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Helicopters, Travel and Film Making - A Conversation with Becki and Chris

2021-10-09 · Livestream or live hangout · Ali, Becki, Chris · recording, 1 h 9 min · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Relationships and personal life) · mode: Conversation and interview · tags: His own products discussed, His medical past

In a Part-Time YouTuber Academy alumni event streamed live, Ali and his students question YouTubers Becki and Chris, who run their channel on pillars instead of a niche, try not to chase the numbers, judge a video by whether they had fun and are proud of it, and trust their "internal compass".

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Going live on Zoom and YouTube for the academy community

00:01:18 — Set and interior design: one light, black paint, the inspiration shot and mood boards

  • ★★ Ali has been obsessed with Becki and Chris since their collaboration with Peter McKinnon about three years earlier; his YouTube course has referenced their channel more than any other for set and interior design. — 00:01:18 · Peter McKinnon, Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★ Chris says the secret of Becki and Chris's set look is that they are cheap: they built it around one light and painting everything black. — 00:01:48
  • ★ Ali has just moved into his studio space and laments his lack of interior design skills: he knows only house plants, a lamp and perhaps a neon sign. — 00:01:48
  • ★★★ Becki says the key to designing a space is finding the inspiration shot: decide the vibe and mood, collect many photos you like on Pinterest, analyse what you like in them (walls, colour scheme, textures, lighting) and build your own from them. — 00:02:17
  • ★★ Ali says interior design feels to him like a black box needing a qualification, as learning to code does to many people, until you go into it and find tutorials, Skillshare classes and plenty of free material online. (hedged) — 00:03:43 · cracking open the black box
  • ★ Becki says she figured out interior design herself: obsessed with home renovation since childhood, she later went into graphic design. — 00:04:25

00:06:24 — Pillars instead of a niche, and how much to care about the numbers

  • ★★★ Becki says that from the start of their channel they wanted to make videos about whatever they are into, so they let go of a niche early on. — 00:06:52
  • ★★ Becki: Instead of a niche, Becki and Chris's channel has pillars (travel, photography and video, interior design, helicopters), and they try to combine at least two of them in a video. — 00:07:22
  • ★★ Chris says they started the channel during a year in Vancouver, Canada, for his one-year medical fellowship: instead of building up Becki's real-estate photography clients there, they made a travel series on YouTube so their parents would know they were doing okay. — 00:09:02
  • ★★★ Chris still believes that niching down makes the algorithm push you followers, but since the channel was not a job they posted what interested them, as long as it passed the "authenticity test". — 00:10:05
  • ★★ Chris thinks the channel would probably have grown faster on one subject, but a comment that someone could watch Becki "watch paint dry" told him they were training the audience to come for them rather than for a niche. (hedged) — 00:10:52
  • ★★★ Ali says traditional YouTube advice (niche down, a face with a MrBeast expression in the thumbnail) does work, but you also have to think about your own goals, your vibe and how classy you want your thumbnails, accept that you may grow more slowly and own that decision. — 00:11:17
  • ★ Ali says his last three videos have each ranked "10 out of 10", the worst of his recent uploads, and jokes that he has been feeling as if his life is destroyed. — 00:12:08
  • ★★ Becki keeps in mind Sara Dietschy's "one for you, one for them": she alternates a video people can learn from with one she simply wants to make, even if nobody cares about it. — 00:13:09
  • ★★ Becki says you never know which video will do well: ones she expected to flop did very well and ones she expected to do well flopped, so she stopped trying to care too much. — 00:13:53
  • ★★ Chris points out that average views are a mean, so half of your videos will be below average: if every below-average video makes you sad, you will be sad half the time. — 00:14:26

  • ★★★ Chris says letting the numbers dictate your well-being is like playing the lottery with your emotions. — 00:14:26

    “it's like playing the lottery with your emotions”

  • ★★ Becki says YouTube is mentally taxing, and her way of keeping it sustainable and her mental health happy is not looking too hard at the numbers and not stressing over titles and thumbnails: if a video fails, move on to the next. — 00:15:46 · Mental health

  • ★★★ Ali finds in every domain of his life that the less he cares about the numbers the happier he is, yet he should care to some degree because his business has hired people and has a studio and needs to make money: a constant balancing act. — 00:16:15
  • ★★ With the book he is attempting to write, Ali finds that thinking about making it a bestseller sucks the fun out of it, while writing it for himself, enjoying the journey, gets more of it done. — 00:16:15
  • ★★★ Chris's checklist after a video: look at it objectively; did you have fun making it and are you proud of the work? If yes, feel good and move on; if not, think about how to improve the next one. — 00:17:50
  • ★★ Chris says your best videos probably have the best numbers but there is no perfect correlation; if you do your best work people come for you, so you being you should drive the channel, not the audience. — 00:18:20
  • ★★ Ali says he will write Chris's checklist on his whiteboard: did he have fun making the video and is he proud of it; if so he will ignore the numbers, and if not he will fix the problem next time. — 00:18:36

