Monday, September 2, 2019

The Future of VHyesterdayS

Hi everyone,

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I had some issues a while back with Lionsgate and my Terminator 2 video for VHyesterdayS. It was flagged and removed from public viewing, because they claimed it contained too much footage from the film.

I tried to fight it and countered their strike, citing that the footage in the video was of a trailer, which is widely available on YouTube itself, and contains no audio, but my motion was denied and the video won't be back.

I'll be honest, I'm not heartbroken about it.

I got really into YouTube when it first launched even though I didn't partake in making videos right away. I started by posting a "vlog" sporadically, but in 2008 I decided to give it a real whirl and started posting a lot of videos and it was a ton of fun.

The thing is, I never put any production value in whatsoever. It was me and a webcam. I'd slap a title card on it and post the thing. These days, you have to have production values up the yin yang to be relevant and I'm not really enjoying it.

My aim with the VHyesterdayS video series was to quickly highlight some of the tapes in my collection in five minutes or less, but to produce those five minutes was taking me way too long. I would watch the movie, take a ton of notes, and then try to jam all those thoughts into the video, which resulted in me jumbling everything up more times than not. I also "tried" to give it a-go and make the videos look at least a little bit more presentable, by lighting myself and running some content on my many monitors in the background, which is why we're now here.

I think I'm done with the videos.

With my current lifestyle - #IveGot3Kids - its nearly impossible to get the time to even watch a movie let alone write out my notes and record the video. The whole thing was taking up too much time and I think the output was sub-par.

I've heavily gotten into writing for Retro-Def again and now Pixel Elixir, as well, and it just makes sense for me to convert VHyesterdayS into a written article. I squirrel away time during my day to sneak off and write - which I love - and since that's where the passion lies, that's where the content goes!

So, if you're new to Retro-Def, you've stumbled upon VHyesterdayS, and you're wondering why it started out as a video series and morphed into a written one, you've got the whole story. Capeesh?

Now with that out of the way, I've got another edition of VHyesterdayS on deck and it should be out later this week. I've changed things a bit - I'll no longer just talk about the tape, but give a little background into the film, too. You know, flesh things out a bit. I'll still try and post any trailers or cool ephemera that might be on the tape to my VHyesterdayS YouTube channel, which hopefully won't get flagged, but we'll see!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading the musings of a 30-something as he taps away at his keyboard about old dusty video tapes. If that's your thing, then boy have you hit the jackpot!

Cheers,
R