The Intro That "Drowned"
Sometimes things just don't make the cut🤷🏽♀️(Behind the Scenes Of Storytelling and Content Creation)
Last week I uploaded a new video about Exploring Kisumu on the YouTube channel. It was a quick twenty-four-hour pitstop on our way back to Nairobi from Busia, and we had such an amazing time in the city by the lake, that I wanted the story to show exactly that. Now if you’ve been on my channel for a while, you know that all my narration videos start with a specific quick-paced snippet-showing preview of what the video will be about. The Kisumu one was going to be similar, but I planned to use Dholuo (Luo language) instead of English for the intro because…KISUMU! It was the one chance I had to use my mother tongue on the channel in a unique creative way, and I intended to utilize it to the fullest.
So for two long weeks, I worked. Scripting the story, asking my Luo friends on Facebook to help me get the correct phrases, rehearsing the voiceover an unhealthy number of times to make sure I was getting the intonations right, sifting through gigabytes of footage to find the perfect shots, cutting, pasting, editing…the whole ensemble. To spice things up, I even threw in Suzanna Owiyo’s Kisumu 100 as the soundtrack, to give the story the complete dala (home) touch it needed. It was going to be epic!!!
But when everything finally came together and I was reviewing draft one of the finished video, it felt like the story had two different intros back to back. One in Dholuo followed by another in English, and there was a bit of a disconnect. Looking back, I now realize that this is a mistake I’ve made with some videos in the past, but I was still conflicted because even though the disconnect was crystal, I loved the Luo intro SO SOOO MUCH! 😫
So, faced with the choice to take my L and cut it loose, or proceed with my epic idea and risk confusing my audience, I cried for all the weeks of hard work that were about to go down the drain. Then when the tears dried up, I did the sensible thing and tossed it out.
For shits and giggles, here’s the “famed” intro, plus a little extension of how the story would have picked up from here in English.
(This is a private unlisted video, all for your amusement! 😁)
It was a good idea, just not for this video or even for my audience. You see audience retention is key on YouTube. And the first few seconds of your video GREATLY determine your audience retention. If viewers click on your video and then click off in the first minute, YouTube will practically “kill” your video and stop recommending it to other people. So in the grand scheme of things, it just didn’t make sense to start a story with Dholuo for an audience that’s 95% non-Luo. That is how I ended up going with the intro done in the colonialist’s language. 🤷🏽♀️
I think the final piece ended up being a lot more concise and better-looking overall, but from this failed experiment, I have learned that not everything that sounds epic and cool in my mind, is actually going to turn out to be epic and cool in real life. I must learn to catch myself before I spend time, effort, and money, chasing ideas, people, prospects, and ventures that look rosy but will not yield the results I want. Also, may I finally be freed from the shackles of “I filmed this so it MUST be seen”. That is one hill I am constantly choosing to die on, and it’s costing me a lot of time and energy. Both of which I am in dire deficiency, in recent times.
Oh! Did I mention that Suzanna, (okay not exactly her but the YouTube copyright watchdog) hit me so hard with a copyright claim for using her song, that my ear is still wheezing from the impact? 😂 Hell will freeze over before I unlawfully use someone else’s music in my videos ever again.