Happy Tuesday!
Recently I actually decided to get INTO scrolling more. Weird, I know. The thing is, I was never really into Instagram and I only occasionally fell into a Tiktok hole, but have easily been able to pull myself out. I deleted video swiping apps off my phone long ago. But for some reason, I got an urge to post short, vertical videos recently.
If you follow me on one of the vertical sites you may have noticed several videos popping up. I tried a few news based ones. I enjoyed it. But then I decided to do a bit of market research. I started scrolling Instagram Reels… a lot.
What I found was amazing and frustrating… there is so much godforsaken talent out there! Jeez!
But my favorite account I found was itslittlemich. A Canadian woman documenting her journey of recovery after a breakup from a long-term relationship and getting fired. On the surface it might seem odd that this account has anything to do with my interests. But look a little closer and you’ll see BRILLIANT shooting, editing, storytelling, and it’s friggin hilarious!
The amount of effort and craft that goes into each short rivals most YouTube videos. And it’s just one person and SHE EDITS ON HER PHONE!
Most of the best stuff I find on Instagram feels like straight up sketch comedy. Itslittlemich is doing full day-in-the-life stuff or even bigger stories but somehow packs it all in to a one minute short—and it’s seemingly taken from her real life—and it is just as funny as any sketch. It feels ambitious, wild, new and exciting, and it reminds me of what I was trying to way back when I first started.
I know you’re not supposed to compare yourself to others, but after watching her and all those damn talented people, it suddenly felt like what I was doing was wildly inadequate. It made me want to either quit shorts all together or really try to make something special.
Up until now I was either doing a talking head sort of thing or just taking clips from my longer videos. What if I ACTUALLY TRIED to make my short videos their own thing? So that’s what I did.
I spent several days writing and shooting and editing my very first 100% fully wheezy realized big boy vertical short video. And ya know what? Y’all liked it! It’s doing very well on the Wheezywaiter youtube channel (for my standards at least), and better than average on Instagram at this point.
True, it’s the same story as my recent longform video (and I take a few clips from that video) it was shot completely separately and vertically and made to stand 100% on its own.
These aren’t life changing numbers, but I had a blast and I want to keep giving shorts a try. Feels long overdue since it’s very nearly the same type of thing I was doing in early wheezy days.
I don’t know why I needed to see a template from itslittlemich to really see the potential, but here we are. Hopefully, I can keep it up.
Wink (ding),
Craig
P.S. I’m going to try to do videos on Patreon every weekday again! Here’s the first one.
A new video in which I try Sleep Products will be out Friday. And can be viewed early just for Patrons right now!
Working on a short based on that same sleep product journey.
Reading a couple books, one of which I chose in my lastest video. The other is The Count of Monte Cristo. I was reading it on the phone but just got a physical copy. HOLY CRAP! Didn’t realize it was such a big boi.
Playing too much Binding of Isaac. Old game, I know. I just got into it recently!
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