Okay, today’s the day the first vlog entry is going to go live.

It’ll be later tonight, after I get home from work and, uh, shoot it.

We’ll see how long that kind of schedule lasts before I decide it’s just a bad idea.

(Probably a week or less, I’m guessing.)

I’ll be posting it here on the blog. It’ll be cross-posted to Facebook and Twitter. I should probably share it on Tumblr, too.

But if you want to know as soon as it’s live…

The absolute best thing to do is to subscribe to my YouTube channel. (Be sure to hit the gear after you subscribe so you can set email notifications.)

Yeah… that’s going to need some sprucing up. Guess that’ll be another facet to this project. The more people who are going to be looking at this, the better I’m going to need it to look.

Still, trying desperately to resist the urge to build out a full marketing plan and cross-platform campaign. That’s made a little easier by not having a focus for this challenge. Or, y’know, a target market or anything.

*sigh* This would have all been so much easier if it had been an option before I knew all the possible things that can be done to make something successful. (Thankfully, I’m not all that concerned with any traditional “success” in this case.)

That’s about it for now. Next post will have the first video in it.

Don’t forget that you have some say over what goes on for the next 100 days… click the big green button below here to get to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

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If I haven’t made it clear enough, I purposefully don’t have a lot of expectations for this 100 Days of Vlogging project.

It’s akin to just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

If anything sticks really well, it may be something I do a lot more with.

At the absolute least, it’ll get things moving somewhere. That’s what’s really important to me.

So, I’m not expecting (or, really, even wanting) to get “YouTube Famous” or rake in that shared ad revenue. I just want to get a bunch of content out there, get comfortable talking to an empty room with one soulless eye looking at me, and, in general, prove to myself that I can actually pull off something of this scale.

What is the scale of this?

If you’re like most people, you’ve never really pulled together a video project of any size or complexity. I kind of wish I were that naive when it comes to the process.

Once upon a time, I wanted to make movies. And TV shows. Back then, there wasn’t anything even close to the Internet we know today, let alone YouTube. The home video technology was in its infancy. Things were really expensive. And there weren’t any cheap and easy ways to learn how to do this stuff. (Especially if you weren’t old enough to get a job.)

In college, I took a bunch of film and video classes. Technology had improved a bit by then, but good quality stuff was still on the really expensive side of the budget line and, while the Internet was almost a household idea, there still wasn’t anything like YouTube.

I worked for a few years down here in the DC area at a place that produces a lot of videos. I have a lot of friends who make movies–shorts and features and webseries. I still keep up on the industry as a whole and things have come a very long way in the last 30 years. Good quality stuff… is in your smart phone. That ubiquitous $600 or so hunk of technology produces video quality beyond anything a non-pro was using back fifteen years ago, let alone in the 80s and 90s.

Shooting and editing are the biggest time sinks with what I have planned. I’m decidedly trying not to script things right off the top. I’m also trying to avoid a lot of pre-production work, for the most part. And any fancy post-production work, too.

This is a hobby project that I’m squeezing in between everything else that I do when I get home from work.

Thankfully, that doesn’t exactly mean that the quality is going to be horrible. It’s tricky to create truly horrible quality these days. Sure, stuff can be bad–bad content, bad lighting, bad sound–but if you have half a clue (which is at least what I have), it’s easy to avoid the worst of those “bad” things.

So, that’s something.

Overall, a 3-5 minute video of me just yammering on will likely take about half an hour to fully put together. Maybe less if I can overcome my innate desire to fiddle with things. Optimally, it would take ten minutes. Everything done in one shot, a quick run through Premiere Pro to trim things, and then uploaded.

We’ll see how that goes in practice.

But what about concrete goals?

Fine, you want some actual concrete goal? Something to aim for? Some distinct measure that can mark a milestone.

How about this: 100 Eyes.

That’s 50 people. (Generally speaking…)

I’ll be completely satisfied if I can get at least 50 people regularly watching what I put out there. And by “regularly watching” I mean that there are 50 people subscribed to my YouTube channel with view count at least coming close to that on a video to video basis.

If I get more… well, that just means I’m actually doing something right… and that something has stuck to that wall and will need to be looked at a little more closely.

Speaking of eyes… click the big green button below here to get your eyes to the page where you can submit topic suggestions and questions (so I know what kinds of things you want to see go on in these videos).

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]

Don’t panic, I’m not actually going to list all 100 (or so).

Depending on how well you know me, it may seem a little odd that doing this vlog project is something that’s outside of my comfort zone.

Maybe you’ve seen me “hold court” among a group of friends or strangers, going on, at length (sometimes too much length) about any number of topics.

Maybe you’ve been at a wedding I’ve officiated.

Maybe you’ve known me long enough to have seen me on stage long, long ago in a play.

Maybe you’ve read my frank and direct (though often a bit purple) writing in my various blogs.

Being gregarious, open, and not afraid to step into the spotlight, how the heck is a vlog something I’m uncomfortable about?

Simple: I get through all that other stuff because it doesn’t leave me talking to myself.

