Video Reviews

 

Video Reviews: Five Minutes, One Take, No Cuts

(In Order of posting, most recent first)

Background Notes

In May of 2024, I finally decided that perhaps I had been forming my opinions on video reviews all wrong, and have tentatively dipped my toes into the seething maelstrom of Instagram, TikTok and YouTube content.

Back when YouTube channels (and then IG and TikTok, et al) started to proliferate, when podcasts became a thing and various audio-video tools were in their infancy, I looked at the work being done by early adopters – the set up, the cameras, the background, and particularly the video editing – and came to the conclusion this could not work for me. Of course, I could not even have a collection of rums to hand, since I was working in the Middle East, but given the mental effort and time which writing took (and still takes), I felt that I lacked the time, technical chops, materials and technological savvy to make a go of it on a consistent basis. The more one gets into these things, the more time consuming — and sometimes technically intricate, even difficult — it becomes. I didn’t think it was possible for me to really do that effectively.

But in 2024 two people changed my mind: one was Arminder, who runs that tight, smooth, short form vlog on Instagram called Rum Revival. Now he exemplified much of what I described above – his editing was seamless, his set up was great, he spoke for extremely short periods of time and made coherent and concise points, limiting himself to just a few minutes of speaking. Total pro. It was the duration I fixed on: he made his videos so short that they were like haikus, and for a person who writes the way I do, in posts that meander for a thousand words, this was an interesting way to approach a video review. Cut out all extraneous material completely and focus only on the essentials, like a visual Serge Valentin.

The other major impact on my thinking was a person who I know prefers not to be named, who I shall call A. Now A was and remains a life blogger and has posted some of the most emotional and beautiful videos of his country I’ve ever seen; then upped anchor and moved without money, language skills or a support network to Europe, and continues to blog from there about daily life. We have been in touch for a while and one of the things I took away from his philosophy was simply to do what feels right and works for you and do it well. To be natural and unforced and let your enthusiasm and joy in the work shine through. I could watch A. and his videos all day long, they’re that good and I enjoy them that much.

I’m neither as tightly focused and professional as Arminder nor able to let my soul be on display quite the way A. does. But both of these persons and the way they approached videos informed my increasing desire to expand the horizons of rum reviewing. This became more important as my personal time started to be squeezed with other responsibilities, while conversely being helped by how easy it had become to create such content – another thing A. showed me how to do. The written reviews, now numbering over a thousand, were still the backbone of the site, but I noticed (and was unhappy) that engagement was always minimal and readership, while robust, had plateaued for some years. A new challenge, a new outlet was needed.

So here, I have started to experiment with the video format. I’m going to try and speak off the cuff, without a script, no breaks, no cuts, no editing, for five minutes or less, about one rum at a time. That may change as I settle into the groove and develop based on what I see as necessary: user feedback will be a large part of that, I think. Although the links I add to posts will direct to YouTube, I am posting and checking feedback on Instagram and Tik Tok as well. The platforms’ links are:

I’m a complete tyro at this, so there will be teething pains. The look will be basic at first, the setting spartan, the video source just a phone. But as a firm believer in kaizen I’ll try to bring it slowly up to a more professional standard as time goes on. As fast as a written review is posted there will be a companion video for it, and I’ll also reach back into my archives and do video reviews of rums from the corpus of written work from the past. I hope you like this additional feature to the site. Leave a comment wherever you wish if you want to make suggestions or corrections.

So let’s get started, then: lights, camera…action!

 

 


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