Stand-up can THRIVE on YouTube if we let it.
Seemingly opposite to previous projects I’ve worked on, namely the TikTok assignment I did found here, this YouTube project was the final one I’ve decided to do (for now) relating to the “Comedy” thing that I’ve been obsessing over for the past 5 months or so.
YouTube, boasting amazing discoverability, has launched many people's careers across the world. Musicians, Gamers, incredible Athletes, Comedians, and many others. Bo Burham, famously discovered on YouTube, is proof that for this genre specifically, there is a ton of potential. However, pure stand-up comedy hasn’t done super well on YouTube for “new” creators. Popular comedians find continued success there, but there aren’t many young people that consider themselves “stand-ups” that have made their mark yet here.
My idea was to create “highlight reels” that would highlight medium to small creators that could make up a ~10-minute video. The main reason why people don't finish comedy specials as often is that they are too long. Andrew Schulz (popular comedian from New York) understood this and he was one of the first comedians to really embrace stand-up on YouTube and editing down long bits to smaller videos that could keep people's attention for longer. He said, “people are more willing to digest 2 hours of content if it feels like you are giving them a choice. Split it up into 10-minute videos and you will see that when they before wouldn't watch your 2 hours special all the way through, they will when it's they feel like its not too much of a burden.”
The Plan
Sticking with the theme that I had across the Podcast and TikTok project, I reused the logo and the color scheme when trying to figure out how to design the Banner of the YouTube page.
The Banner
I got some inspiration from Theo Von’s channel and tried to go a similar route with how I did it but still make it unique.
Since the background on the other projects was black, I felt like just keeping the logo in color with the comedians in black and white felt right for some reason. In hindsight, I probably could have added a TikTok link on the banner to advertise that as well, but maybe that would have been too much.
The Logo
Not much to see here, it’s the same one from the other projects. The naming of all the projects was slightly different, however. I personally think it's fine and is still clear due to the branding that they are all in the same family, but others would probably disagree and say that I should have all of it be the same.
Sample Post
Overall, I did two, about 10-minute video sample posts. Each post had 3 comedians each doing about the same amount of time-based on how their individual sets go. The two posts are different, though. The first one is super “young” comedians in the industry and even I, someone who consumes maybe 2–3 hours on average of comedy every day, didn’t know who they were. The second post was about more established comedians that make a living but aren’t on some sort of crazy level of comedy fame.
YouTube titles and descriptions tend to be all about “shock value” nowadays, so I tried to incorporate that into the posts as well to maybe draw more attention to the post. The comedians were all given links to their YouTube channels as well in each of the videos.
The videos were edited and have small intro and outro titles as well as a popup graphic displaying their name. I HATE intro and outro music. It feels cheesy and like I'm watching some sort of gamer “highlight video” or something. I tried to keep it as crisp and to the point as possible.
Conclusion
Full disclosure. This is not my first YouTube channel that I’ve created so I didn’t learn much about the “YouTube” process, but I did find some sort of self-affirmation that there are indeed not many people doing this type of work on YouTube. The only ones I really saw that were compiling comedy clips, were big names like Comedy Central and that is all original content that is on TV or on their Youtube Channel specifically. I think there is a place in the market for this that someone could really capitalize on like people already do with Music, Gaming, and Movies.
I felt like this project fit really well with my previous projects. It can relate super well to the Survey App that “connects you” with comedians that you might like based on their content. It is an excellent contrast to TikTok’s short-form content, for people that want longer videos. It also relates well to the Podcast in that was as well as having someone out of the industry talk about things going on with an “outside view.” Overall I’m very happy with this topic-closing project and felt like I learned a ton.
