Last Sunday, I released my YouTube channel’s twelfth sketch comedy video—Zoom Wedding—to the best reception I’ve gotten for a new video, um, ever. It has the most views through the first week of a video being released, a bunch of likes, and, importantly, the highest average percentage viewed of any video I’ve put out. If that number was 100%, it would mean that everyone who started the video, watched it to the end. It’s currently sitting at 64.2%, which may not seem particularly high but is, as I mentioned, the highest of any video I’ve put out.
With most of my videos, I try to do at least one new thing during production (I have no real experience in filming or editing, creating these videos is how I’ve been teaching myself). A couple of big examples include using a green screen for Ballot of the Bands and filming something outdoors for the first time with Jesus’ Friend. While developing Zoom Wedding, I wanted to create a sketch where the main character was silent the entire time.
As an aside, since I didn’t plan on speaking much/at all in the video, I didn’t do my usual diligence in getting good quality audio. In fact, there was construction happening outside my apartment that day, normally cause for me to hold off on filming, but I thought I would just get the footage and delete out the audio. I did delete out the ambient noise while editing it but decided to add it all back in after the fact because it was strangely quiet, a more annoying experience than you might think. Also, fun fact, the one line I ultimately did say in the script is dubbed in after the fact and completely lip-synced because I didn’t get a good recording of it while filming. Now I know to always get that good audio, even if I don’t think I’ll need it. Anyways…
Over the years, from various sources, I’ve acquired my fair share of advice on writing comedy. I’m not going to disparage any of that advice because it was generally pretty good and I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t gotten it. That being said, I disregarded a lot of advice to make Zoom Wedding my way. To summarize the sketch, we follow a guy through the motions of realizing he’s got a wedding over Zoom to attend. It begins with him playing videogames, he get’s an alert on his phone, he prepares for the wedding, and then he logs onto the Zoom meeting. While there are some amusing mannerisms and a feeling of familiarity to what the character is experiencing, there’s nothing particularly funny or unusual for that first 90 seconds of the video. It’s mostly a lead up to the final moments. This is atypical in sketch comedy. Normally in that realm, the viewer knows what’s funny within the first 30-60 seconds and they get to see the funny thing happen a few more times. When creating videos for the internet, it’s even sooner. There’s TikToks and memes people have to get to, which just take a few seconds to understand. I decided to throw caution to the wind and hoped that people would come along for the ride. That didn’t come easy though.
When I first finished putting the video together, before I even uploaded it to YouTube, I didn’t have any faith that people would enjoy it. I was asking myself why I had wasted my time making it. I don’t like to waste my time and I did not feel great. I also have practically no self-confidence these days, so I can’t very well just drop something and not worry about it. In the end, I had nothing to worry about. I needed to trust my gut, I needed to remember that I kind of know what I’m doing, and—most importantly—I needed to get the naysayers out of my head.
