THE SITC EXPERIENCE!!

BEWARE! LONG POST AHEAD!

So as I have mentioned in previous posts, I attended this amazing event called "Summer in the City".

Summer in the City is an event that has been held in London for up to 4-5 years now, being one of the UK's largest Youtube gatherings. This year it was held at Alexandra Palace on the 17th-18th of August. It had a large amount of things going on at it including:

• Youtuber Meet and Greets
• Panels 
• Live Performances
• Merchandise booths

etc.....

It was amazing, I got to do so many things, but I was slightly disappointed I only got to go on one of the days that it was happening due to other commitments.

Never the less, I had a great time and because I had such a great time, I thought I might as well write up what I did during the 1st day of Summer in the City :-D

THE DAWN OF A NEW DAY!

So I started up early from the B&B I was staying at and made my way up to Alexandra Palace around 1 hour before the event opened to the public. when I arrived, I was astounded by how many people had shown up. I had expected people to have arrived earlier than me being that it was 10am, but I swear there was already around 200-300 people already arrived and lined up to enter into the event to see their favourite Youtube stars.

I hate lines. I'm can be a patient person when I want to, but for a cue with 300 people in it and still another hour to go I decided ask some of the staff if there was a chance I could volunteer at the event.

Now I know what you are going to ask: "ProfKranc, were you just seeing if you could volunteer so you could sneak inside and skip the line?"

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Maybe....

Nah guys, I'm not that irresponsible. I was actually genuinely interested if I could volunteer for the day. Seeing stuff as a attendee of the event is one thing, but being part of the behind the scenes is another :-).

However, after some unsuccessful attempts to volunteer, I milled around some of the nearby shops to waste time, hoping the enormous line would die down once the gates had opened.

They didn't.

When the gates had finally opened, the line had wrapped around the building and covered the grounds surrounding it. I still didn't want to get caught in the line, especially because I was at the event all by myself. So I went back to a place I found while wasting time before Alexandra Palace opened.

At the side of the building there was a side entrance that 1 guy was guarding. I'm ashamed that I can't remember his name now, but he was a really friendly guy who worked for security at Alexandra Palace for all the events that took place here. 

We exchanged stories about each other and had a few laughs while a few small time Youtubers arrived seeking entrance with their invitations.

Then there was a fateful meeting a beautiful young woman. And thus a new chapter of the story unfolds.

Meeting a new friend

Two volunteers came up to us from the building, telling us some more Youtubers would be coming this way while handing the guard a list of who should be arriving. Julia was one of those volunteers.

Julia is a girl from Austria who was volunteering at the event. She also has a Youtube channel where she vlogs. I WAS IN ONE OF HER VIDS BTW!

Here is a her video on Summer in the City and a link to her channel if you are interested :-).

Julia's Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/juliaisaglobetrotter

Anyway, she was assigned to the side entrance to help identify the Youtubers coming round to make sure they were sent in the right direction. During this we talked and I was able to find out a bit more about her, why she is here and what was going on inside Alexandra Palace behind the scenes. 

After talking with her for a while and seeing that there was no chance of the line shortening anytime soon, I decided to stay for an hour or so after the gates had opened at 11am to see whether or not I could just wait out the cue. 

So after 11am, more and more Youtubers who were performing came round to the entrance to get inside, some bring in company, some not. But in the end, Julia and the security guard did their job and some of the Youtuber's companions were turned away.

As more and more Youtubers arrived, a small group of about fan girls without tickets to the event had arrived to quickly take photos with whatever stars they could find. 

Now before I continue, I'm just going to explain what a fan girl is for anyone who has been living under a rock :-p.

Fangirl - An analysis

A fan girl (as the word suggests) is a girl who is a fan of something. You would think that's it right? Heh heh WRONG!

The term fan girl is more commonly known for some of the more extreme female fans out there. Have you ever seen Justin Beiber fans? Fans of small/ young screaming girls who are crying in the audience of 1 Direction concerts? The ones who are beyond obsessed with these people who they ogle over? Yeah, they are fan girls.

This is a tame photo for what I saw.

Anyway, back to the story

The Stars Approached

The fan girls were waiting around yet again, the group had grown slightly, but it wasn't anything the security guard couldn't handle.

You know, I wouldn't have described these girls as fan girls until I saw them react to what I' about to tell you.

