How the craft actually works
Editing, audio, thumbnails, retention and channel strategy, taught rather than teased.
The library, in one index
Planning
A formula beats a calendar
A calendar tells you when you are late, not what to make; the unit worth planning is a repeatable form.
intermediate
A month of social without a month of ideas
The people who look like they do are running three or four formats on rotation, a much smaller job.
intermediate
A strategy that has never rejected anything
The one test for a strategy is what it has ever stopped you doing; if the answer is nothing, you own a decorative object.
intermediate
Deciding who your content is not for
The useful half of audience work is the exclusion, and it is the half nobody writes down. Name who your videos are deliberately not for and five decisions downstream stop being arguments.
basic
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How long should your video be
Length is what is left after everything that repeats itself has gone.
basic
Researching your niche without a budget
The gap you are looking for is usually not a subject nobody covers, but one that is covered badly.
basic
Should you be on every platform?
Start with two, where the people who buy from you already are, and add a third only when the first two produce something you can point at.
basic
What to buy first
Everything free comes before everything paid, and the camera sits a long way further down than you want.
basic
You are about to buy the wrong thing first
Before we edited anything, we told him what not to buy yet.
basic
Your course videos are being edited like your YouTube videos
The same lesson, edited for a paywall, is a different edit, because it has a different job.
advanced
Filming
A b-roll list you can use again
The reason your cuts jump is a missing second and a half of picture, free to film on the day.
intermediate
Background and atmosphere lights
A light that never touches your face can do more for a shot than a brighter one that does.
intermediate
Cut-out images for marketplaces
Marketplaces are fussy about cut-out images, and a lot of rejections come down to the same few fixable things, once you have checked that marketplace's own current rules.
intermediate
Directing a shoot you are not at
The problem is that advice given on a call lives inside one person, and people leave.
advanced
Filming next to a window
Daylight is free, flattering and completely unsupervised. The problem is that it will not be the same light in forty minutes.
basic
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Filming so you can repurpose later
Repurposing is settled on the shoot day, long before an edit begins.
intermediate
Film three hooks
Write three openings and film all of them while the camera is still where you left it.
basic
Giving every camera angle a job
An angle is not a camera position, it is an answer to a question the viewer asks.
advanced
How many cameras do you need?
One camera, well placed, beats three with nothing to do.
basic
Lifestyle photos and product photos
One photograph answers what is it, the other who is this for; a shop needs both to be wanted from and bought from.
intermediate
One filming day, a month of posts
The saving is in setting up once for eight pieces, which means every decision has to be made before the day it is filmed.
intermediate
Photographing every product the same way
A shop looks like a shop when every item was photographed the same way.
intermediate
Resuming a shoot after a break
Continuity is what decides whether the two halves of your video sit next to each other.
intermediate
Shooting log, and when it helps
If nobody is grading your footage, Log is a downgrade you have paid for in care.
advanced
Studio or location
The decision is which your video is about: the control a studio sells, or the context a real location does.
basic
Ten mistakes people make filming a lesson they teach
Ten failures specific to filming a skill you teach, each with the cost attached.
advanced
Ten mistakes people make filming a recipe
Ten failures specific to cooking on camera, each with the cost attached.
basic
Ten mistakes people make filming their own product
Ten faults specific to filming a thing you sell, each with the bill attached.
intermediate
Ten mistakes people make filming themselves talking to camera
Ten faults in one job: a person, a desk and a camera.
basic
Ten mistakes people make filming work in a workshop
Ten faults in one room: noise, dust, a workpiece that changes shape daily, and a job that runs across a fortnight.
basic
Three-point lighting for people who film themselves
One of the three lighting jobs can be done by a white wall, and one by moving your chair.
basic
What happens on a studio day
A shoot day is slower and more repetitive than anybody expects, and almost none of the waiting is about you.
basic
What to say out loud while you film
The cheapest editing improvement available costs one sentence, said out loud, while the camera is already running.
intermediate
Where to put your light when you only have one
One lamp, placed well, beats three placed badly.
basic
Why wardrobe decides whether a series looks like one
Clothing does two jobs: whether you can finish a video later, and whether twelve uploads read as one series.
intermediate
Your viewers are hunting for your hands
The frame follows the fingers, so nobody has to look for them.
advanced
Sound
Can your audio be saved?
Three buckets: repairable at reasonable cost, repairable at a cost to the recording, and gone. Knowing which one you are in is worth more than any plugin.
basic
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Do you need more than one microphone?
