YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts

Chapter 2. Storytelling and Directing

Michael W. Dean

I know a lot about filmmaking on an indie, short-form, YouTube level and even a lot about more complicated, long-form, pro filmmaking that approaches a Hollywood level. You don't need to know all that I know to make great YouTube videos, because all of it would fill many books. (In fact, I've written, edited, or contributed to several books.)

www.cubbymovie.com (URL 2.1)

I'm going to take the more basic and YouTube-specific of that info and distill it down into the two chapters of information you'll really need to be a contender on YouTube. A lot will be covered quickly, but not in a way that misses anything you need to know to make videos that look and sound better than most of the fare on YouTube.

The basics of writing, lighting, sound, camera placement, and editing are the same, whether you're shooting with a webcam in your bedroom, making a $100,000,000 Hollywood blockbuster with a huge crew and movie stars, or shooting scrappy little documentaries that change the world with good mini-DV cameras, with a small volunteer crew mostly made up of film school students, and with a professional editor, like I did with my two feature films.

The Importance of Storytelling

Most people when they get a video camera just start shooting. I know I did. But you really should do some exploration into storytelling so you have something worthwhile to shoot.

The Basics

I cannot overstress the importance of storytelling. Storytelling at its most basic ...