 Are there things, Gordon Lang, that other YouTubers do that you don't think that you would or you tend not to do? Unboxing. First of all, as a word. I hate that word. Unboxing. How can you... That's like, now tell you what, this goes back to that song Unbreak My Heart, which at the time I thought it's not even a word. How do you mean Unbreak My Heart? How about, make me feel better, cheer me up please. Unbreak My Heart. Unbox my camera. Got a reassuring one, two, one, two. That's probably how every episode will start. Someone's chest shot and I was going, hello, testing. I've got this idea for this series called Great British YouTubers. The best I've got for a logo at the moment is kind of a Frankenstein bolting together of the YouTube logo and the Union Jack. So I both infringed copyright and enraged a nation. Job done. But the first person that I wanted to talk to was you. Wasn't available so you came to me. Never. I feel that we have explained each other on another video that I made. It's one of my favorite videos on my channel. I'll run a clip now and there's a link in the description to it. But before we get into the chat, can I just ask you, what is your all time favorite video that you've made on your channel, Gordon Lang? My all time favorite, and this is the problem that all creators have, is that everyone wants you to be pigeonholed. And we'll talk about this, I'm sure later on, but in the same way that Jamie Oliver probably wouldn't be that successful if he suddenly did a video reviewing a car or doing a gardening or something like that. People know you for one thing and if you deviate from that, woe be tied. Woe be tied. The algorithm will punish you and your video will underperform horrifically and you'll be put off. You will be beaten into submission to continue doing what you were put on this earth to do, which is what you initially defined yourself as, which for me was a camera reviewer. And it's amazing how specific people can get because even though we're talking about hybrid cameras now, if I go off and review a microphone, nope, too far off. So I'm going to choose as one of my favorite videos, my first attempt to actually doing a vlog, which was eight years ago, no, nine years ago, 2011-2012 timeframe. I went on holiday from where I lived at the time in New Zealand for three weeks, a three week family holiday that ended up taking a year and a half. And we were location independent for a year and a half, which is just a fancy way of saying you're homeless and you're spending the money that you would have spent on rent or a mortgage on hotels. And surprisingly, it's actually similar when you're not paying utility bills, insurance on the car that you don't have, all of these things really add up and you could spend that in a different way. And I tried to make a series of vlogs about it that, of course, I thought were revolutionary and interesting because I was doing something quite different. And people were saying, hey, in fact, I think you Neil, I think you actually said to me, you should make a video about that. So I started making videos about them. They're really rough because I was talking about the cameras I was using on this trip, but I only had one main camera and I wanted to show that camera. So if I want to show my proper camera on camera, what am I filming with? And I scrabbled around and my second best camera was an iPad, an iPad 2, generation 2, circa 2011. And if you've ever tried to film video with that, it crops so massively that you have to position it so far away that I was literally filming with an iPad balanced against walls in various cities around the world. About four meters away from me. Somebody tried to pick it up and walk off with it. With the iPad or the camera? Yeah, yeah, because I'm being a crazy guy on the street going, I heard everyone, the reason that I'm doing this and everyone's like, you know, whatever. And then they'll walk past them because of course you're drawing attention to yourself, so they're looking at what you're doing. And then they notice this iPad just sat meters away from anyone and they would, as anybody in their right mind would think, well, someone's obviously left it and doesn't want it anymore, even though it's got an exciting tally light on it. And of course it was so far away, the audio would have been rubbish, so I was using a Zoom portable sound recorder, which was quite close to me. The sound quality on these are quite good, but anyway, I thought these were quite fun videos and it was my attempt at vlogging, which eight years ago was, you know, not that common a thing, but of course no one watched them because it wasn't a pure camera review. So those were probably my favourite videos that I did. We'll put the link to those in the description. Thank you. And we will run some footage while you're speaking there. Oh, make sure you use the footage of me in Morocco with camels going by behind me. That's quite fun. Morocco? Yeah, because