Throughout the years I have tried a thousand and 1 formats for my video making process, some worked, some didn’t. From On-the-fly recording with lots of “uhmmmm, uhmmmm” to pre-planned, scripted-with-teleprompter queues. The truth is; there is no one way that works for everything, at least when it comes to how I produce my videos.

With the Traveller Type-S Scout video, my vision started to form the second I was introduced to the project. You see, with some videos, viewers want to listen to instructions, they want to learn, with others, they just want the eye-candy and with the Type-S video, it was all about putting the model, the detail, and most importantly, the designer in center stage.

I knew I wanted a video that wasn’t going to be too long, 5, maybe 6 minutes, in order to keep the viewers engaged. Retention is key to having videos perform well. 6 minutes is usually the sweet spot for the best balance, which happens to be roughly the length of 2 songs.

At this stage, I could start printing the 300+ parts needed to build the Type-S, it was going to take around 500 hours of combined printing between 6 machines, so I had ample time to plan the video accordingly. Whatever the format of the video was going to be, the printing process needed to be recorded, and there is nothing more eye pleasing than smooth timelapses and slow-mo shots with some nice ambient light in the background for that extra flair. So whenever I threw a new part to print, I made sure to take some B-roll shots of it printing.

What was important however, was the music. The music has to fit the mood, the project has to relay the message you want to give to the viewer. In my case I knew instantly that I wanted a sci-fi/stranger things feel. Something that tells you it’s futuristic, yet nostalgic, but I also wanted something a bit more menacing. This initiated the process to find the right songs.

The video would be split in 2 segments. The first song would cover the printing process and the build with a kind of crescendo vibe, hyping up to the second segment; the showcase. I knew the sound I wanted and the shots I would take before I even started printing. I wanted a heartbeat style intro for the second segment, where the Type-S would fade in and out with the beat. Finding the songs wasn’t easy, mainly because I knew what I wanted. It’s always harder to find what you want when you know what you want. But 5 hours of scouring through the PremiumBeats website, I got what I wanted.

Little hint, if you ever want to include music in your videos, I would highly recommend purchasing tracks from sites like PremiumBeats. I’ve spent many years using free to use music from youtube, and 80% of the tracks end up being bought out by big companies resulting in copyright strikes on your channel which can be quite a burden.

Once all the parts were printed, the process of assembly begins. For this, I tend to use an overhead camera setup. However, for this build I opted for an overhead and also a side camera recording in tandem. The Type-S has so much detail that some shots just needed to be really close and shot in from the side rather than just the top, in order to give it a more dynamic feel. This way I didn’t have to stay moving the camera around and also redoing the same assembly process twice to get different angles.

Once the whole ship is assembled, then it’s time to take the reveal shots. Needless to say, slo-mo shots are always a killer. They are smooth, build suspense and give an overall pleasing visual effect. I also wanted to do a little something fancy. My skills in video editing are just average, and special effects are not something I have ever delved into. But I needed smoke around the ship, and since I don’t own a smoke machine, in comes my e-cig. E-cigarettes use the same main ingredient as smoke machines, vegetable glucose, and the smoke generated also has the same effect, it becomes heavy when cooled and tends to travel very slowly on surfaces. This, coupled with the slo-mo effect and the ambient light, gave me the exact shots I envisioned when I was first introduced to the project.

The ultimate test to knowing if what you wanted to create turned out as good as you hoped, is your own reaction to the editing and final result process. In my case, I had a big grin all along the editing process, and when it came to editing and re-watching the reveal shot, I was waaayyy to giddy, like a kid on Christmas morning. This told me that I achieved what I wanted, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

In total, like with most videos I produce, I will have tens, if not hundreds of hours of footage. I have recorded many shots that I believed would fit nicely within the video, but ultimately ended up on the cutting room floor as they just didn’t fit. It’s always better to have extra shots you can fall back on, then having too few and realizing you have to re-set up the scene to take more B-roll.

Not all videos you produce will give you that feel-good vibe, as a content creator, sometimes you will need to upload things which you aren’t overly-excited about, whether it’s for financial reasons, to accommodate viewer requests, or simply for the sake of just having something to upload. Whatever the reason, always try to enjoy the process and make the best of it. Ultimately you need to be happy and proud of what you put out there. At the end of the day, it’s your name that’s going to be associated with how the viewer perceived the content they just watched.

Joe Casha