The events were slowly getting into session inside the building. I was still waiting outside the side entrance with the security guard and Julia, sharing some Oreos among them and the surrounding fan girls. Then a black car with tinted windows pulled up. 

It took me a while to realise, but upon examination of the shadows inside the backseats of the car where non other than the popular twin vloggers "Jack and Finn (JacksGap)".

(Jack and Finn from JacksGap)

Only seconds after realising who the shadows were in the back of this car, the driver got out of the car to open the door to allow the stars to get out and make their way into the building. The fan girls caught sight of Jack and Finn and began screaming with excitement. 

Jack and Finn urgently pleaded to the driver to close the door and drive on through quickly. Julia, the security guard and I removed the barrier leading to the building and the car began passing on through. 

Meanwhile the fan girls were crying just from the sight of Jack and Finn, one biting her finger to prevent herself from screaming anymore.

Of coarse this screaming brought more fan girls to the area and began discussing excitedly how Jack and Finn had been here.

Moments later, the black car showed again exiting the building, now without Jack and Finn. However, this did not matter to the fan girls as they began to feel the car just for having the Youtubers in it.

I don't want to paint fan girls a bad name as it seems I making them out worse than what they are. I got talking to them and they were actually really nice. I was just really surprised about how they reacted to the sight of Jack and Finn. I only thought the stories of fan girls were just gross exaggerations of the real thing, but now I have learnt the truth.

After Jack and Finn, no more Youtubers came and Julia was allowed to go back into the building after a job well done. 

I went back to the main entrance. It was now around midday and the line had finally died down. I was able to get in without a problem and began exploring the massive venue.

The Venue

Entering I could see the place was absolutely packed full of people (as it would be). Seeing that this was now around 1pm, I grabbed the nearest program and found out what was on next. 

Upon looking at the program, I figured I had some time to kill before I could go see one of the panels I wanted called "Taste and Decency on Youtube". So I made my way to the main hall and explored.

There where quite a few booths here. They included video games, bars, free hugs, merchandise, a Youtube network and the Youtube consultation area (with FREE MILKSHAKES) which is where I got the Creator Playbook. 

After wasting some time, I made my way out to the main entrance. I was in the middle of trying to find a vending machine for something to snack on when I ran into Julia again. She was wondering too after she lost her friends. So she stuck with me as we continued to explore.

Eventually I came across a Youtube star. None other than Liam Dryden :-D.

Liam Dryden

Liam Dryden is a random Youtuber who helped make Summer in the City. But the main reason I got giggly from the sight of him (Oh God, I'm a fan girl) is because he was Scottish (even creepier XD).

Anyway, he was the only Scottish Youtuber I knew and so I wanted to meet him. 

By the way, I don't have an obsession with the Scottish. For one reason and another, I feel like I have a special connection with Scotland. So I went up to him and guess what I did?

I shook his hand and told him that I respected what he was doing and that he should be proud.

Yeah, I did just that. See I'm not a fan girl :-p.

Panels Arise

Afterwards, we went to a couple of panels and I got to shake the hand of a couple other Youtubers including Benjamin Cook, Tomska and Ciaran O'Brien.

After a panel called "Short films on Youtube", I got talking to Ciaran afterwards and he actually told me about how he got invloved with Youtube.

Just a bit of background on Ciaran. Ciaran is a 1 man crew that helps a lot with filming other Youtubers stuff while also doing jobs for production companies.

Ciaran O'Brien

He told me about how he started off doing stuff for production companies and worked with a couple of Youtubers before he got spotted by Tomska during Summer in the City with his camera. 

But anyway, after we talked all the way into the main hall he got surrounded by a few fans wanting autographs, photos and other things of the such. So I let him be and made my way to another panel about the new Youtube layout.

Something I actually noticed during this panel is that the Youtube staff presenting the panel were getting slowly bashed by the Youtubers present about how they have lost a lot of their traffic because of the new system put in place on Youtube. I won't get into that, but I was able to make a few friends who were Youtubers there. 

After this panel, the big event happened where a star studded cast of people from Youtube came and did a panel on the main stage, asking questions that the series "Becoming Youtube" poked questions at.

I'm kinda slowly losing the amount of detail I'm putting into this it seems, so I'll be quick and briefly explain the rest of the night.

