That's me trying to create chess content on Youtube

It is almost ten years since my last blog-post here on Chess.Com. I feel like I need something to share with you guys, but I must admit that there is a bit of shame at the same time. I am going to ask you to be patient going through this...

When they listed me as a chess coach on this website (about 14 years ago), I was considering to start making content on Youtube, or to write a chess book, while coaching - at least in my thoughts - was just a temporary thing. Years after, I don't have a book writen, nor Youtube Channel that has any success. Don't know where all those years have gone, but I finally decided that something has to be done. So, about 8 months ago I just decided to start recording myself analysing one of my student's game. Afterwards, whithout any editing, I just published it on my YT. And guess what... it was terrible.

There is no surprise, of course. But that moment of publishing your first video - it is so hard thing to do. Especially for someone who is an introvert and needs some time to conquer that terrible anxiety of getting public. Anyway, soon after, there was the second video published, third, fourth, and... yes, of course, it was still terrible. Not only the number of viewers, but also the quality of the material. I didn't like my way of discussing things, dramatical pauses I could finally hear that I make while explaining concepts, my repetitivness... "Oh, my poor students! They are listening to this every time we have our lessons!" - one of my first thought.

Another problem is that I am a perfectionist - if something is imperfect according to my standards, in my head it is thousands times worse than what a normal person would think of it. Thus, the recording process of a single video takes a bit more than what you may think (or anyone not dealing with the video-production): about 5-10 hours for a video of only 10 minutes. It means that I keep repeating one same story numerous times, making numerous takes, in order to tell myself at some point: "Enough! I can't do this any more!" That's the moment when I stop, and go through all those terrible takes, in order to take one, and start working on it. (Lately I started dividing the whole concept into parts, then recording them, and finally putting them all together.)

The next phase begins: editing the garbage video(s)! You can't make much of a quality if working with such material, plus I am not that much into that matter - I haven't been learning anything related with the video editing ever. Watching the tutorials on YT, I've learnt something on how to use the ShotCut (video editing software) and started using it, getting - I'd say - maybe 90% of what it can offer (that is pretty good percentage).

Than the damned program crashes! And again, and again, and again. Autosave is there, but it is terribly slowing down the process. "F...ing ShotCut!" Of course, it is my computer that can't stand that much of memory usage. Then I discovered that there is this thing called "proxy file", and it helped a lot to keep using the same machines when producing the videos, without that many crashes during the editing process.

Overall, the editing process may last for days. And finally, when everything is over, there is this thing - creating a thumbnail, making up a good title for the search engine, writing a good description... It all takes couple of more hours. Summa summarum, it takes about 15-20 (active) hours from the scratches and recording till publishing a video of not that great quality.

You can't imagine how happy one is when they get (for the first time) a comment from one of their viewers. It is best when you wake up, and see that people are thankfull for explaining them a concept. Once I've got a message from a viewer telling me that they have played an opening I presented in a video, and won their game, thanking me for that. It is such a pleasure to see that in the comment section!

I am writing here to timidly ask what do you think of that all, since I am asking myself, doubting, cause too much time is lost in the process, only to realise that I am not good enough to be proud of my creation once the job is done. Let me be clear - I am not talking about the views and number of subscribers (there are much higher numbers then what this material and my performance deserve). It is about the objective quality which I am not satisfied with at all.

We may say that I've risen the ladder higher, that my expectations aren't realistic for the time being. Also, there are many YT chess channels out there with great number of audience, with a very low, even much lower quality than mine. But that's beside the point, cause if one is not happy with their own performance, there is no point in continuing with it.

BUT! There are many good reason to continue!

1. Youtube is the future, or at least a great segment of it. Everybody who has something to say may do that on Youtube, and show their skills. If you think you have a skill, why not share in front of other people? I know that I am good at teaching chess, or at least not bad. And that's probably the thing I am best at, so if there is something I should be presenting to the world, than it should be exactly that. And with the help of such technology we have today, it is only one click away from one getting in front of the whole world.

2. The fact I am not doing it well at this point, shouldn't stop me from trying to do better in the future. Being aware that things can be done better is a way of pushing yourself to learn more, and do something about it.

3. Recording and editing videos for the YT channel has to do with the aesthetics, which is the field I am also involved in, since my master's thesis (as a philosopher) was dealing with the asthetics in film.

4. Being bad in delivering the story or a concept is something that is linked with how good one is in discussing things with other people, with friends, and overall - how fun one is. In other words - growing into someone better then yesterday overall. It is not only about chess, nor teaching, nor editing. Communication is very important for every human being and learning to become better on Youtube means - for me - learning to become more interesting person in general.

At the end, I'd like to suggest you to check my last video. I hope you're not going to do it with intention of killing my will to continue, but if someone is more experienced, or is able to tell how this typically ends, or maybe has just the same kind of doubt, feel free to share! I'd love to see other experiences and hear other people's stories.

Thanks!

Published on November 4th: