Three years into making videos I finally saw my fatal mistake

I was editing a travel vlog last month and realized my establishing shots were way too long. Like 20 seconds of me walking through a market with no voiceover. I used to think viewers needed to soak in the atmosphere but then I checked my retention graph and saw the big dropoff at exactly those points. A friend who edits for a news channel pointed out that every shot should serve a purpose or tell part of the story. Now I try to keep those wide shots under 5 seconds unless there's something specific happening. The weird part is nobody ever complained in comments but the numbers showed the truth. Has anyone else had a moment where analytics made you change your whole editing style?

2 comments

2 Comments

nathanj568d ago

Nobody ever complained in comments but the numbers showed the truth" - yeah that's the brutal reality check right there. I had the same thing when I realized my intros were basically me rambling for 45 seconds about what we were about to see, you know, like a human trailer. Checked the analytics and saw 30% of people just bailed in the first 20 seconds. Now I just jump right into the video and maybe say two words then cut to the action. The silence from viewers is the loudest feedback you'll ever get.

felixlee8d ago

Disagree with @nathanj56 here. The silence from viewers might just mean they watch on autoplay with their phone in their pocket or skip through intros anyway. My most viral video had a 20 second ramble at the start and people still watched the whole thing because the content was good. Metrics can lie just as much as comments do.