Skip to main content

Peter McKinnon, and Learning to Love Creating Video Again

For much of my life I've been interested in filming video. As soon as I was able to afford it, I bought my first video camera - somewhere in the very early 1990's.

The thing is, I don't have a passion for cameras, and I'm not driven to make any particular kind of film. I just feel, shooting video is something I want to do.

I also have no interest in being a camera person for someone else's content. I know I have my own voice and things to share (if my blogs are anything to go by).


This is not a woe is me, I don't know what to film kind of post. I've got plenty of content I can turn into videos for my original The Extraordinary Tourist YouTube channel, that I started back in 2006. A channel I'm currently trying to resuscitate with more frequent videos. In fact if you have an interest in art and/or skateboarding, those are my two main content topics.

I watch a lot of YouTube channels. If there was one channel I would single out as a role model for what I'd like to be doing, it's Peter McKinnon's channel. I'm not just saying that because his channel has blown up over the last year, to the point where he's a YouTube poster boy for what can be achieved even in a saturated market. I'm saying it because he genuinely seems to enjoy every aspect of making content.

Early on Peter made a great video about just getting started with building a YouTube channel. I've posted it below. I'd add one thing to it; try to focus your channel on something specific that interests you. A hobby, sport, television, movies, dogs, cats, etc. Stay focused right from the beginning and you'll find your people (i.e. audience) sooner. That's what Peter did.



What impresses me most about Peter is that he seems to love what he's doing so much he's always thinking about telling a more compelling story through camera placement/angles, composition, backgrounds, lighting, B-roll etc.

So much so, that in a recent video (below) where he and his studio partner, Matty, had to carry a new fridge upstairs to their studio, Matty complained about Peter's need to get '1000 different cut scenes' through out the process... and Peter made that complaint part of the video content!



Peter clearly loves creating content, and always appears to be enjoying the process both on and off camera. I assume he's constantly thinking about how all the pieces of footage will fit together in the final edit.

That's the thing that really baffles me. I can do all that, if I really applied myself but I don't love doing it. However I really want to. I like shooting video. I want to do more of it, but I'm not in love with the process of planning, shooting, and editing. How do I get there?

I used to be excited to make my videos back between 2006-2008. Youtube was just beginning to explode and I was excited to make art/comedy videos despite not being a comedian. I also made speed paints before that was really a thing, but mine included me talking to camera, narration, titles and more.

If I were to chose one video from that period that represents the best of what I achieved it would be Speed Painting 'JAC Leaps Again' which I've embeded below. You'll have to excuse the blurry video. Back then I only had low quality 640x480 pixel webcams to film with (HD wasn't common yet), and I had to further compress my final edit so the file size wouldn't be too horrendous to upload over dial-up internet.



In the years since this video I know my camera presence and on camera energy has improved. It's still not there yet but I've come to terms with needing to appear less tired and be more expressive.

That aside, this particular video clearly has a lot of thought put into the planning, filming, and the edit. It's not just about the painting being created, there are a number of sub stories intertwined with the action.

The thing is, all that thought, planning, and filming, was done over two days on the fly. I painted myself creating the artwork one day. The next day I filmed myself speaking to camera and shooting all the b-roll of me finding my old art and showing it to the camera. You can tell this by the fact I'm wearing different clothes whilst I'm painting to what I'm wearing for everything else.

There was no script or notes. The things I talked about were just what I came up with when I sat in front of the camera. Which is why you get everything from referencing a previous video to talking about background noise (doing that Peter McKinnon thing of including random moments as part of the video content).

 After this video I fell into a template formula that enabled me to create and edit art videos really quickly. Eventually that burned me out, though it would take a couple more years to realise I no longer wanted to keep doing the same thing over and over.

Clearly I can make relatively compelling videos, probably much better now that my equipment, skills, and knowledge have all improved.

Somehow I need to get excited about that stuff again if my channel is ever going to grow. I need to be able to engage with, and present my content in a more interesting way in order to stand out. I need to make the process of making videos fun for myself again. Probably the only way is to just start and keep going until making videos becomes a habit.

To finish this post I'm going to post a very recent video by Peter that I feel makes a great bookend to the first one I posted above. In it he gives a very straight forward talk to camera about why your channel, no matter how small, matters. Whilst you watch it, take note of all the thought that went into producing this video. No one just randomly finds themselves on a train track vlogging!


