I am still here!! It has been a few days, but I am still steaming ahead with new found purpose and resolve! I have managed to record the footage for the first 3 videos in the tutorial series, and this means I am at the point of having the custom entity, in its most basic form, in a Minecraft world.
However, remember I said that the videos were scoped as part of my masters degree? Well the whole reason for the scoping was because I was researching what makes 'good' educational videos. I did a heap of research and came to the conclusion that my previous tutorials, while not complete garbage, were not all that great either. So it means a few fairly significant adjustments to my workflow for producing these videos.
Recording footage and narrating 'on the fly' is something of the past for these kinds of tutorials. I found that I ramble... and get distracted, and therefore distract from the intended purpose of the video. Alongside that there was a lot of research about video length, and what is likely most suitable. In the past I tried to keep my tutorials under 20 minutes, because that seemed to be what all the other YouTube creators I regularly watch do, however they create entertainment content, not educational content, and there is a difference. Apparently I should be trying to keep these tutorial videos under 7 minutes if possible, and definitely shorter than 10-12 minutes.
So while I have around an hour of raw footage recorded, I need to convert that to highly focused footage (of around 15-20 minutes) and then add carefully scripted narration. On a side note, I am clearly getting better at this, because if you read my first post of the genetics project from a few years ago I am pretty sure it took quite a few more hours last time.
I am also working 'between' Minecraft versions, because the tutorial series (now expanded to something like 14 different videos) includes things currently unavailable in M:EE like custom items and blocks. These will be available when M:EE finally updates to 1.16/1.17 which I am hoping is on the cards soon, and I think it is going to take a little while for these tutorial videos to be ready, as I estimated that it takes about 3 times as long to produce the videos in this way, compared to what I used to do. (I hope the extra time and effort is worth it!)
I am currently deciding whether to publish them 'one at a time' as I complete them, or whether to hold them and release as a complete set. If you have any thoughts there, please let me know in the comments, on Twitter (@EduElfie) or in the Mentor Discord (https://discord.gg/7fSQBdx).
That's it for this update. Thanks for reading!
Good on ya for pushing ahead! I'm kind of divided about how to do tutorial videos, though mine are almost always under 7 minutes and usually around 5. Carefully scripting seems like so much work! Perhaps when I'm not teaching full-time I'll have more time to script my videos. At any rate, I look forward to these. And I would recommend publishing them as they become ready.
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