Noah B Woodworks

I’ve been on and off with filming my projects for the last 3 to 4 years. I have gone through a few phases of style and presentation, but I have not landed on anything consistent. I’m talking about video that is made specifically for YouTube. Longer format video is tricky, because you’ve got to keep your audiences attention longer. Keeping their attention these days is difficult because the shorter format videos of TikTok and Instagram have shortened the attention spans of many as a biproduct of constant use. Woodworking is a long format endeavor, so I believe that long format videos are better suited to show the process of building.

My journey as a videographer as been rather hectic. I started by doing some fancy lighting, and narrating, pulled back from that and stripped it down to captions, then went crazy with a more vlog style format. None of these really took off in the way that I had hoped, and that is partially due to inconsistencies in style and frequency of upload. There are a few commonalities I see with very successful YouTube woodworkers. Their videos are thorough in story, and do a good job of outlining why the object is being made. Their videos are often narrated with good audio instead of talking to the camera which can be off putting, especially if the viewer is unsure about the maker. Finally, their videos have beautiful imagery and the footage is shot thoughtfully with plenty of good light and movement.

I am thinking that I can copy their approach, but start with the last point. Shoot the video beautifully, upgrade the camera, lighting and aesthetic of my workshop first so that the images are pleasant to look at. Then narrate what I’m doing in post. There are a couple of advantages to that. I don’t have to worry about talking to the camera while I’m making something, which can often be a huge distraction, and I can calculate exactly what I’d like to say without worrying about spending excess time when I’m building.

I’m looking forward to attempting to make the shop look more beautiful, and it is always fun to upgrade the camera. My current setup is a Canon M50 with a nifty 50 speed-boosted and adapted lens. It is a pretty sweet rig but it has a few weird quirks. Every time I turn it on the shutter will click a bunch of times because the camera doesn’t recognize the adapter well, and the autofocus on the M50 is atrocious. Manually focusing every shot is hard on the small screen, so I got an external monitor to accompany the rig. I also can’t use it to capture photos, as the shutter will lock up when I click to shoot.

I’ve used my GoPro Hero 13 for the most recent video, but the footage from that is really strange and doesn’t look amazing. It also has terrible low light performance, and I often woodwork in the morning. It’s hard for viewers to watch a wide angle for a long time, so I’ll probably attempt to use the GoPro for short format; vertical footage. The GoPro takes really awesome timelapses, so maybe I can make or buy a moving dolly for it, to spice some of those longer shots up.