Creating content is actual, hard work

Rarely do I frame myself this way, but I am a "creator." I make content. Professionally my creations mostly are for the traditional medium of television, but I also make a LOT of content that goes directly to the internet. If you see a TV camera man around town with a heavy camera on their shoulder, following a reporter and a subject you immediately recognize that the hard work that person is enduring. Shoulder mounted cameras look impressive and heavy. If you turn and look at the reporter that's where opinions vary. Are they actually "working?"

Prepare yourselves for a long one.

Of course they are, but over time I've learned if people don't understand a role or a job they get frustrated, possibly angry, and denigrate a person they think has it easy.

The above video was produced by Tom Buck, probably one of my personal top three favorite YouTubers. Every week Tom releases a video about audio and video production equipment, how they work, and how they can could can be used in your production setup (mostly YouTube production workflows). Since Fall 2020 I've watched every video Tom has released. There are three guarantees with Tom's videos; they will be exceptionally researched, they will be smartly produced, and... they will be long, BUT in like the best possible way (fourth, be prepared for puns).

I bring up Mr. Buck for two reasons; first, I bought the slider detailed in the video above directly off of Tom's presentation. I am not a YouTuber who works in a clean, air conditioned studio space all day, and I have always been quite dubious of using sliders, but Tom presented this beautiful iFootage slider and it hits all the right notes. I won't review it, that is Toms role. The second reason I am sharing Tom with you is this video is a perfect representation of what people don't understand about video production.

If you click on this video you'll notice right away it (1) looks like a million bucks, (2) sounds exceptional, (3) has hundreds of edits, (4) incorporates dozens of setups and overlays, and (5) it is longer than a half-hour TV show when you take into account time lost to commercial breaks. Tom worked on this video a LOT. We're talking hours of planning, production, editing, and posting. This is a legit full time job.

Last week, I spent a week running around the Battleship Iowa museum ship in San Pedro, California. When the documentary airs next spring you'll see an hourlong program edited from more than a dozen interviews, 1,000s of historical images, and hundreds of coverage shots like the above video of my camera sliding (the very slider Tom introduced to my world, gotta love synergy) around the lower decks of the USS Iowa battleship. If you passively consume that hour documentary, i.e. watching on a couch with few distractions, you will not notice all the work that goes into the production. For the above shot alone it required travelling halfway across the country, assembling camera equipment, boarding the battleship, climbing down three decks into the ship, setting up the slider, and recording. If you, yourself are a content creator, or are an informed consumer of media you might clue into all that, but the information isn't handed to the audience.

This production literacy issue is experienced across all mediums of professional content. Print journalists put in hours of research and agonize over what to leave in a story versus cut out. Podcasters pre-plan their program, worry about sound quality, duration and focus of a program, and how to market their work. TV and film production alone can get so complicated and costly you'd be astounded. YouTubers are no different, there are varying levels of engagement and interest from an audience, but if someone is taking the time to research, produce, edit, and publish YouTube content they are working, hard. That is a lot of time and focus. You don't do that if you aren't committed and passionate.

On the most recent episode of Tom Buck's podcast "The Enthusiasm Project," Tom shares how the modern blight of internet anger has taken a toll on him. He goes into detail about his recent experiences with nasty commenters and internet trolls. In Tom's niche of YouTube there is a large -and overly reactive- subset of consumers who see all reviews and walkthroughs as disingenuous advertisements for the production or manufacturer. There is no way to reach or educate these people, it is an affliction they are stuck with and the content creator must endure. I empathize with producers like Tom who enter this world earnestly and have trouble compartmentalizing the misguided rage and quick strike takedown commenting that comes with it. The internet has created a wonderfully assessable podium to amplify knowledge and expertise, but it also affords the same platform for the darkhearted, misinformed, and uneducated.

From my experience there are two issues at work here; public face and envy.

As any meteorologist can tell you, especially the women; as soon as you put your face on screen, in-front of an audience there will passionate reactions on both ends of the emotional spectrum. Your job and onscreen, public facing personality will be a part of your life experience from sun up to sun down. A great deal of the negativity you'll encounter is from the bitter and envious. This is the "she's not so great" or "I could do that crowd." These are the people who see photos at a public showing and mock the work as something that is easy. 

There is no reasoning with these people, the only possible solution is to rise above. You know the work and ethic you've put into your product. If someone else could do it, they are doing it and respect you for doing it too. You put in the time and found what works for you. There is clear value in what you are doing, otherwise your audience would not exist. The negative crowd doesn't win from you reacting because they don't actually care. 

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Having worked in production of nearly every type of media I can personally attest there is no easy content producing job. I even dip my toe into the tech & gear review arena occasionally but it's never lit my world on fire. Producing is hard and any one who has done it will tell you if your heart isn't it you will drop out quickly. The problem is the plague of negativity could push talented producers to quit creator, maybe before they even find their audience, but potentially even when they find success. So while you can't straighten out the fools of the world, we can support the creators we enjoy and at the very least let them know you respect the work they are doing and the time they are investing. Because we do runoff the ethical, passionate, and smart creators of the world, then all we'll have left is the compromised and ill-intended.