My very first Youtube Video

Hey everyone. I’m happy to announce that I have published my very first Youtube Video! This video is just a simple introduction to my channel and I really hope you will like it. Starting a Youtube Channel was actually one of my beauty blogger new year resolutions for 2016. I’m going to tell you all the details of my first experience in creating a Youtube Video down below.

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As I have explained in my video, I want to have more interactions with my readers. I love my blog and my regular readers, but it’s very difficult for me to really express myself personally in words, especially in reviews which I mostly do on my blog. I want to give a more “the person behind the blog” feeling and really show you my personality. This is what I want to achieve by creating Youtube Videos.

My birthday (and a huge giveaway) is almost coming up, so I’ve decided to treat myself with a ringlight as an early birthday present. I’m someone that always wants to have something  as perfect as possible, so good lighting was a must for me before I would even try to create a video. I was browsing through Google and found the webstore BonjourFoto.nl. They have a very interesting page about Make-Up and Beautyphotography using a ringlight. I looked at the options and purchased the Falcon Eyes FLC-65 Ringlight for €89,95 Euro and a Falcon Eyes W80 Tripod for €14,95 Euro. I actually received a different tripod of a better quality (the one that I purchased was out of stock), but I don’t know which one I have received.

The tripod/rightlight combination was easy to assemble but let me tell you, I didn’t think the ringlight was so friggin’ HUGE!! I’ve had no idea. For some reason I only thought that this would be a small ring around my camera so I kind of made a (foolish) miscalculation on that part. Fortunately I can just place this somewhere in a corner of my living room for storage. I wouldn’t recommend to disassemble the ringlight/tripod after use.

Sitting in front of the ringlight was also a very interesting experience. It gets really warm in front of that thing, and it is expremely bright to a point that it almost hurts. I have to say that I probably have to pay more attention to how long I can sit in front of the righlight, because I have done it twice for about 20 minutes and both times I got a very painful headache afterwards. I also saw a blue ring in the corners of my eyes after filming for about half an hour, which can’t be a very good thing. Do any girls with some experience with ringlights have any tips for me?

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I tried filming during daytime, and both times I had to use my regular lamps in my living room because the ringlight makes me look extremely pale to almost looking greyish/sick. I had to counteract that effect by my regular ceiling lamps, which have a more warm/yellow light. I do think that my make-up looks much more detailed in front of this light.

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If I’m going to use this set-up for my regular face shots for reviews, I will probably need to edit the pictures for more warmth (which I usually do anyways) like I did with the picture above. I was hoping to prevent this extra step, because adding warmth can be very difficult, since each screen has a different color setting. For example, my laptop is translating colors in a very cool tone, so when I edit my pictures in a way that it looks good on my laptop, it looks horrible on my phone, which has a warmer setting so my pictures look very unnatural and orange to the point that I have to re-edit my pictures after publishing. Unfortunately, my apartment is too small to add any extra daylight lamps, so this will have to do for now.

Anyways, back to making videos. I have never had any experience in actually talking in front of a camera, which I found to be very, VERY difficult and frustrating. I have a new found respect for all Youtubers! I actually do speak English on a daily basis because of my work, but just talking spontaneously to a camera is something that I will need much more practice of before I will be able to get more comfortable. In my head I just know everything I want to say, in front of the camera I completely forget everything and stumble upon every single word and just freeze like a deer caught in headlights. I’m usually not that uncomfortable and nervous in person, please trust me on that. 😛 I finally was able to get something after filming after about fifteen minutes of filming and after editing, only had a movie that lasts for less than two minutes.

Another thing that was new to me was editing. I edit my videos using a laptop that runs on Windows 10 and I found after doing some research, that the Windows Movie Maker would be the most suitable candidate for me.  Windows Movie Maker is a part of Windows Essentials, which is free to download at Microsoft.com. I played with the software and found it very easy to use. It kind of speaks for itself, I didn’t need any tutorials and could make my introduction video by using this software. Uploading to Youtube was also very self-explanatory.

By the way, editing videos really makes you see yourself in a completely different way. I thought my English was good, but man.. it sounds HORRIBLE!!! I feel like I sound like Lious van Gaal when I’m speaking English. Also, I found out that I have filler words (in Dutch: “stopwoordjes”) that I never knew I had. I started every sentence with So.. (so I created this channel, so I created my blog etc). It felt really confronting to listen to my blabbering for fifteen minutes, but I was able to remove most of my filler words in editing. I hope that this will also be less confronting and more comfortable with more experience.

I really do hope that you enjoyed my first Youtube Video! Please subscribe to my channel if you want to want to have updates for more videos. Let me know you have any suggestions for me in any way (ringlight setting/editing/video suggestions) because I want to do as much as I can do to create good quality videos for you all. ♥