00:18:59 — Why they don't outsource editing; series, short films and Chris's footage channel

  • ★★ Becki will not outsource editing because it is her favourite part of making videos: outsourcing it would mean outsourcing the passion. — 00:19:42
  • ★★ Chris says that for Becki and Chris the editing and the colour grading are part of the channel's secret sauce. — 00:20:39
  • ★★ Becki says weekly videos to feed the algorithm leave little time for series and short films, which take months: a five-part travel series is filmed and in early editing, and a 12-part home renovation series is in progress. — 00:21:40
  • ★★ Chris started his second channel of helicopter flight footage (heard as "Hell Escapes") in the autumn of the previous year and has about 11 videos, each an hour long. (hedged) — 00:23:49

00:24:01 — The channels they watch

  • ★★ Becki loves Cody and Victoria's videos: their shots, colour grading and audio are always on point, and they film in nature. — 00:25:07
  • ★★ Becki is obsessed with Hunting for George, an Australian couple making interior design, home renovation and travel series and home tours. — 00:25:29
  • ★★ Chris watches a lot of Trent Palmer, a bush plane pilot, and so does Becki. — 00:26:38

00:28:11 — Throwing spaghetti at the wall, trying on hats, and the pyramid of visible success

  • ★★★ Chris: To beginners throwing spaghetti at the wall, Chris says you should decide which spaghetti you like, not a passing critic; making authentic work is the best approach because your moods then do not depend on things outside your control. — 00:28:47
  • ★★★ Becki says starting YouTube means trying on a lot of hats to see which suits you: they tried tutorials, travel videos and an interview podcast, which they hated and dropped. — 00:29:09
  • ★★★ Chris says nobody on YouTube knows where they are going: the channels that have seemingly made it, Becki and Chris included, do not know what they are doing. — 00:31:36
  • ★★★ Chris says YouTube is a pyramid: few people make it, and you disproportionately see those who did, never the millions more at your own stage. — 00:32:47
  • ★★ Chris calls it a treadmill of always looking one rung up: Becki and Chris's channel is at about 300,000 subscribers, a number that would have amazed them five years earlier, when they were looking at 1,000. (hedged) — 00:33:13

00:35:00 — Why helicopters rather than planes

  • ★★ Chris's interest in helicopters began while he studied for his radiology board exams in St. John's, Newfoundland, when he wondered how helicopters work; over the next two or three years he learned to fly them. — 00:37:16

00:39:05 — Finding an aesthetic: colour grading, set design and other people's LUTs

  • ★★ Becki says a look cannot be forced: it comes from trying other people's techniques, changing them, adding your own and massaging the colour or style into something you like, then keeping that baseline with small tweaks. — 00:39:37
  • ★★ Chris says a characteristic aesthetic works well, but outside the film and video niche it need not be the cornerstone of a channel. — 00:40:36
  • ★★ Chris describes Becki and Chris's look: a bluish-cyan tint in the shadows with orange-amber mid-tones, a teal-amber base that is high-contrast, dark and moody, with much of it coming from the set design. — 00:42:16
  • ★★★ Chris says that if you want your own look, especially in the photo and video niche, you should do your own colour grading; someone in the productivity space could probably get by applying a LUT. — 00:43:42
  • ★★ Becki's quick way to a look: try other people's looks, then try to recreate the one you like yourself; you may not get there, but you end up somewhere original, your signature look. — 00:44:11
  • ★★ After Becki and Chris's video on shooting in log about two years earlier, Ali tried shooting in log once and never again; he now uses picture profile zero and does no colour grading in post. — 00:44:38
  • ★★ Chris says that in the photo and video niche viewers notice at once when images look off, while a home renovation audience would care less. — 00:45:17

00:46:15 — Finding a weekly rhythm, the pandemic slump and the internal compass

  • ★★★ Becki committed to a video every week for four months; her editing in Premiere got faster, from about 50 hours a video to 10 to 20 hours by the end of the year. — 00:47:08
  • ★★★ Becki: After trying two or three videos a week, which was not sustainable, Becki found one a week the best way to feed the algorithm and stay consistent without being so overworked she had no personal life. — 00:48:11
  • ★★ Becki: When the pandemic hit, Becki found a weekly video hard and went two or three weeks without posting, her first consecutive skipped weeks in three or four years. — 00:49:30
  • ★★ Becki says that sometimes you have to take breaks and should not beat yourself up over skipping a couple of weeks, since it is for your own sanity. — 00:50:51

