The And She Looked Up Podcast
Every other week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love. Your host, Melissa Hartfiel, left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, community co-founder and has owned and operated a multi-six figure a year creative content business. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
The And She Looked Up Podcast
0924 Subscriber Soundbite: Why I Think Long Form Video Might be Important
Sorry for the late episode but here I am! I've been thinking a lot about long-form video (think YouTube) the last six months or so. Mostly why I think it could be important for creatives in this age of AI, IP theft and the need to double down on showing the human behind the work. I know... I just heard you all groan collectively. But take a listen, and hear me out!
NOTE: I accidentally said that Instagram was shutting down shops part way through the episode. I meant Etsy (I hadn't had my caffeine yet when I recorded!).
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And She Looked Up Creative Hour Podcast
Each week The And She Looked Up Podcast sits down with inspiring Canadian women who create for a living. We talk about their creative journeys and their best business tips, as well as the creative and business mindset issues all creative entrepreneurs struggle with. This podcast is for Canadian artists, makers and creators who want to find a way to make a living doing what they love.
Your host, Melissa Hartfiel (@finelimedesigns), left a 20 year career in corporate retail and has been happily self-employed as a working creative since 2010. She's a graphic designer, writer and illustrator as well as the co-founder of a multi-six figure a year business in the digital content space. She resides just outside of Vancouver, BC.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the September Premium Subscribers episode, which is actually in October. So that brings me to the first thing, which is apologies for not getting this episode out sooner. September just completely slipped away from me and I've been in this state of thinking. It's September 28th since Saturday and it is October 3rd today. So so I'm I'm. I think I was just hopefully wait, hoping that time would stand still for a few days so I could catch up, but alas, that has not happened, and so I am behind. Many apologies to you all. It does mean that you get two episodes this month instead of one, so that, I guess, is a. It's not really a bonus, you're just getting what you paid for, but maybe something to look forward to. I don't know. Either way, I am sorry. The other thing I of course want to say is thank you all so much for your ongoing support. It really does mean a lot to me, and it is what helps keep this podcast going.
Speaker 1:One of the things that has had me late with this episode is that I have been recording a ton of guest episodes over the last. Well, yesterday recorded a whole bunch, have a bunch more booked for next Thursday. It's a lot of talking to do in one day, but the lovely thing about it is that there will be so many episodes in the bank. Now the hard part is editing them, which takes a lot longer than the actual interview, but it feels very satisfying to have a few under my belt and to have a few more on the way, so that's a good thing. Today, what I wanted to talk to you about is something that I've been noodling in my brain for several months now and I decided to take the plunge about two weeks ago, and that is long form video. And that is long form video. I've been thinking about this for quite a while and my thoughts really started to turn when I started doing video episodes of the podcast Um, and it made me realize that it wasn't, as I don't want to say, as hard as I thought it would be, because it is hard and it is time consuming. But I think maybe the word I as hard as I thought it would be, because it is hard and it is time consuming, but I think maybe the word I'm looking for is that it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be.
Speaker 1:I have done long form videos. I've done a couple of studio vlogs for my Fine Lime Designs YouTube channel and then it just got neglected. I really enjoyed doing them, but it was a lot of work. It was a lot of footage that needed to be edited together, it was a lot of time it was remembering to turn a camera on when I was doing anything that I thought would work for a studio vlog. And it was just a lot of work and it made it very hard for me to get into a state of creative flow which I think we can all appreciate.
Speaker 1:But about a month ago I posted a little video on my Instagram about how I had purchased a knockoff Apple Pencil to fill the void while I was waiting for my new Apple Pencil to arrive. I had a bit of a mishap with it, so I had to order a new one and to get me through I ordered a $25 one off of Amazon and several people asked me if I would do a review and talk about the differences between the two pencils, because there is an enormous price difference and I tried to film a couple for Instagram and I just couldn't get the information into the time frame that I was allowed to use on Instagram or TikTok. So I thought, you know, maybe I could just record a long form video and put it on my YouTube channel. I have a YouTube channel, so why don't I just do that? I can record it the same way that I record the podcast episodes, just as a zoom recording a zoom meeting except I'm the only one in the meeting and that's exactly how I record the solo podcast episodes for uh, for the show. So I did it and I put it together and then I just put a link to it in my Instagram stories for anyone who was interested, and it got a handful of views and a couple of comments and I thought you know that wasn't hard. I can do these videos where I sit in front of the camera and just talk to the camera. It's easy to edit. It doesn't take a lot of my time. I don't have to create all this separate footage and stitch it together. I could record some B-roll and insert it over top of my voice at strategic points if I wanted to, but I don't have to do it that way, and so that was kind of ticking around in the back of my head.
Speaker 1:But what really got me thinking about it is so many of the conversations around AI lately, but also intellectual property theft. Instagram lately has been very harsh and has been shutting down a lot of shops after doing reverse image searches which I'm assuming they're using AI to do on the internet and finding a lot of their shop owners images on sites like Timu and Shine and platforms like that, aliexpress and this is part of Etsy's plan to remove a lot of the dropship items on their platform because customers have started to complain that it's a lot of cheap junk that isn't handmade. So kudos for them to try and address this. But at the same time, what they've done is they've put genuine Etsy shop holders in a position where they have to prove that the item is theirs and that the photos are theirs. It's sort of like we take it down and the thing that we have created and that we're selling on Etsy or on our own platforms or anywhere really is actually ours. That we made it, that we designed it, that we illustrated it, that we painted it, that we crocheted it. Whatever the case may be and I start to think, you know, this is where long form video could really be helpful. I think the same for AI.
