that means props, effects, locations, cast and crew members and so on. If you get the opportunity to throw in something additional to make it a bit richer, great, but don't make it so essential to proceedings that you can't continue if you lose access to it. You might think that abandoned schoolhouse would be an ace location for the climax of your series, but can you make it work somewhere else if you had to?

- On that note, have fallback plans. Look at each essential cast member, prop and location involved and decide what you are going to do if they can't be involved any more. Sometimes this will be simple - your Slenderman suit broke, you buy a new one, no problem. Sometimes this will be more complex - say, if the abandoned schoolhouse you intended to have the climax at and which already prominently featured in some of your videos gets demolished unexpectedly. Either way, come up with backup plans so that if the worst happens you aren't paralysed.

There's lots of series out there which churn out dozens of videos with little content and try to make a story out of that, and it's kind of wearing thin. And I'm particularly wary of getting into a new series at this point only for it to peter out like almost every long-running series has (with a few much-honoured exceptions).

What I'd really like to see is more series that, instead of putting out dozens of uninformative videos and take forever to tell their story, are constructed so as to be able to tell a complete, satisfying story in less than 10 videos. If you really want to do a longer series, maybe spin off new story arcs once the initial one has concluded, but don't just go into this stuff open-ended with no either no firm plan of how you are going to end it or with a plan that relies on you being able to turn out videos at a reasonable pace months or years down the line, because we've got too much of that on the scene already and it's just tiresome at this point.

[TheFallenSeven]

awakeasaurusrex-- Yeah I just got the idea to do a vlog on one channel and a cine thing on my main one. Why? I feel bad that lately I haven't really put out anything on my main site, but you are right. Vlogs are easier to do I feel and I can make one easily every two weeks or so but if I decide to go down that road I want to make sure it has good quality even if it isn't my main YouTube channel.

If there is one thing I'm lazy about IT IS AUDIO. audacity is great but after getting all the shots and editing them I just want to whip up some audio and throw it in there, but I got to do a better job because I'm straight out lazy when it comes to that.

Also, not to be a noob, but what does OOG, IG, and ARG stand for...I always hear it but never understand it