When Day Turns into Night

Julia, her friends and I all stayed to watch a couple of the final live performances and made our way to the bar. This was quite a fun part as a few Youtubers and many of the event attendees had arrived. 

We had a few drinks and before you knew it everyone was gone. I sadly parted ways with everyone and made my way home for a good night sleep.

Moral of the Story

I'll say that I had a wonderful experience at Summer in the City. Even though I could only go for one day, I made lots of new friends, got to meet some brilliant Youtubers and learn some valuable information.

I would totally advice you to go to Summer in the City next year. It's a blast for anyone who goes :-).

Anyway yeah. That is my big long post about the Summer in the City experience over. I'll catch you later. Live long and prosper or something like that :-D.

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RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!!

I'M BAAAACK!!!

Hello people of the internet! How are you all?
I'm brilliant! Back from London and feeling awesome!

What did I do in London you ask?
Well, I went to Summer in the City WHICH WAS AMAZZAAA!
Among that I did other things, including sightseeing, movie watching, meeting with family and friends.

Summer in the City

At SitC I got to go to panels, watch live performances make some new friends, meet famous Youtubers like Benjamin Cook, Liam Dryden, Ciaran O'Brian, Thomas Ridgewell, etc...

For a more in depth look into what I did during the Summer in the City event I will post it in a different blog post at another point in time for anyone who is interested.

There was also something brilliantly useful for me that i found while at SummerintheCity which was a Youtube channel Consultation area. In this area employees of Youtube gave you advice, tips and tricks on how to get more attention to your channel and improve your videos.
And it was people who actually knew what they were talking about so I got some great advice on my Youtube channel and videos.
Now I could write out all the advice that was given to me on my Youtube channel, or I could do that and also add a great recourse for you to see that can help you if you are on Youtube.

This resource is called the Youtube Creator Playbook.

Youtube Creator Playbook

The Youtube creator playbook is large amount of information piled into one area for content creators on Youtube to get advice on trying to build up their audience on their channel. While I was at Summer in the City I was given a book version of this part of the Youtube website. 

It of coarse gives you information apart from building your audience as you can see from the small screenshot. But instead of listing what everything that is in their, I will link you the online version of the playbook for anyone who is interested! :-)

Youtube Creator Playbook Link: http://www.youtube.com/yt/playbook/

 I will give the advice which was given to me in another blog post, as this is just a broad overview of what happened.

But yeah, its good to be back. I had a hell of a time in England with my friends and family that I met there. I will be coming back to you with more blog posts about the advice I was given and what happened during SitC later.

Before I go, I will mention I made friends with one of the volunteers called Julia. Julia is an amazing person who has a channel of her own. I was in her video about Summer in the City if you want to check that out. :-D You can see me from 00:50 to 00:53 in the video. Take a guess which one is me! (That's a really stupid question as you already know what I look like).

Julia's video: 

Video Link: http://youtu.be/K-zMC7dwPz8

Julia's channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/juliaisaglobetrotter

Anyway, it's good to be back and I hope you come back here soon!

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RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!

I'M GOING TO LONDON!!

London. The place of Royalty, Government, Big Ben, The London Eye and Tea. :-p

I'll tell you, I'm not going to London just for a little off the spot holiday, but to go to a special convention that is happening on the 17th and 18th of August. And that event is......

SUMMER IN THE CITY

Summer in the City is a reasonably well known event that has been running in London for the past few years now. Some people think of it as just a special gathering for people to meet their Youtube stars and some think of it as Britains version of Vidcon.
To me..... its a chance to visit London and shake the hands of people I respect.

Summer in the City runs several different events during it which include talks, open mic events, meet and greets and video screenings. All of which centre around Youtube. The event itself isn't run by Youtube, but Youtube enthusiasts who are trying to make it bigger than it ever has before.

I've been quite excited for this event since I found out about it through Becoming Youtube (which is an amazing series btw). I honestly don't know what I'm going to do at the event when I get there, but I know generally who I want to see.

For randoms sake, I'll list some:

Tomska - Thomas Ridgewell
ninebrassmonkeys - Benjamin Cook
OMFGitsJackandDean - Jack Howard and Dean (don't know last name)
FunnyCatVideos - Ciaran O'Brian (not because of his videos, but because he is involved in just about every British Youtube video in one way or another)

People like these make professional looking videos for a living on Youtube. They are people whom I look up to as they stand out from the people who make vlogs and other self-filmed stuff that is usually found on Youtube.