Speaker 1:I think more and more people are assuming that, particularly in the land of illustration where I am, and graphic design that is AI generated and it's not. It's my work, it's my illustration. How can I show people this? And it was a conversation we had a few of the vendors and I had at a pop-up market I did on the weekend, where we were talking about how many people were coming through our booths. At the most recent markets we've done and we're genuinely shocked that we were the artists behind the work. A lot of them thought we had bought our designs and slapped them on cards or stickers or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:And so it's become this whole conversation of how do we show the world that we're the artist, and I think we've talked before on here about how we need to show that we're human, to show to lean into our humanity as a creator, which I think is extremely important, and I think that long form video is a way that we can do that. So I think it serves a couple of purposes. One, it helps us lean into our creativity. Two, it can help with the provenance of our work in showing us go through the creative process to create something, keeping in mind you don't need to publish your video until after your item is out in the world. It doesn't have to be done in the moment, but I think it also offers us another opportunity to build a community around our work. One of the things I've always really liked about YouTube, as a consumer of YouTube content, is how so many artists and creatives have built very large communities of very invested fans in their work, and so I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and yesterday I published a second video to my YouTube channel where I talked about some of the hits and misses from the pop-up.
Speaker 1:I did recently, and I was a little concerned about posting it because the sound was not good. I forgot to plug my mic in Very rookie mistake, and I left a note in my mastermind group asking them do you think I should still post this? And as I talked myself through it in the posting, I realized you know what. I should just post it. I'll. I talked myself through it in the posting, I realized you know what. I should just post it. I'll just post it. See what happens. I'll put a disclaimer on it saying that the sound isn't great. And I posted it and forgot about it until one of the ladies in my mastermind group commented and said I think you should post it and I said, oh, I already did. And then I went and checked on it and it already had views and it also I had gained two new subscribers since that video had gone up. I have a very, very tiny YouTube channel. It's had like 19 subscribers. Now I have 21.
Speaker 1:But I do think it's something that I'm going to lean into a little bit more. I've found a way that I can do this that works for me right now, with the time that I have. I am much more comfortable with editing video because of the podcast, and I think eventually I will start to experiment with the types and formats of video that I can do. But yeah, I think this is going to be part of my strategy to show myself as the artist, to also build a community around me and to use it as a form of proof that I am the IP holder for the work that I show under my name. So I think this is something really worth thinking about if you are a maker or an artist or creative.
Speaker 1:I don't know that long form video would work so well for a writer, but I do want to just mention long form video would work so well for a writer, but I do want to just mention if you are a writer, check out a guest we had last season, demi Winters. She has a fantastic TikTok account where she does show the behind the scenes of her writing without really giving anything away, but you learn very quickly that she is the author. She is the imagination behind the books that she's writing and she does the imagination behind the books that she's writing and she does a really great job of showing that on TikTok while building a community around her. I think it would be harder to do long form, but for writing, I think somewhere like TikTok would be great. The other thing with long form like YouTube, is that I was thinking about this. I can repurpose this for blog posts on my website. I could also repurpose it for short form content for YouTube and Instagram, because I think there's a place for short form content as well. I just think it has a longer shelf life on YouTube and I think there's more opportunities to search for it and be found through search on YouTube. So that's one of the reasons why I'm going to start experimenting over there.
Speaker 1:If this is something you think you might like to do, first of all, I would go and I would start looking for other creatives in your medium who are using YouTube. So if you're a crocheter, look for other crochet artists. If you are an illustrator or a painter, look for other illustrators or painters and watch a whole bunch of different videos, see what you connect with and pay really close attention to how the videos are shot. Do you see the artist's face in the video? Because in a lot of them you don't. In the previous studio vlogs that I did, I never showed my face. In the current videos I've made, I do show my face, but there are ways you can do this without actually showing your face if that makes you uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:We are makers and artists. We use our hands, so we can do videos that focus on what our hands are doing in the creation process. Do they show snippets of behind the scenes in in their work world, in their studio? Do they show what they do at markets? Pay really close attention to where the camera is, where they are and figuring out is there somebody behind the camera? Is the camera sitting on a table or a shelf or something? Is it somehow showing above, filming from above? Think about that and think about the different ways that you could film yourself Because, as I said, you don't have to show up on camera, you just have to show up.
Speaker 1:I think that's the key camera, you just have to show up. I think that's the key. Yeah, so that is something that I'm going to be experimenting with over the next few months. I have some clips from the build up to the launch of my box Christmas cards showing the process that I went through to create those, because a lot of people don't realize that my cards are handmade. I do the whole process in my studio, so I'm going to be doing that next. I think, also, if I'd been a little more organized, it would have been a great marketing tool for the actual launch of the cards, but I think I can probably still get some sales from them doing it this way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's what I'm going to be playing with, and I think it's something really worth thinking about how you can use video to, as I said, um, combat AI, uh, copyright infringement, show the provenance of your work and build that all-important community that is full of potential customers and fans of your work. So that's it for September, even though it's October. I will be back before the end of the month with another episode for October and, as always, thank you all so much for your ongoing financial support for the show. It really does mean a lot. That's it for now.