Extra microphones do not sound better on the day; they keep decisions open afterwards, a different purchase entirely.
intermediate
How far should a microphone be from your mouth?
There is no correct number, and any page that hands you one has decided something about your voice and your room without hearing either.
basic
How loud should music be under a voice?
There is no correct number, but the method is quick, free, and survives changing the track.
intermediate
Hum, fans and the fridge
Noise that moves is where recordings are lost, and the difference is audible in ten seconds of silence.
intermediate
Lavalier microphone mistakes
A clip microphone fails in a few specific ways, all preventable and all decided in the thirty seconds before you press record.
intermediate
Mixing a lesson so people can follow it
Satisfy either competing goal fully and you have failed the other, so the work is deciding which one is the lesson.
advanced
Noise removal, and when to stop
The setting that sounds cleanest is usually the one that took the person out.
intermediate
Recording an instrument and a voice together
Every microphone hears everything in the room; that is bleed, and it is why two tracks fight each other until the geometry is right.
advanced
Should you cut out every breath
On long-form keep the breaths; on a short vertical video, cut them tight.
advanced
Sound effects that hold attention
An effect earns its place by holding attention or replacing a sound the microphone missed.
intermediate
The room was wrong, and the session could not be repeated
We decided how much of the room to keep.
intermediate
Two microphones, one hollow sound
When a thin, hollow sound appears the moment you add a second microphone, it has one clean cause, and the fix costs nothing.
advanced
What mastering does that turning it up does not
Mastering is a decision about where the recording is going, which is why one video can need more than one version.
intermediate
Where your music licence lives
Everything that happens next depends on whether you can find one document.
basic
Why your audio is quiet on YouTube
The platform measures your file and turns a loud one down towards a target of its own. Arrive quiet and you stay quiet.
intermediate
Why your video sounds echoey
Echo is usually a distance problem first, not a fault in your microphone, and distance costs nothing.
basic
Why your video sounds like a room
The echo is a distance problem before it is a software problem.
intermediate
Editing
Cropping to vertical without losing the subject
Which third of the width survives is a decision, and the automatic crop that makes it for you does not know which part of the frame is the lesson.
intermediate
Matching colour across cameras
Three cameras in one room give you three rooms unless you decide which one is the reference and bring the others to it.
advanced
The mistakes post-production cannot fix
Six faults an edit cannot recover, each with the reason it is gone and the cost of preventing it, which is usually nothing. The honest list is shorter than the ones you have read, and the shortness is the useful part.
basic
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What colour grading actually does
A grade is several operations running at once, and most of them are invisible on purpose.
basic
Why a short cut from a long video fails
A short is a different form, not a smaller portion of the same one.
intermediate
Why your edit feels slow
A fast cut can feel like wading and a slow one urgent, and the difference is whether anything is changing.
basic
Why your multi-camera edit looks off
Two neighbouring shots at the same distance read as a mistake rather than a decision.
advanced
Zooming in without going soft
A punch-in is a crop, and a crop spends resolution you cannot earn back.
intermediate
Packaging
A description is not a menu
One link, chosen because it matches what the video promised, usually out-pulls a description full of them; a strong default worth testing on your own channel.
basic
Burned-in captions or platform captions
Burned-in captions cannot be switched off, and the text in them is a picture rather than a caption track a platform can correct, translate or search; the format decides which you use.
intermediate
Carousels people actually swipe
People swipe because a card left something unfinished, and most carousels finish every card.
basic
Feed and Story are two assets
Two versions cost one extra pass and hand whoever runs the account a second lever.
intermediate
How long is a hook?
The window differs by platform, and on the fast ones it has closed before your logo has finished landing.
basic
On-screen text that answers a question
Text on screen has one job: to leave nobody holding a question.
basic
Playlists, chapters and pinned comments
Treat your channel as a curriculum rather than a feed, and three free tools stop being housekeeping.
basic
Subtitles that do not look cheap
Test your captions at three lengths and most of the amateur look disappears.
basic
Three thumbnails
Three genuinely different concepts take about twenty extra minutes, and the third is often the one you would never have made otherwise.
basic
Thumbnails are chosen at fingernail size
You designed it on a monitor at the size of a poster. It is being judged on a phone at the size of a fingernail, in a row with eleven others.
basic
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Unboxing videos that are not an afterthought
The unboxing is the piece a customer watches most carefully, because it is the only one showing what actually arrives.
