If you watch one or two episodes of this, you get the distinct feeling that literally everyone in the 1970s was on drugs… 

(ED NOTE: Last week, we took a look at the things that made fans of a podcast topic stop watching video podcasts. In that segment, we tended to look at content and approach, so in this segment we’ll be looking at the smaller details that can drive the viewers crazy. Hope these help.)

Just for a brief recap: as part of the annual The Mid Year Freakout Book Tag, a number of vloggers and book influencers took to YouTube to present their views on the books they’ve read, what they want to read and how close they are to their annual reading goal. As Amy watched these, I asked her to keep track of the things that made her stop watching any particular video and we would chat about it later. The idea was that she loved the content, but still wasn’t going to dedicate her time to something that didn’t pass muster for her.

Here are some of the more “detail oriented” elements she noted:

SENSORY OVERLOAD: Apparently, some of these content creators didn’t get the memo that “less is more” when it comes to stuff like this. Amy noted that the most annoying ones would be weaving in pointless visuals, using weird filters or doing edits that drew attention to the edits. While she was trying to learn about a book, she found herself fending off the feeling that she was going to have a seizure from all the blinking and cutting going on.

This is a relatively common phenomenon when people get ahold of some newer form of technology. When word-processing programs took over from standard typewriters, people were using all sorts of weird fonts for no real reason. When HTML coding became accessible to folks, I remember all sorts of colored fonts and even the dreaded “blink” tag, which made it almost impossible to read.

Editing programs give us more options than the simple “cut,” such as wipes, crumpled paper cuts and even the weird raindrop thing. People think they’re being edgy or innovative when they use them, but they never once think about how damned difficult they’re making it for the audience.

If the content is good and the presentation is strong, you don’t need to jack up the production with all sorts of weird stuff and visual stunts. It’s the reason why “Citizen Kane” doesn’t have any car chases or explosions, while every “Fast and Furious” movie has about a million.

 

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE: Someone once told me that great acting is done in way where it doesn’t look like acting at all. That’s probably why I sucked at it, given I could memorize all the lines, but I delivered them like I was a scared kid at a spelling bee. Great actors practice over and over and over again until what they’re doing looks and sounds conversational, but is really a well-learned presentation.

Amy got peeved a few times when it was clear someone was trying to spitball their way through content without really having spent any time practicing what they were going to say or do. This included weird pauses in the content because they forgot what book would be discussed next, or stops in the middle of a sentence because they forgot what they were going to say. It also got weird when the podcaster wanted to show off a book, but couldn’t find the right book and we were all there just hanging out, waiting for the person to find it. (Editing doesn’t hurt here, either…)

Practicing will help eliminate some terrible verbal mannerisms. The “ums” and “likes” and “y’knows” will crop up less frequently, but you can also look for other things you do that might annoy the heck out of your audience. In one case, a video presenter kept saying “No one can believe it” about EVERYTHING to the point where Amy said, “I can’t believe I watched this for this long” and flipped away from it. I have no idea if the content was worth anything, but it wasn’t worth enough to hear “No one can believe it” one more time, apparently.

Spend the time working your way through the material before you put it on video. Practicing, like when you had to give a speech for class or do a presentation in front of important people, will limit the nerves, smooth out the rough spots and get you ready for a clear, coherent and confident chunk of content.

 

AVOID DISTRACTIONS: I’ve had conversations with people where I get distracted by something weird going on with them, and suddenly, I’m fixating on whatever that distraction. George Carlin once did a bit about someone laughing through their nose and blowing a snot on their shirt. That actually happened in a conversation I was having and all I kept thinking was, “There’s this giant snot on their shirt…” They could have been getting ready to stab me to death or tell me the cure for cancer, but all I’m thinking is, “That snot is going to dry there…”

Amy mentioned a number of weird distractions that bothered her. In one case it was some freakish piece of pottery on a shelf behind the person. In another case it was the lip gloss the person was wearing that was so shiny, it was almost creating star bursts on the video. Whatever it was, she suddenly got sucked into this moment of weird and eventually couldn’t hang in there for the content.

It’s hard to come up with exactly the right amount of background elements. Too much stuff and it’s “Squirrel Theater.” Not enough stuff and it looks like you’re filming a hostage video in a shipping container. This is where both practice and “beta testing” can go a long way. Put something together, have people you trust give it a look and see if there’s anything they would recommend you get rid of or add.

Hope these help. See you next week.