It’s really not that Lizardy… What does Lizardy even mean?
Ever wanted a 101 on commentary YouTube videos? Well, clearly you have some interest coming here. Today I wanted to go through my process for making a standard Lizardy video. I’m sure this process may vary a bit from other commentary YouTubers, everyone does it with their own quirks, so keep that in mind.
Firstly, we need a topic. This is where I get somewhat deep and ponder or sometimes just throw something at the wall. The entire reason why I created Lizardy was because there just weren’t videos on the topics I wanted to see. In 2023, there were rarely ANY popular videos on Mario & Luigi, and if there were, it would be the usual things we’ve seen time and time again: rankings, retrospectives, and so on.
I wanted to see people talk more about the series from a development standpoint, and what the future may hold for the spinoff series. The same could be said for the “Mario Mandates”, which I thought were a pretty interesting concept. Now I never want to talk about that topic ever again. Anyways, the point is I wanted to see the topics I wanted to see. That may seem obvious, but the thing is if your drive to make a video isn’t strong enough, you’ll never actually make it, plain and simple.
Even now, I wanted to launch this website with standard reviews of some games, but I can’t do that. I thought my motivation was strong enough, but it really wasn’t. Also it’s because I still don’t know how I’d format a review, they’re scary.
Building off what I said about topics I wanted to see, this is a bit of a reality check. If you make standard by-the-book reviews or tier lists or retrospectives or anything, you’re digging yourself in a grave.
YouTube as a whole is oversaturated with all of those and more, it’s harder to grow a channel with the mindset that you can do the same by just doing the same thing. You’ve got to put your thinking caps on and innovate!
Of course, I’m not saying don’t do those things, but if you do them just like everyone else, you shouldn’t be expecting the same results. Think about “Why should they watch my video over others about the same topic?” I thought this type of thinking was a lot more common, but I’ve seen time and time again people do the same thing expecting growth.
Sure, I am a victim of this as well. For example, my yearly Nintendo predictions videos are fairly common, and I don’t bring much to the table in terms of spicing things up. I only really do them because I love it, I enjoy the speculation.
Again, it’s about what you’re trying to get out of content creation. For me, it’s primarily just a hobby, but some people try to take it much more seriously. If this were my job, I’d take innovating much more seriously. And also probably get something better than a $30 Amazon microphone.
Let’s keep moving here, after we find a topic that we’re passionate about enough to know we can ramble about, we get straight into writing! That’s right, writing! Don’t start with fun stuff like thumbnails, we need to get the difficult stuff done first. Writing has… admittedly gotten harder for me as time goes on, but I’m still able to write a lot if it’s something I’m super passionate about.
For writing, I like to throw my phone on my bed behind me and create a new Google window with just a doc open alongside any links relevant for research. Even when I write with music, I keep it in a separate window and a specific YouTube playlist, because I know that if I keep switching between songs nothing will get done.
This gets a bit iffy and I’m not recommending this, but on the days I really can’t concentrate, I’ll have an energy drink or two which helps me focus. I may have a heart attack, but at least the people will get to know the truth behind AlphaDream’s bankruptcy! But seriously, there are much more safe alternatives for concentration which I am looking into and you should also if you experience the same issues.
If you need advice on where to start with writing, I got two pieces of advice. Firstly, bullet points are your best friend. Think about every subject you want to talk about in the topic and write a bullet point for each. Once you have a bullet point for each subject, expand on each one!
For example, if you were to write a review, you could have bullet points for things like your favorite part of the game, your thoughts on the music, and so on!
Some commentary YouTubers are able to just have a Google Docs with bullet points and fill in the blanks themselves when recording, and if you can do that go for it! It’s basically just making an “unscripted” video as opposed to a “scripted” one. I have a huge level of respect for every YouTuber who’s able to do that, and I think they’re the ones truly fit for this type of content. I myself can’t do it very well, I’d just fall apart after a few sentences stumbled on what to say.
But don’t worry about that! Most YouTubers go scripted. After you’re done writing and satisfied with your work, it’s time for recording! It can be a bit anxiety-inducing when starting, but at least in my experience, once you’re into it, you’re into it.
This is where things can really vary person to person. When recording, I try to do it all in one take. Make a mistake? Simply just restart the last line or paragraph, really wherever you can cut your speech and make it sound like it’s all one coherent clip.
Other creators like to record each sentence separately, some paragraphs, it really depends on what works best for you! Since regardless of how short I record I’m bound to make mistakes, I just do it all in one long take.
When recording, most editing software should give an option to listen to yourself in real time as you talk, and I don’t know what psychopaths use this, but power to you if you prefer that. I like to also add background music prior to recording, so as I’m recording my audio I can hear the background music so it’s not just awkward silence.
Speaking of editing software, I heavily recommend DaVinci Resolve. It’s completely free, and has so many professional features at your discretion. A lot of times when interacting with other content creators I hear about their editing programs constantly freezing or crashing, but I’ve had little to none of that with DaVinci.
I usually just do all editing in the trimming section instead of the editing section
– The green lines are audio, every little line between them is when I spliced one!
– The red lines are all of the background music files that have since been deleted
– The blue lines are footage and or images
Once we’re done the recording, we get to the most dreadful part, splicing. It’s trimming and putting together all the audio of me in one, long, coherent video essay. A lot of this is more so just getting rid of the little gaps even where I’m simply breathing. You don’t need to get that excessive, but I try to get every ounce of fluff out.
This can be repetitive and long, but with keybinds set alongside a 24oz milkshake, you can get it done in an hour or two depending on the length and how distracted you get.
Then begins regular editing! Adding footage, images, sound effects, all that fun stuff. This process is usually a lot easier. For footage, I try my best to use my own gameplay and you should too, but if you are unable to do so, you can use others as long as they’re properly credited. There’s literally no reason not to create them. There’s not much else to really say here.
Once I’m done editing, I like to watch through the video one last time from start to finish, not only to check for any mistakes, but also checking audio balance. It’s important to make sure your volume is loud enough that you can hear it well over the background music. If you can’t determine that yourself, send a friend a clip and see if they think the audio levels need to be adjusted.
Once that’s all done, while the video’s processing it’s thumbnail time. Oh, what started as something I loved dearly became so stressful very quickly. A thumbnail means a lot, of course your title has just enough if not more importance but we’ll get there. For thumbnails, I have a very specific pattern I’m sure you may be aware of if you’ve seen some of my videos before.
It’s less about consistently having basic thumbnails with a white background for recognition, but simplicity. In a home page filled with bright colors and a ton going on to try and get your attention, simplistic ones unironically can steal the viewer’s eye. Of course, there are more innovative ways to make simplistic thumbnails than white backgrounds, but you get the idea.
The title of course is also important. You want to keep it straight to the point and intriguing. My most popular video is titled “The Problem with a ‘Nintendo Switch 2’”. That title, at least in my opinion, is straight to the point and intriguing.
But please don’t actually watch the video. It’s been about 2 years since then. I sounded awful and my points were incredibly invalid. I don’t blame people for thinking I said “graphical enchantments” instead of “graphical enhancements” so people would rage comment to boost engagement. Y’know maybe that’s how the video went semi-viral.
But that’s just about it for my video creation process! It’s pretty standard, but I’ve been doing it for about 2 years now and it still works well. I hope this was able to be of any help to anyone interested in getting into content creation. Have fun!
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