Unfortunately the ticket buying stage for Summer in the City is over and in hindsight I should have promoted it earlier to anyone who actually could have gone. But who knows, I may make a video on my little trip to London. I may not. But you know that I will blog about it afterwards!
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BTW I won't be blogging for 12 days after this blog post because I won't have access to a computer while I'm in England.

But to tide you over, enjoy a couple of series that I believe to be quite good online. I'll list a few below for you to check out if you want.

Online Series recommendations:

Bite Me: http://www.youtube.com/show/biteme/videos
Description: Three Gamers. One Outbreak. No Continues. Follow three gamers as they find themselves in the midst of a real life zombie outbreak. Relying only on the knowledge and skills they have accrued over years of gaming, these guys will have to drop the controller and pick up anything that they can use as a weapon.

Casters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A_mCTRv5l0&list=PL93837B50594863AD
Description: 3 friends struggle to try and keep their audio podcast going with the increasing competition surrounding them. As doubts rise outside the group about whether or not this is worth the time, as well as drama affecting the Casters team, will they be able to rise above the rocks of boring internet content as a rare gem of quality?


Video Game Highschool: http://www.youtube.com/show/videogamehighschoolvghs
Description: A series about best friends, first loves, and landing that perfect headshot. No.1 Record breaker for a Kickstarter fan funded web series.


Thanks and I'll see you again soon :-D
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RANDOM VIDEO TIME!! 

X2!!!

MAN OF SPEED!! BEHIND THE SCENES!!

So with the release of the new Man of Steel parody I made, I have decided to let in on some of the process it took to make the actual thing look so good along with how I did the speed away effect.

By the way, if you haven't seen the video then here it is for ya :-D

So first thing that is kinda more outstanding than any of my videos is the camera/ visual quality in this video.

A common misconception about when it comes to filming is that the more expensive your camera is, the better quality your video.
Now as much as it is true that a Canon 600D DSLR will obviously have better quality than a Iphone camera, there are factors that affect every camera when it comes to visual quality.

The first and probably most important thing to consider when it comes to visual quality rather than composition is lighting.
Lighting can make a really crap camera bring out professional looking quality video. While if you have bad lighting, it can destroy any image on even the most expensive camera.

An experience I had a while ago while I was assistant director on a short film called "Photo Shoot" was something that was ruined by lighting.

During the film shoot, we had a scene where the two main characters where having a conversation and taking some photos in the study. However because the lighting was quite bad, the camera man (who was just starting) turned up the ISO (or AVA for some) on the camera to try and compensate for the bad lighting. Because of this, the video we took came out very grainy. So grainy that we could not fix it in post.

Just to give you an idea of what ISO is, I'll just briefly explain what it means.

ISO is essentially adjusting how sensitive your camera's image is to light, but the more you up the ISO, the more noise you can see on your image. Because of this, you decrease the quality of your image. For me an ISO of 800 is the max I will ever go (and that is with visible noise), anything at 1600 or above is useless.

If you compare this to, for example my 6 seconds to die short (where there was poor lighting), you can see a difference.

(Damn, I look creepy in the right photo O_O)

So for this day of production, I was able to shoot on a fairly sunny day in an area with a lot of light. Because of this, I was able to keep the ISO at 400.
Then with the right exposure and aperture, I was able to let enough light in to create a create picture without completely destroying the picture.

However you may be asking : "ProfKranc, what if I want to shoot a scene that is supposed to be dark but I don't want to loose video quality?"

Well I would advise trying to light the scene to a point where you can retain as much quality as you can and in the way you want the final image to be. Try to make sure the lighting isn't so dark that it literally make some sections completely black. If you keep the detail and want to make it look dark (or maybe even make it look like its at night), you can play with it in post until you get it right.
LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES! RETAIN VIDEO QUALITY!

Getting back to where we were at, there is one angle though that I didn't correct that did bug me.

This one.

The reason this medium shot of the scene bugs me so is the colour and tone. When you compare it to the OTS (Over the shoulder frames), the medium shot looks colder than the others.

The way this could have been fixed is with colour correction.

