Denver Comic Con 2018 Panel Spotlight - From Script to Screen: How to Produce Your Own YouTube Video Projects

Written by Tim Girard

From Script to Screen: How to Produce Your Own YouTube Video Projects
Friday, 6/15/18 from 6:30PM - 7:20PM Room 504 - Reel Heroes Filmmakers Series

Want to make awesome YouTube videos, but don’t think you have the resources? Think again! Ginny Di walks you through the complete process of creating your own music video or short film from conceptualizing the project through the entire production process, including marketing the video for release. After the discussion, there will be a debut showing of Ginny’s newest cosplay music video, inspired by 'Firefly'.

Ginny Di has been doing cosplay, singing, and making videos (based on Disney, Star Wars, Pokémon, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Firefly, video games, and many other sources) on YouTube for about 5 years. She came to Denver Comic Con to share her experience with anyone who has ever wanted to make their own YouTube videos, but didn’t know where to start. Here are her step-by-step instructions to get started.

Concept
What type of video do you want to make? What do you like? It has to be something you’re very interested in and excited about, because you’ll have to put a lot of time and energy into it. In the beginning stages, think big and let your imagination run wild. You can always scale it back later if you need to. What are your assets and resources? Do you have friends that sing? Dance? Own horses? These are things to consider as you’re thinking of your big picture. Make sure to set a deadline, so that your project doesn’t just stay open-ended and never gets finished. Start to think about your budget and how to make it work, but keep in mind that with creativity, you can stretch it.

Get Your Team
You probably aren’t going to do this alone, so it’s time to figure out who else you’ll need. If you aren’t already a good writer, find someone who is. You’ll also need people who can do costumes, makeup, video, audio, editing, acting, etc. Make sure to use only reliable people, and be a good leader to your team. This way your project will run efficiently and they will be happy and more likely to want to work with you again. An important aspect of this is their compensation. Are you paying them with money, and if not, how are you rewarding them?

If your budget won’t allow for money up front, you can compensate your cast and crew by  offering them food, creative credits on your project, your skills in a future project of theirs, or a percentage of any profits you may someday make.

Preparation
There are still a few more things that you’ll need to do before you can start filming. Possibly one of the most important of those is to find a location. Can you afford to rent a location? Can you use your (or your parents’) house? If not, everyone has access to the outdoors. Once you decide on a possible location, it’s very important to go there with your camera and take sample footage. This way, you can see that everything will actually look the way you imagine it once it’s on screen. Make sure you have all of the actors assigned to their parts and all of their costumes put together. Run rehearsals beforehand so you can confirm that everyone knows their parts before getting the whole cast and crew together at the filming location. The last thing to do before filming is to create a schedule, and remember that what you think will take one hour will probably end up taking at least two hours. Write down a list of all of the shots that you have to film (and enjoy the satisfaction of crossing them off as you finish each one). Along with the shot list should be a storyboard to have a visual reminder of how each scene should look. There are online programs you could use, or MS Paint, etc. but if you can’t draw at all, you could always arrange and take pictures of LEGO mini-figures, or something along those lines.

Filming
Gather whatever equipment you have access to. Obviously a camera, but if you can’t afford a high quality one, (or know anyone who will let you borrow one), you can get started by using the camera on your smartphone. If you do already have a high quality camera, and have the budget for it, the next thing to invest in would be a good lighting kit. That will bring the look of your production to the next level. Other equipment to gather would be a dolly and/or tripod and extra batteries. You don’t want to make your cast and crew sit around for three hours while the battery charges! Once you have everyone and everything at your location, shoot some test footage and watch it on a computer. This is so you can make sure that you’re happy with the way it looks before you shoot the entire thing. Make back-ups frequently and review the footage. Make a log of the footage in a spreadsheet as soon as possible after shooting it, and include a description of all of the files and footage so that you can easily find what you need later.

Editing
There are plenty of free and cheap movie editors (iMovie, Windows Editor, etc.), so in the beginning, you don’t need to spend a ton of money on a professional-level program like Adobe Premiere. Throughout the editing process, show your drafts to people and get feedback. They will see things that you may not notice and show you what might need further adjusting. When editing scenes with dialogue, be sure to cut out all of the dead space between lines (unless you want intentional silence for effect), otherwise it will greatly slow down the pace and people will lose interest.

Release and Marketing
Because there is such a vast amount of content on the internet, you must do whatever you can to stand out. There is no ‘wrong time’ to post a video to YouTube, but what is important is consistency. If you’ve established a schedule of when you release your videos, viewers will expect content at a certain day and time, so don’t disappoint them. Aside from that, you can study the YouTube analytics to see what people are watching and when, so you can try to learn from the trends. Make sure that the thumbnail for your video is eye-catching by picking a frame from the most exciting part of the video. Your title should be descriptive but to the point, and it can be ‘clickbaity’ as long as there is a payoff (don’t lie about what is in the video). When you write your description, use the same keywords that you used in the title, but reworded and with more elaboration. After you’ve posted the video, check in and respond to all of the comments, so that you can develop a rapport with your viewers. You can post a link to your video on social media to reach a broader audience. Don’t be afraid to post things multiple times, because people won’t always see everything that you post. Someone who missed it the first time you posted it, might see it the second (or third) time around. You can also try tweeting at celebrities if your video is relevant to them (if it is based on one of their characters), but don’t pester them. You can raise awareness before the release of a video by posting promotional media ahead of time, like behind the scenes photos or announcements of the upcoming video. If you find that, after you’ve released a video, people aren’t watching it, you can try changing the title or the thumbnail. Even if a video isn’t popular immediately after you release it, it could still become popular later. You can also re-promote videos long after they were released, like on the ‘one-year anniversary,’ for example.

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After a short question-and-answer session, Ginny showed us her newest video of her singing the Firefly theme song, ‘The Ballad of Serenity,’ cosplaying as Mal. She build a Serenity set in her parents’ garage, which is a great example of how you can accomplish sci-fi on a low budget. Her friend Blake Smith arranged and performed the accompanying music. Instead of recreating the violin solo toward the end of the song, Ginny replaced it with a vocal jazz arrangement of herself singing two other lines, cosplaying as Kaylee and Jayne. She shared with us that even at this point in her career, there she will still see some awkward things in her videos that make her cringe... but that’s okay.

For more Ginny Di, check out her website which has a blog that you can subscribe to, a photo gallery and tutorials of her cosplay, cover songs (that you can listen to on iTunes and Spotify) and parody music videos (that you can watch on YouTube), a contact page, bio/FAQ, a shop for some Ginny Di merchandise, and a link to her Patreon page. On her YouTube channel she has playlists for Cosplay, Music Videos, Harry Potter, Photo Editing, and Tutorials.

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