 Welcome to the podcast. This is, as you all know, Explore Lucid Dreaming. Can you tell everybody your name? Um, my name is Explore Lucid Dreaming. I haven't done like a name reveal yet, so people just don't follow me on YouTube now, yeah. Oh, I didn't realize. I thought in the base reveal you did the, that's fine. The anonymous Explore Lucid Dreaming or Mr. Beluga. Mr. Beluga. As you all know, he's obviously the creator of Explore Lucid Dreaming for a big channel, the biggest channel about Lucid Dreaming. A million subscribers, probably more now. So congrats. Thank you. So did you think you would reach a million that fast? Like what was your kind of plan? On Explore Lucid Dreaming? Yeah. I mean, I didn't really know like that it could be done, but I think once the first video went viral, like when I started the channel, then I kind of realized that there was the potential for like a bigger audience out there. So it was really neat. Like when I first got a hundred thousand, I didn't even think that was possible. It was just something I did for fun. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. No, because I remember when, I think I remember when you published like your first couple of videos and I saw it being talked about on, I think it was Reddit and I think at that point you had about three, four thousand subs. Yeah. And then I checked back like a few weeks later and it was just, I mean, I can't remember how many exactly, but it was, it was a lot more and then it just kept on like snowballing basically. Yeah, it was weird. I think, I think the hardest milestone was like 10,000 and then after that, that's kind of when I got the first lucky or like viral video and then it went up 200,000 in like a couple, couple days I think or a week. That's amazing. Yeah. I'm curious like what your plan is for Beluga. Do you plan to be the biggest YouTube channel? No, that's not really my plan. I would say I just like making videos on there that like people enjoy and because it's just so much fun to like get the feedback and like make like sometimes when I have an idea that I'm super confident about and then just like releasing it and seeing all the people I know like messaging me and say like, that was really funny or something like that. I think I'm just going to keep doing it as long as I can make entertaining content that I believe in and the channel kind of grows, I guess like in proportion to how good your videos are and like, so I don't really have any like subscriber goals. It's mainly just the content itself. Like I always want to innovate my content and like try to find the next thing with that and just keep doing it as long as I have fun. That's pretty much the goal for Beluga. Yeah, that's I mean, that's a pretty good goal to be honest, just have fun with it, be creative and obviously people like it. So it's kind of a win-win. Yeah, I think like creativity is probably like my favorite part about YouTube and just being able to make whatever video that you can think of. Yeah, for sure. And there's so many different like different directions you could go with it and styles. Like how did you get into actually video editing or like video making? Well, I've always been interested, I would say like in YouTube itself. My first channel I started when I was in grade six and I think like right away when I would start shooting videos like I did gaming back in the day on like a super small channel. Really? But I think you just kind of learned it as you go because you shoot something and then you're like, okay, what do I do with it? Or there's like this section that you have to cut out. How do I do that? Back then I only had my like my phone. So I had to download apps and like splice things out of there, iMovie and stuff like that. Eventually when I got a computer, I got Premiere and that's really when I started Explore Lucid Dreaming because I did kind of teach myself how to use Premiere and just like the things you could do on it and then figured out like learn the things that I needed to do for that channel which basically was put a bunch of clips, have like transitions, text, music, you know, stick my voice up with it. Can't imagine editing on a phone. It was brutal. I don't think anybody should have to do that. Editing gaming footage, like would you, how would you even do that? Would you transfer it from your console to your phone and then? I used to be like a console YouTuber but the reason I never really did well is because I would film the like the TV screen with my phone camera. It was really bad quality but. Yeah, isn't that like weird flickering when you do that? Yeah and it was like an iPod too so because I didn't have a phone till I was older but yeah it was like flickering it was bad and then I would like try to edit like cut it together and try to like save the clip with editing so maybe I learned I learned a bit from that like cutting out boring parts but yeah yeah. Oh wow that's interesting. Do you think you'll ever make another gaming channel or like go back to gaming channel? I think if there's a specific game that's like really good for YouTube and there's like an idea that that can be executed like I would never sit down and just play a