intermediate
Where the eye goes first
If a cut lands while somebody is still reading, the speed has cost you what you were buying.
basic
Where to put the call to action
Your own retention graph already knows where they were still watching.
basic
Growth
An A/B test that teaches you something
The useful version of a test is one deliberate change at a time, mostly to the packaging rather than the film.
intermediate
A social report that changes what you film
The row that matters says what we are doing differently next month, the only row anybody ever acts on.
intermediate
Creative testing and audience testing
Settle one experiment and change the other, and the account starts answering questions.
advanced
Five stages of awareness in one ad account
Sorting the ads you already have is an hour's work, and it usually finds the same gap.
advanced
How many ad variants do you need?
The useful question is not how many variants, it is what changes between them.
advanced
How to audit your own channel
The step almost everybody skips is explaining the videos that already worked.
intermediate
Reading one video to brief the next
A retention graph is a transcript of your edit; a few recurring shapes in it each point to a different question about the video you have not filmed yet.
intermediate
Same day, same hour
Your own analytics know more than any chart, and if you have no history yet, the answer is not a time.
basic
The report that stops two rows early
The number is the easy part; the reading and the action are the report.
intermediate
What a channel audit should contain
An audit is a scored document with an order of work at the end, and half of what it scores is what you already do well.
intermediate
What a media buyer needs from your creative
When the person running your ads asks for more files, they are asking for one of the few levers they control: options that can be compared.
advanced
Which numbers actually mean something
The view count is the number that tells you least about what to change, and the one everybody watches.
intermediate
Why LinkedIn ignores your TikTok
Four things have to change when a piece moves platform, and the footage is usually not one.
intermediate
Why nothing is moving on your video
Nothing has moved for a week and nobody has said why. Half of that is somebody else's to fix, and the half nobody writes about is invisible from where you are sitting.
basic
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Why your ad looks good and sells nothing
A beautiful ad and a working ad are different objects, made to different standards.
advanced
Writing ad angles from pain points
An angle is a different reason to care, aimed at a different person, and your customers have already written most of them for you.
advanced
Your comments are writing your next video
An afternoon with a spreadsheet turns months of comments into the next six videos.
intermediate
Working together
Getting your project files back
What you are buying is something a different person can pick up in a year.
basic
How many revisions is normal?
How many rounds a video takes is settled before the first one, by the brief and by whether a note can be found on its frame.
basic
How to brief a video editor
Six things, ten minutes, written once before anybody opens the footage.
basic
Is a free audit just a sales call?
Often, yes. The version worth an hour of your time is the one that occasionally ends by telling you not to hire anybody.
basic
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Per video, monthly or retainer
Compared on what each model does to the behaviour of the people involved, the choice is much easier.
basic
Systems you keep when the editor leaves
When a supplier leaves, everything they knew leaves with them, unless it was written somewhere that was not their inbox.
basic
What changes when an agency holds your product
An agency that has only seen your product in photographs makes the version you could already picture; the difference is whether anybody opened the box.
intermediate
What result are you expecting?
One answer, chosen before filming, and the same footage becomes five different videos.
basic
Who answers when someone is angry
The real risk is a confident wrong reply, written in ninety seconds by whoever happened to be holding the phone, and it becomes a screenshot before lunch.
basic
Who decides what
Draw the line between your decisions and theirs before the first shoot, in writing, and the approvals stop arriving.
basic
Reading is not the hard part.
When you want the library applied to your channel, that is the audit.
Start a free auditStart with a free audit
Tell us where your content is now. We will come back with what we would change and what result to expect.
A person reads the channel and writes the audit by hand: a considered read typically takes three working days. That is the usual shape, not a promised turnaround. We use these details only to reply to you: no lists, no lurking.
What you will get
A fit snapshot: where your channel stands, and whether we are a match.
Two to three opportunities: specific, prioritised, yours to keep.
A recommended next step, even if that step is not us.
The audit is free and commits you to nothing: nobody follows up with a call you did not ask for.
The guides, in one list:
Your first proper video, start to finish · 8 lessonsOne filming day, a month of content · 8 lessonsFilming lessons with instruments · 8 lessonsProduct on camera · 6 lessonsSound, from room to master · 10 lessonsThumbnails, hooks and the first three seconds · 7 lessonsReading the numbers without folklore · 8 lessonsAds that earn their budget · 6 lessonsWorking with BUBI: how a partnership runs · 9 lessons