Seriously, that’s a big part of it. Like most people, I don’t care much for how my voice sounds when it gets played back to me. As a trained public speaker, I can hear all the imperfections and hesitations and subtle stumbles. As someone who values silence as much as I do, hearing myself run on and on and on without any other voices interjecting is… disconcerting.

I’ve also questioned my own mental health enough over the years to worry just a wee bit when I find myself talking out loud and there’s no one else around. Since the current, default, vlog setup is just me, a camera, and a microphone, that’s all I’ll be doing.

I’ll also have no idea how things are being received until after they’re out there and beyond my control.

This is kind of a big deal. When I’m interacting directly with people, I can change up a lot of things based on their reactions. If the topic I’m on is falling dead, I can switch to a new one. If I’ve lost the interest of the audience, I can kick things up in my presentation, adding a little more flair. (With writing, I can always go back and edit… but mostly, I just spend a bunch of time going back over it before I put it out there, making small changes here and there… that’s really not something one can do easily with a daily vlog setup, at least not when it’s just a hobby.)

I don’t care much for looking at myself, either.

It took me a really, really long time to accept that I have, at least, an average appearance. There’s a lot that goes into that bit of personal psychology, but it is what it is. There is precisely one usable mirror in my apartment. It’s in the bathroom, over the sink. I avoid it as much as possible.

Pictures of myself? Don’t much care for most of them… no matter how good others thing they are. Seriously, you’re not going to find a flood of selfies on any of my streams. You’re not going to find dozens of profile pictures of me. I’ve been using the same two profile pictures for… a really long time. (I should probably switch to a new one before the transition will be really jarring to people… hmmm…)

While editing this vlog, I’m going to have to look at and listen to myself… a lot. That’s going to be tricky to do without getting all sorts of self-critical. (Definitely tied to the perfection paralysis I’m fighting to overcome in general with this project.)

So that’s something else I’ll need from all y’all: Perspective.

There’s a really good chance that, at some point over the next hundred days, I’ll hit a wild negative spiral or three. I’ll be frustrated that things aren’t showing up on screen like they are in my head; I’ll be fed up with how I look and sound; I’ll simply be looking for excuses to just stop.

Having other people along for the ride–people I know and trust–will help me keep all that under control better. It’s not that I want a bunch of emphatic encouragement and saccharine sweet praise. I expect honest criticism from my friends (and you do deliver oh-so-well most of the time).

The good and the bad, presented honestly, is what keeps me from flying off the road in either direction.

It also let’s me know that I’m not just talking to myself.

Speaking of talking… click the big green button below here to submit topic suggestions and questions so I’m not totally boring you to death for five minutes a day.

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]

In attempting to keep the “plan” for this vlog thing as minimalist as possible (in order to prevent perfection paralysis on my part), I’m not really putting together an editorial calendar.

Sure, once October rolls around, I’ll likely be talking about “seasonal” things (like Halloween, ghosts, and horror films). And when we pass through November and December there will undoubtedly be some sort of “holiday” content. But, for the most part, I’m just planning on rambling on for 3-5 minutes once a day.

Like I said, nothing fancy.

Yet.

What I don’t want to do is bore you to death.

See, there’s really no reason for me to do this if no one other than my mother is going to bother watching it. (Sorry, mom.)

I work best when I’m doing things for someone else’s (potential) benefit. When there’s a chance that what I’m doing will definitely have some sort of impact (hopefully positive!) on someone’s life. It’s why I just about all of my Facebook posts are open to the world. It’s why I’ve (sporadically) maintained multiple public blogs.

Judging by past experience, the best way for me to help myself is to help (or, at least, entertain) others.

Very, very rarely do things I do solely for myself hold my attention for any length of time. Definitely not for 100 days of cranking out content.

That’s where I’m going to need your help.

Since all y’all are the ones who will be seeing these videos first (or, at least, having the option to see them… I’m not going to go all Clockwork Orange on ya…), I want it to be stuff you’re interested in.

I’ve had many conversations with many people over the years–and if you’ve bounced here from my Facebook feed, you’re probably one of those people–and accrued a lot of anecdotes and even some actual knowledge, maybe some wisdom.

This is your chance to pick my brain or challenge me to learn something new.

To help me get out of my comfort zone a little more.

To make this more than just me sitting in my apartment talking to no one. (Which I do plenty already.)

Even better: I actually want some of you directly involved.

Most of my time is spent alone these days. Often, I long for the “good ol’ days” of having a passel of people just down the hall that I can shoot the breeze with at all hours. I see this as a chance to take that idea to a new level.

Many of you do awesome things. Much more actively awesome things than I do. Things that I genuinely think lots of people out there in the world would be very interested in.

So, if there’s a topic you want to talk about–something you’re working on or something that really puts the wind in your sails–I want to sit down with you (either in person or virtually–yay! Technology!) and chat about it for a little while.

Then I want to put it out there in the world.

It may even be neat for a few of us to get together, run our own little panel discussion.

Maybe live.

I don’t know… I’m game for pretty much anything that you’re interested in.

[jbutton size=”xxlarge” color=”green” link=”http://durosia.com/vlog-questions” newpage=”yes”]Come Ask a Question Here[/jbutton]