  • ★★★ Chris says that rather than overthink whether new content will alienate viewers, they make content they would like to watch: that "internal compass" is an underrated tool to fall back on, and if it feels right it probably is right. — 00:52:01

    “if it feels right it's probably right”

  • ★★★ Every night Ali wonders whether anyone will care about a video he really wants to make on self-acceptance and lessons he has learned from therapy, since people come to his channel for productivity hacks and tech reviews. — 00:52:39

  • ★★ Ali likes to remember that everyone is just making things up as they go along and that there are no right answers in the YouTube game. — 00:53:08
  • ★★ Ali likes Becki and Chris's internal-compass philosophy: if you are having fun and posting authentic content, that is how you sustain a channel. — 00:53:08

00:54:10 — Work-life balance with a full-time job, and feeling qualified to give advice

  • ★★ Becki makes YouTube her full-time job, while Chris is a full-time doctor who works from about 7.30 in the morning until six to eight at night. — 00:54:40
  • ★★ Becki and Chris have dinner together and keep their evenings off work unless a big project deadline is coming up. — 00:54:40
  • ★ Becki says filming does not feel like work; editing, the thumbnail, the title and the Instagram posts are what feel like work. — 00:55:42
  • ★★★ Chris says YouTube feels like a hobby next to his full-time job as a doctor, so he is less prone to burnout than people grinding at a full-time job while trying to make YouTube work; when both are mentally taxing, that is a recipe for burnout. — 00:57:26
  • ★★ Ali has just launched a new podcast in which he interviews people and asks them for life advice. — 00:57:55
  • ★★★ Ali says to take everything you hear with a pinch of salt: everyone can only speak to their own experience, there are no right answers to figuring out life, and anyone who acts as if there are is trying to sell something. — 00:58:20
  • ★★ Ali says he does not really feel qualified to give people advice; his stance is "here are some things that work for me, maybe they'll work for you". — 00:58:42
  • ★★ Becki does not give advice on topics she is not comfortable with, after she once did and got reamed on YouTube. — 00:59:36
  • ★★★ Chris says they are not experts trying to teach: he holds a commercial helicopter licence but is no flight instructor; to entertain you have to add value, and one way is adding new information. — 01:00:21
  • ★★ Chris tries not to fall into the Dunning-Kruger trap: he does not want to spread nonsense online to many followers who believe it. — 01:00:45
  • ★★ Becki says nothing goes out on Becki and Chris's channel without two sets of eyes on it. — 01:01:51

01:03:00 — What a couple keeps private on camera

  • ★★ Chris's test for what the couple shares online: what they would say in a group at a cocktail party, such as a slightly raunchy joke, though neither of them drinks. — 01:03:42
  • ★★ Becki: If either Becki or Chris is not comfortable with something in an edit, they take it out completely, with no pressure. — 01:04:58

01:05:48 — Parting advice: comparison, being yourself, creating a niche that does not exist yet

  • ★★★ Becki advises new YouTubers not to compare themselves with others, because comparison is the thief of joy and will suck the joy out of YouTube. — 01:06:22
  • ★★ Becki advises being yourself and not delivering content the way someone else does because it works for them, which makes you an imposter of that person; if you keep going you will find your voice and style. — 01:07:07
  • ★★ Chris says the person you copy has already moved on to something new, so copying leaves you two steps behind: do your own thing. — 01:07:07
  • ★★★ Chris says the niches they want, such as travel series by helicopter, do not exist yet; such series may not be popular since nobody searches for them, but if you create something people did not know they wanted, you will be the first in that area. — 01:07:54

01:08:22 — Next day's chat with Charlie Houpert and the academy launch

  • ★★ Ali announces a chat about charisma with Charlie of Charisma on Command at the same time the next day. — 01:08:22

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Becki and Chris have a growing YouTube channel of over 300,000 subscribers about home design, helicopters, travel, photography and film making, and join a Part-Time YouTuber Academy alumni community event streamed free on YouTube. — video description · Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Becky and Chris · internal compass

Also: People: Angus · Charlie Houpert · MrBeast · Peter McKinnon · Sarah Dietschy · Trent Palmer

Organizations: Charisma on Command · Cody and Victoria · Hunting for George · Pinterest

Concepts: cracking open the black box · Dunning-Kruger effect · LUT · Mental health

Places: Canada · Vancouver

Products: Adobe Premiere Pro · GoPro

Taking part: Becki · Chris (youtuber, mentioned from 2021)

Only in the description or credits: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

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