Yello's YouTube Corner
I'm way too obsessed with making videos.
Table of contents
My YouTube channel is called Yello's Island, of course. It's gone through quite a few phases since its inception, but one consistency has always been my personal thoughts and stories within every video.
As of right now, my channel is focused on personal anecdotes around the games and systems I've owned over the years. Each of them have interesting stories behind them, so I wanted to share that in a very chill, low stakes environment, without unnecessary edits and effects tacked on.
History of my channel
YouTube Addict (Pre-2017)
Ever since I discovered YouTube around 2008, this platform basically became my entire entertainment hub. I watched less TV and movies and more YouTube videos throughout my day. This was before even having an account, so instead of subscribing to channels to have them automatically pop up in my feed, I would look them up using the search bar from memory, which feels like a bygone era. I've had so many YouTube creators that I would obsess over, watching every single one of their videos for hours.
There are way too many channels to list and honestly, their individual names don't matter (cuz a couple of them are questionable nowadays). I was in love with the concept of a YouTube video itself; how it felt more personal and raw than traditional media. I was able to attach myself to the personality of the creator (almost parasocially oops) and become invested in whatever they had to say. There really was nothing like it. I would literally watch so many videos every day, it probably affected my brain development permanently. But my god was it so entertaining and comforting for teenage Yello.
Editing on a potato (2017 - 2019)
I became so immersed in the YouTube culture that like lots of viewers, I eventually wanted to make my own videos. Fortunately, I didn't have the guts to use my parents account and post embarrassing videos as a child, so I had a least a little more sense of what I could make, but I was still in the dark of where to even start.
So I decided to harness my fanatic energy and make a fan compilation of a YouTuber I loved watching back in 2017. Except, the most capable computer I had at the time was a Macbook Air that I barely used. But I got to work, downloading all the necessary clips to iMovie, learning the basics of splicing, placing text, and rendering, and put together a respectable series of clips of my favorite moments from that YouTuber's famous series.
I posted that video to a brand new channel and surprisingly, the views started slowly climbing...like continuously. It was probably because that YouTuber was popular at the time, but I was already blown away by the number of views it gained over the span of a week. I started getting real comments under that video, directly referencing edits I did in the compilation, which blew my mind. I got a surprisingly large amount of positive feedback, which was my first instance of validation from the internet. It was extremely gratifying. At its peak, the video had around 100,000 views in less than 6 months, which was WILD.
That is now privated because a. copyright and b. it's definitely cringy to watch back. But I wouldn't say that I regret it. Making that fan video helped me get my feet wet in making my own videos, which I soon learned would become a new obsession for me. Though, even at the time, I knew that I wanted to make something that truly my own, instead of taking other people's content. At the time, my channel was called "Yelloyoshi" because that was my screen name for other accounts I had, but my one video had nothing to do with it. So I decided to lean into my persona and make this channel all about me.
Since I grew up watching YouTube, I thought it would be a great first video to introduce myself through my YouTube viewing history and how it led me to make my that very video. Quite meta of me. Which meant making my first ever YouTube script, recording audio on a microphone, and compiling it altogether in a more advanced (and afforable) editing program, which was Sony Vegas Pro. Keep in mind, Vegas Pro was Windows only, so I couldn't edit on my MacBook anymore, which meant I had to edit on my ancient potato laptop from 2011. I have no idea how I was able to put up with that amount of lag for 10 minute video with a good amount of editing in there, but I persevered. A first real attempt is always rough in hindsight, but I'm glad I put in legitimate effort into something I was proud of at the time.
After that, it was off to the races. I still had no clear direction but I was so excited to post more. Even though the process to upload felt arduous and slow, the final product made it all worth it. At the time, I liked YouTubers that showcased who they are through storytelling or confessional-type videos. So I made videos like thoughts before entering college, social anxiety, and the one that felt the most natural: video game memories. I knew that I didn't wanna do let's plays or reviews, but talking about my own experience with games was right up my alley. So I slowly leaned more into gaming specific videos like a tribute to my favorite game of all time and a sketch around Daisy from the Mario games.
Around mid-2019, I was able to semi-upgrade to a less potato-y Windows 8 laptop, which was a godsend for my standards, which helped me create videos a little faster than I could before. With each video I made, I learned that I really love talking about myself, which sounds narcissistic. But it was truly theraputic being able to express myself in a visual way. Even though, I was still learning the ropes of basic keyframing, sound effects, and audio mixing, I was so excited to keep improving with each video that I could never stop thinking about the next script.
I'll just make whatever (2019 - 2022)
By the end of 2019, I got into the groove of making videos, but the problem was that they always took a few months to make. My perfectionist tendencies were always in the forefront. So I wanted to spice things up at bit with a bigger project. I was super inspired by dodie at the time, and one series she was known for was her daily videos for a particular month (VEDIF, VEDA, VEDIM, etc.), where you had to come up with 1 video for every day of the month. It didn't matter how big or small the scope was, you just had to get a video out once a day. So I figured that I'd take a crack at it for my own channel, in an attempt to pump out videos a little faster...well, a LOT faster.
I started planning around December 2019 and chose February as the month to execute my month-long challenge, which would be known as "VEDIF 2020". Usually these videos were supposed to be super casual and on-the fly, but I wanted to go all out. I had a master plan of every single video idea I wanted to do and even a secret message hidden in every video. Even though I probably had a few hundred subscribers at the time, I wanted this to be the most mind-blowing thing in the world. The problem was...I was just one person. With my still-beginner video making skills, I signed myself up to an unimaginable amount of extra work that I was simply not prepared for, even with the few extra months of buffer.
But I committed. I may have stayed a few hours past my bedtime on a school night to get the next VEDIF video posted in the morning to maybe 30 active viewers, but the persistence to not miss a day kept me going. And against all odds, I successfully posted every single day in February and fully executed my master plan. Each video had a purpose because they each held a secret word and when all put together, it would reveal a secret message. I remember feeling so proud of that project, despite some videos only getting 30 views cuz of their wildly different subject matters. But the low views didn't matter as much as the principal of sticking to a long-term project, which proved to be a valuable lesson in persistence.
After that huge VEDIF project, I saw that the best performing videos were focused on Nintendo, which was no surprise. My character was a Yoshi, after all. So I figured that I'd hone in on what a typical Nintendo content creator would do, since I still felt like I was learning the ropes. I made my first ever review of Super Paper Mario, a video essay about Wuhu Island, and even a slightly-disguised Top 10 video of my favorite games of 2020. I was hitting all the basic marks of a gaming channel, but that was okay with me. I honestly just wanted to know what it felt like to make those kinds of videos I grew up watching. And I'm happy to say that I'm still proud of those videos cuz even though they would take months to make yet again, each one felt like a big drop because I put in so much care and attention into them.
Then on one fateful day in 2021, I made a seemingly random video that would forever change the trajectory of my channel's philosophy...I made a tutorial video. No, it wasn't to get easy views. It wasn't because I found some groundbreaking discovery. It was because I was fed up with my own problem and wanted to create my own solution. Put simply, I wanted to make a video compiling the proper way to fix the time mechanic in the Pokémon Gen 3 games whenever the battery ran dry. Surprisingly, there was a lack of thorough information about this topic, aside from bits of tools and info scattered around the Internet. So I decided to compile the guide myself. Even though it was nothing like my previous videos, I still felt compelled to make this, if nothing else for future reference. The video initally came out to little reception, which was no surprise to me. But don't worry, we'll check back to this video later on...