My YouTube journey
When I was in my first year of high school, I spent quite a lot of time on online forums. This is how I got to know about the fan-video community on YouTube. A fan-video basically entails taking a movie/series/other medium such as pictures and match this content as well as possible to a song, using effects such as overlays and transitions. I reached up to 5200 subscribers at the end of my high school years and gained some really good friends that I'm still in contact with.
I learnt how to video-edit in 2009 by trial and error and watching some YouTube tutorials. I used Sony Vegas Pro, a pretty easy to understand but powerful programme. I loved creating videos of Harry Potter, Twilight (yep... I dare saying it, I was Team Edward), The Vampire Diaries, Doctor Who, Merlin, Pretty Little Liars... Whenever I heard a song that I liked, I already could imagine the content that I wanted to use with it. My head at the time was like an encyclopaedia: ''This voiceover? Oh, that was from season 4, episode 12, around the 5 minute mark''. Crazy! YouTube played a huge role in my life.
What I loved most about YouTube, next to creating, was the community aspect of it. Throughout the years, I've found and talked with many people who were making the same kind of videos as I did. We would comment on each others videos, encourage each other to make new ones, make videos together by splitting up a song in parts and we even had hours-long Skype sessions. I also met and am still friends with girls I met through YouTube.
After a few years of YouTube, I was asked by the Popsugar partner network to join their network. It felt pretty crazy, as my videos are full of copyrighted material... Oops. Still, I went ahead and grabbed the opportunity. I started using non-copyrighted music for some videos and earned a little bit of money because of that. This was around the time that YouTube wasn't as good at detecting copyrighted material as it is now: it was good at it with songs, but not so much with video content. It was also the early days of partner networks: nowadays it is a lot easier to get a monetised account. So all in all, it felt like a huge deal at the time!
I learnt how to video-edit in 2009 by trial and error and watching some YouTube tutorials. I used Sony Vegas Pro, a pretty easy to understand but powerful programme. I loved creating videos of Harry Potter, Twilight (yep... I dare saying it, I was Team Edward), The Vampire Diaries, Doctor Who, Merlin, Pretty Little Liars... Whenever I heard a song that I liked, I already could imagine the content that I wanted to use with it. My head at the time was like an encyclopaedia: ''This voiceover? Oh, that was from season 4, episode 12, around the 5 minute mark''. Crazy! YouTube played a huge role in my life.
What I loved most about YouTube, next to creating, was the community aspect of it. Throughout the years, I've found and talked with many people who were making the same kind of videos as I did. We would comment on each others videos, encourage each other to make new ones, make videos together by splitting up a song in parts and we even had hours-long Skype sessions. I also met and am still friends with girls I met through YouTube.
After a few years of YouTube, I was asked by the Popsugar partner network to join their network. It felt pretty crazy, as my videos are full of copyrighted material... Oops. Still, I went ahead and grabbed the opportunity. I started using non-copyrighted music for some videos and earned a little bit of money because of that. This was around the time that YouTube wasn't as good at detecting copyrighted material as it is now: it was good at it with songs, but not so much with video content. It was also the early days of partner networks: nowadays it is a lot easier to get a monetised account. So all in all, it felt like a huge deal at the time!
This is a fan video I made of Little Women, one of my favourite books and movies.
Besides series and pictures, I experimented a bit with fully drawn animation videos. I participated with these videos in the yearly movie-gala that my high school hosted and won twice! The third time they didn't want to give me the prize anymore, but they did ask me to host the gala together with a friend ;p I also have created some paid-for promotional videos for companies while I was still in high school.
When I went to university the hobby kind of slipped, but during the corona pandemic I have been getting back into creating again, which felt amazing. I have started learning more about Adobe After Effects instead of the good old Sony Vegas Pro, which I plan to continue to do.