game like for YouTube because that's already done like that's already been done like a million times and there's not really anything unique. I think if you're able to make like skits or like stories through video games then I would do that but I wouldn't I wouldn't know if I would be like a gaming YouTuber then or if I would just be like a like a story person I don't know but I I do like creating like stories and and carrying them out on right now it's discord but yeah yeah. Yeah it's pretty like the characters you make for the on the bloke channel is pretty funny actually so that's very creative. It was like a complete 180 for my lucid dreaming channel which yeah I just realized like how much creativity I had with it like because it was a completely different channel I could do anything I wanted and I'm just like it was so much fun to plan that out and to like create characters and stuff for it. How long does it take you to come up with an idea for the beluga channel like one of the discord stories where you have different characters and sound effects? I think like the idea for the title and thumbnail of the video usually takes like one or two hours and then once I have like the idea then I just write the script for it which it can take a long time depending on the idea because some ideas are like harder to get a script for and that other ones are more straightforward like like a story related to like when your phone's at one percent but you kind of know where it's going to lead and you just kind of like fill in the gaps so it really depends usually a few hours. That's a pretty good time. How about you how long does it take to like get all your your research together and your topic or whatever? I mean kind of depends on the on the top if I'm just responding to a question or you know a comment or something um then not very long because it's just based on my knowledge experience memory but if it's more of a complicated or if I'm like presenting information like about a supplement for example or research or yeah then it can take longer maybe a few hours depends. Do you write like an exact script like word for word? No no no I have yeah exactly I have like like keywords those statements and sentences and then there'll be next to the camera so I'll just like look at the keyword to remind me and then just kind of improvise on that yeah because otherwise no no maybe it sounds too scripted if I if I were to write out an actual script compared to if I just add a keyword and then just kind of spoke naturally about it. Yeah and like also people don't naturally talk like they would write so people would definitely know if you're reading off something. Yeah yeah exactly. Have you thought about doing um like a TikTok or like making small pieces of uh of your channel videos into TikToks? Um I have I know like people repost my stuff on TikTok but they usually have to like cut it up in small segments but I feel like I always want to just focus if I'm making videos to make them on YouTube because then you have more creativity and you can kind of do more with longer videos because on TikTok like how much impact can you have on someone if you only have a few seconds before they swipe up um see there's like only so many ideas you can do and usually they're pretty like shallow surface level ideas like just try to get a quick laugh before they swipe up whereas on YouTube like if you have a really good idea you make into a video it can be like an hour long and you could still have success with it which like I would rather make long videos or medium length videos than like 10 20 second short videos yeah but there is a lot of people on TikTok and yeah it's it's a huge sight. Yeah I noticed I think I actually saw a couple of people like reposting your exploits of dreaming stuff on TikTok and oh yeah I just yeah I just think maybe that some of the blue guard ideas could be translated to like a really short form and they probably do really well because I see a lot of short like YouTube shorts reels and stuff where it's very similar style you know like the quick editing entertaining storyline but condensed into a so it's engaging you know yeah but yeah I guess YouTube is more impactful because it's a bit longer and also I feel like when you build an audience on YouTube they'll stay with you longer than on TikTok and just like you can really get to know someone on YouTube more than a platform like TikTok like I don't really know I only know like a few people on TikTok but they're also on YouTube and when I think of them it's like I think of their YouTube channel mainly and I think like yeah I'd rather build things on YouTube than kind of try to get like fast growth or you know like tens of millions of views on TikTok and I think also the way they count a view is a bit different from from what I understand YouTube counts a view as anything above 30 or 20 or 30 seconds but with TikTok it's like it's almost automatic that it counts the view so even if you're scrolling past it instantly it's still technically a view which is I see worthless I mean it doesn't they might not have even watched the video they might just be like scrolling while they're looking at something else yeah you know