Now before I explain the whole colour correction bit, I just want to point out something. 

Colour correction is when you match two images to the same lighting, colour and tone. Its not stylising the image like you do with Instagram filters. That is colour grading.

Colour grading is when you enhance certain colours and contrast, while also changing the tone of the image. Colour correction is different.

Anyway, because I was trying to edit this rather fast at the time (and because Final Cut Pro X keeps crashing on me) I didn't pay attention to the tone change in the images. If I could re-edit the video, I would pay extra attention to that to make it look more similar to the other frames.

By the way, just a side note. Final Cut Pro X is a demanding piece of software. If you are going to use it, get a desktop or make sure you have enough space and processing power to use it properly. Otherwise, it will be really slow and crash when you put to much stress on it.

Finally, I said I would tell you how I did the speed away effect shown in the Parody video.

Speed Away Effect

(unfortunately no pictures, FCPX crashed)

First off I had to shoot three things.

1. Actor playing John reacting to the effect (John layer)

2. Me on the green screen pretending to speed away. (G.S layer)

After doing this I had to bring all of the elements together into a single timeline. I put the John layer as the first/ bottom layer and the G.S layer on the second layer.

With the G.S layer on to top of the John layer, it obviously meant that you couldn't see the actor playing John and instead me on my own, on a green screen looking like an idiot.
So in order to fix this, I cropped the G.S layer so only the green screen and I where in frame. This revealed some of the background.
I then scaled it down to the same size of John on the John layer and the Chroma keyed the G.S layer.

Chroma keying is essentially taking a colour and removing it from the shot. In doing this, I took out the green screen and just left me standing there.

We are nearly halfway there now.
From here I went on and key framed myself to go out of frame very quickly from when I turned round. From that point is were we pile on the effects.

First I cut the video footage to when the keyframe movement kicked in. I then added a directional blur to the G.S layer and put it up to 78% on the speed away part of the footage. This gave a sort of speed blur for when I was shooting out of shot.

I then cut away a few frames from John's layer to make his reaction to the sudden speed away more violent. I also added an earthquake effect (or simple camera shake effect) for the first few frames of the speed away to make it look like the camera was shaking because of the pure force of the sonic boom that was created.

I then added a vector of cracked ground and then overlaid it on top of John's layer and below the G.S layer (because I'm supposed to have left the mark).
I then added a dirt charge effect from the "Action Essentials" pack from when I started to speed off to give more of an impact to the effect. It also made it look like smoke went right up into John's face.

With that I finally added a trailing smoke effect. To do this I took a smoke atmosphere effect from the Action Essentials pack and key framed a mask to reveal more smoke as I gradually left the frame. I key framed the mask to move all the way to the point where the shot ended. I did it so it seemed the smoke was following me, essentially making a smoke trail.

After that, I moved to the next shot. In order to make it seem like the smoke is still remaining from the previous shot, I added another dirt effect from the Action Essentials pack (god, I mentioning it so much its like they sponsored me or something, lol :-p) and added a fade out effect to the smoke layer. If I had left it, John would have been coughing over nothing.

And that is how I made that effect.

Now throughout that whole explanation I have made it seem quite easy, but it wasn't. It may have been because FCPX kept crashing, but it took a hell of a long time to do that one effect.
I'm not saying Final Cut Pro X is a bad editor, in fact its quite the opposite. It's just because my computer doesn't have enough processing power to run it smoothly. If you are thinking of getting FCPX, make sure your computer has enough horse power to run it, otherwise it will be as slow as a traffic jam in New York.

By the way, I have mentioned the Action Essentials pack a lot during this post. I just want to clarify that I don't have any special relations with them or anything. Its actually just a really good special effects pack that I use a lot. If you have the money and want to do special effects, I suggest you get it.

N.B. That entire bit at the end of the Man of Speed video, where we are going through someones wallet? It was all improvised. RANDOM FACT OF THE DAY! :-D

NEW VIDEO!!! MAN OF SPEED!!

NEW VIDEO MAN OF SPEED! WATCH IT NOW!!

So yeah, it wasn't that this took a while to make, its just that I filmed it while man of steel was still in the cinema. Then when I finally got it finished, Man of Steel was gone, so I thought why not upload it after a week of my previous one.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it and a behind the scenes will be up soon too :-D

STAY TUNED!!