we visited Morocco and camped out in the Sahara Desert as you do, which I highly recommend doing. Oh, there you are. You're wearing a thing. Yeah, a thing. A thing. That's the technical term of the privileged white man. He's wearing a foreign thing, but it's OK because he's one of us. Oh, brilliant. Yeah, those were fun. One of the other favourite videos of mine, which is actually one of my most successful videos, which automatically makes it one of my favourites, was a tutorial that I filmed. Photography tutorial, of course. Try and do a tutorial on anything else. You're finished. And this was about long exposure photography. And a lot of people, when they go on YouTube or other social networks, they want the secrets. They want to know the top tips. How are you going to succeed at something? And it's actually pretty obvious what you need to do. It's just that very few of us do it. And I rarely do it, but I did it in this one, which is you do everything right. And that sounds glib, but here's what you do. You plan it. You plan very carefully what you want to say and where you want to say it. You don't skimp on things like locations. I've done tutorials that I thought were great, but it was just me sat on this sofa. I didn't really engage with people. This one, because if you do your tutorial on how to run, you don't do it from your sofa. You go out and you run. If you want to do a tutorial about cooking, again, you don't do it from your sofa. You do it from your kitchen. And when you set up that shot in your kitchen, you realise that your kitchen is a mess. And that you have to tidy up and frame it carefully. And if I'm doing a tutorial about long exposure landscape photography, I've got to be out there doing it. So even though it was awkward and difficult, I did it. And guess what? It came across really well. And I cut away to me on the sofa when I wanted to add additional details that I'd forgotten on the location. Of course, that made it more interesting switching between two locations. I also filmed it very carefully. I filmed it in the best quality that I could. I edited it in the best quality that I could. And then, perhaps more important than anything else, it has a decent thumbnail. And that is what more than anything else causes people to open and play a video on YouTube. It's decent thumbnails. And as someone who likes to think that their content is okay and that you're above these things, you're not. It doesn't work. You could produce the best video of all. And if it's got rubbish thumbnail and a terrible title, no one is ever going to play it. However, conversely, and this is what frustrates me about YouTube, the best thumbnail and best title will guarantee opening even if the content is rubbish. Completely. And of course, we call that clickbait, don't we? But it works. And a good thumbnail game is critical. And I haven't mastered it, but I was very lucky to have a picture that I took that worked really well with the text I wanted to use. And it's very easy to see in a very small scale because a lot of people are looking on mobile devices. So I looked out on the thumbnail and that really helped. But basically, it was a good video. That's the thing. It's a good video that I was proud of. And guess what? It did all right. That's so frustrating, isn't it? I suppose it's the story of art since the dawn of time. So that is your bohemian rhapsody. That is your November rain. And now you've got to make another one. It's crushing. Well, the algorithm does some naughty things as well. Well, we don't know what the algorithm does. We can be paranoid about it and suspicious and we can guess at the things that it does. But one of the things I think it does do is encourage you from time to time, especially new creators who maybe haven't had a lot of luck yet. At some point for everyone, one of your videos will do really well, really well, way better than the others. In a way, it's gone viral. Not so viral that you can retire on it or anything like that, but it does comfortably better. Maybe not 10 times, but 100 times better than one of your normal videos. You're like, what on earth did I do there? But wow, the potential. The potential. And there's more of my chats with Gordon Lane from Camera Labs. If you wanted to post a video, it was going to cost you tens of thousands of pounds or dollars. And if you... Who's going to pay that? Not even a corporation is going to pay that. And then in 2006, YouTube comes along and says, oh, we'll host your videos free of charge. It was completely revolutionary, completely revolutionary as a content creator to suddenly have a platform which let you publish videos and embed them on your own web pages if you wanted, free of charge. And please hit the subscribe button if you want to see more great British YouTubers. There's a playlist and a podcast. All the details and links are in the description. I'm Neil Mossey and I'll see you on the very next episode of Great British YouTubers.