Hello everyone. The channel recently surpassed four million subscribers so it's time for another Q&A. Q: How come the "i" in "LEMMiNO" is not capitalized?
A: I would love to say that there is some purpose behind it but I have no idea. Aesthetics! I guess, I don't know.
Q: Your recent video was the most highly polished and professional yet. Thank you. How do you deal with scope creep, and what is your criteria for declaring a video “finished” and ready to upload?
A: This is a very good question because there is no such thing as an exhaustive documentary. There's always more to say. More perspectives, more angles, more theories, more opinions, more evidence, more science, more tangents, more suspects, more people, more questions, more everything.
So whether you're watching a short video by someone like me or a feature-length film by a large production crew, you will never walk away with the complete story. Cutting things out and scaling things down is a very essential and unavoidable part of the process. I mean, the initial draft for my videos is often three or four times longer than the final script.
I don't really know how I decide when enough is enough but I think it's more of a feeling. If the pacing and presentation feels right, and it feels like I've gone through all the major beats of a story, then that's gonna have to be good enough. Q: What is your favorite word?
A: Okay, so I actually keep a document on my desktop simply called words in which I write down words that sound interesting. Words like perspicacity, lugubrious, transmogrify, anadiplosis, and, the most recent one, bescumber. There's no rhyme or reason to it.
Just a random collection of words. Am I just weird or is this something anyone else is doing. Please.
Q: I'm so interested in the animation behind your videos, what software/equipment do you use to make your videos? Also, how do you find new ideas for videos? A: These are the applications I use and what I use them for.
As for video ideas, many of them are suggested by you, the audience. I have a thread on my subreddit where you can do just that. Otherwise, I stumble upon ideas all over the place.
Reading books, talking to people, watching movies, what have you. Q: Do you think you'll ever return to Top 10 videos or year review videos? Your content is some of the best on YouTube thank you for your effort!
Thank you for watching! A: Ehm. .
. I'm done with the yearly recaps. I just don't enjoy making them anymore.
I would also say that I'm done with the list format but I don't know that that's necessarily true. I mean, stories like Consumed by the Apocalypse is told in form of a list. The only thing missing is the title and the numbers between the segments.
So, am I done with list videos? Depends on how you look at it, I guess. Q: What's a video you thought wouldn't do good but ended up surprising you?
A: Well, the interesting thing is that the most popular video on my channel is one of the few videos I did not expect to do well. The whole Cicada 3301 mystery had been dead for a while and I was far from the first to make a video about it. But, too my surprise, it just took off and a lot of people liked it.
So, even though I've been doing this for close to a decade now, every upload is still a gamble. Q: How do you get motivated to edit. Like do you ever look at your project and feel like you don't want to edit that day and just do something else.
What do you do to prevent that from happening. Also congrats for 4 million subscribers. Thank you.
A: Well, for me, the editing is the most fun part of the video-making process. It can get a bit tedious at times but it's nothing that a cup of tea and a short break can't fix. I think there is this misperception of editing being the most time-consuming and laborious part of the process.
It's not. That title easily goes to research and scripting. With editing you can optimize and cut corners but there's no shortcut for reading a 400-page book.
Q: Have you discovered any mistakes in previous videos that you would like to correct? A: Probably every single video I've ever made. The thing is, once you hit upload, there is no turning back.
Any mistakes you've made will now be consumed by millions of people around the globe. Most of these mistakes are quite trivial but some of them could really do with a correction. YouTube does offer a video editor in which you can make cuts or blur out parts of a video but that can often make it more confusing.
I don't want to hide the mistakes, I want to correct them. It also seems overkill to constantly delete and reupload slightly tweaked versions of the same video. I doubt the almighty algorithm would look too favorably upon that.
What I would really like to see is the ability to add a sentence or two in the corner of a video. Something like the cards feature but just for text. You used to be able to do this with the annotation feature which has since been removed because no one was using it apparently.
But I was. I was using it for exactly this purpose. Ever since I've just been adding corrections to the video description and my website but most viewers are never gonna see that.
Making separate correction videos suffer from the same issue. Most people who watch the original video are never gonna see the correction video. So you really need that in-video solution to make a difference.
If anyone from YouTube should happen to watch this, please give it some thought. Q: If you had the opportunity to spend one week in the future OR in the past, which one would you pick and what year and why? A: Presuming I would retain the information and/or technology obtained in the future, I would jump to a time when immortality had been achieved.
Then, I would make myself immortal and just live forever. If not, then, presuming my actions in the past affect the present, I'd venture back to 2009 and buy a bunch of Bitcoins. If neither future- nor past actions have any consequences, I'd probably jump to a time when humanity makes first contact.
I mean, who wouldn't want to see that? Q: Do you have a team for research, editing, etc? If so, how big is it and what are their roles?
A: I do, actually. My production designer is Mr L. My research team consists of Mr LEM, Mr.
Mi, and Dr NO. I also have a team editors locked in the basement but they keep going on and on about someone called LEMMiGO. Q: How are you?
And how has the world events of 2020 effected your life/work? A: I got a ton of questions about the pandemic and how my year has been and while 2020 was a terrible and difficult year for many, almost nothing changed for me personally. I'm already accustomed to working from home and wearing a mask when it's cold outside is actually quite warm and comfortable.
So yeah, the pandemic has only had a minimal impact on my life. Q: I'd love to hear about your researching process. Where do you go to find obscure information with little coverage?
A: Google. It's really as simple as that. Resources like newspaper archives and various libraries can be useful but, again, you find those resources by searching for them.
I don't use any secret tricks or methods to find obscure information. I just search a lot and read a lot. That's all there is too it.
Just type a couple of keywords into your favorite search engine, read everything that seems relevant, and just repeat ad nauseam. Q: How many videos do you usually work on at a time? A: I typically have multiple different projects.
. . Maybe 10 at a time, and I keep switching between them.
Q: Have you considered working in 3840/25p instead of 1080/60p? A: I have thought about upgrading to 4K but I'm only gonna do that if I can keep the 60 frames per second. I am one of those weird people who prefer framerate over resolution every single time.
Not just in video games but in movies as well. The higher the frame rate the better. I recently saw this movie called Gemini Man at 60 fps and it was fantastic.
Well, the movie was not so great, but the crystal clear buttery smooth action certainly was. The problem is it takes about four times as long to render a frame in 4K compared to 1080p. It's also slower to work with and it can be difficult to find material at such a high resolution.
I mean, YouTube already supports 8K at 60 fps. So I'll probably switch to 4K at some point but I'm sticking to 1080p for now. Q: Have you felt more pressure as your sub count has climbed?
A: I don't think so. The pressure to make more stuff has stayed more or less the same. I guess it should increase because there are more people watching but I don't think the numbers concern me all that much.
What concerns me far more is the reception of each video. As I said before, each video is very much a gamble and you never know if the response will be mostly positive or negative. So that can be a bit stressful at times.
Q: Do you talk like that when the mic isn't on? A: I don't know. This is pretty casual, right?
When I made a video in Swedish as while ago some apparently thought I sounded like I had an English accent. I mean, I don't hear it but maybe I've been doing this for so long that I don't even know how to speak like a normal person anymore. So, I don't know.
Perhaps I do. Perhaps I don't. I don't know.
Thank you for all the questions. It was very difficult to pick so few out of literally thousands but it had to be done. Also a massive thank you to my patrons on Patreon and everyone who watch my videos really.
The channel surpassed four million before the end of 2020 and has already grown well beyond that. Just incredible to see. I hope you have a great day and I'll see you all in the next one.
Okay, bye.