Comments

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

TV Series Review: Star Wars: Andor - Season 2 (2025, Disney+) *No Spoilers*

D isney+'s Star Wars: Andor  the first season is widely regarded as some of the best Star Wars since the original trilogy, and I don't disagree in my  Andor Season 1  review. Despite that, it does have its problems, mainly a lot of space between action pieces. That's not to say nothing is happening in those spaces, but I do remember being frustrated how long season one took to get to a promised heist scene, going from conversation to conversation over several episodes. However, when Andor does have action, it usually delivers, with action that serves the story rather than action because 'it's time for some action now'. Unfortunately that gave Andor the reputation for being Star Wars 'for grown ups'. People who understand how tension and intrigue can come just as much from character interaction, who is talking to who, and what they're saying. That lead to low viewership and the show's proposed number of seasons being reduced to just two (I believe...

Resident Dragon: Checking In with My Daily Gag Cartoon/Comic About a Fire Dragon Living in the Suburbs

A t the beginning of the year I introduced you to my latest cartoon/comic series, Resident Dragon (because a dragon's got to live somewhere).  A daily - well, week-day-ly - gag cartoon about Red the Fire Dragon, living in a shared house in the suburbs, with his human friend, TET and his two pets, Grrr Dog and Cool Froyd the cat. Back then I had about 100 cartoons sketched out, with eleven completely digitally inked and coloured.  As of writing this, I haven't yet skipped a day of my schedule, and am seven toons short of an even 200 sketched out, with 31 fully inked and coloured. Actually, it's 33 but I only publish one full colour toon each week, so I have two in the wings. I'm not planning on doing daily toons forever. My goal is to hit 366 so I have enough to fill a daily desk calendar, should I decide to sell one. Currently you can buy individual prints of my finished toons in my Resident Dragon Store . When I have enough finished toons I will be compiling them into...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

Movie Review: Thunderbolts* (2025) *No Spoilers*

G oing into  Thunderbolts*  I was a tiny bit concerned that not seeing the previous Marvel Movie, Captain America: Brave New World , might be a problem. Fortunately, if you've seen the trailer to that film, you mostly have all you need to understand the brief references to it here. The bigger issue you may bump up against is not really knowing who any of this team is, if you haven't been watching every Marvel movie or TV series. The movie is counting on you at least knowing who Yolena (Florence Pugh), Bucky (Sebastian Stan), and Red Guardian (David Harbour) is to draw you into seeing the film. It is kind of a better experience if you know who John Walker - Captain America Lite (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr - Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Antonia Dreykov - Task Master (Olga Kurylenko) are but there is enough backstory given, to at least place them in context of the wider MCU as misfits. Having said that, the story really lends itself to filling in the backstory on almost all...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Movie Review: Captain America: Brave New World (2025) *No Spoilers*

I  decided not see Captain America: Brave New World in a cinema because everything I heard about the film pointed to a disjointed mess, from testing poorly, to whole characters being added in during reshoots. The trailers looked okay but, since they featured Red Hulk, quite a bit, it felt like there wasn't much left as a drawcard for seeing the film in a cinema. Having now seen the film on Disney+ I feel it was a good decision. While the big budget effects no doubt would've looked better on a big screen, the story wasn't particularly complex or intriguing enough to make the film stand out. If anything, it's a straight forward action movie with a hero who is just kind of... there. The story revolves around a plot to kill the newly elected US President, former General Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford). Captain America (Anthony Mackie) must find who is the real mastermind in order to clear his friend and the original Super Solider, Isaiah Bradley's (Carl Lumbly), name. I...

I'm Joining the Illuminati Brotherhood By Personal Invitation of Hiltom Rothschild... Wait, What?

How special am I to have finally come of age (53 years young) and am now eligible to participate in building the world alongside other members of the Illuminati Brotherhood... Yes I've received the call by way of an email, which I'm sure is real because I had to translate it from the Dutch language and it was personally written by Hiltom Rothschild, one of the non-existent members of the Rothschild family (or perhaps deep undercover because Google has never heard of them?). A Transcript of the email below: To: etourist From: Illuminati Brotherhood  Subject: Illuminati Broederschap (Illuminati Brotherhood) I am Hiltom Rothschild, a member of the Rothschild family, one of the 13 families of the Illuminati brotherhood. I'm here to let you know that you've come of age and are eligible to participate in building the 🌎 world. It is a calling and a privilege to honor him with pride and gratitude as not everyone will ever be chosen by the LIGHT, many are called but few are ch...