YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts

Brevity Is the Soul of Wit (or 2 Minutes to Fame)

Basically, as a filmmaker, you have about 2 minutes to get the attention of your viewers. Maybe less. Here I'll tell you why.

Hit 'Em Over the Head and Get Out

YouTube currently allows you only 10 minutes to tell each story anyway. It's pretty hard to make a fully rendered hero's journey story in 10 minutes. It can be done, but you'll be pushing it and skipping over the development of character and plot that requires 90 minutes or more to really do well. I recommend going with two-act format, which works really well on YouTube, especially for videos less than 5 minutes. (And most videos that go viral are less than 5 minutes, because people have really short attention spans these days.) With a short-form two-act format, you're basically hitting 'em over the head, then getting out quickly.

Note

Alan spends more time on YouTube than anyone I know, so I believe it when he says, "The average length of a viral video is 2 minutes."

The two-act format is basically a setup and a knockdown. A "Knock knock" and a "Who's there?" A joke and the punch line. As you see in Figure 2-6, this often works out to 90 seconds of setup and 30 seconds (or less) of punch line.

Figure 2-6. Approximate division of time per act in two-act format.

Another way to do it is 90 seconds of setup, 15 seconds of punch line, 10 seconds of denouement, and then another quick punch ...