Red Raider Show Episode 4

aka Con Season

Hey Raiders, and welcome to another edition of the Red Raider podcast here on Comic Pop's patreon page. It's con season. I am really excited about it. And so let's talk about that and more behind the scenes insights about what's going on here at the YouTube channel Comic Pop. And the YouTube channel.com pop returns. And now the other YouTube channel Comic Pop plays, which I'm playing with the name. I think that's probably the way we're going to go, but who knows? But yeah, we do have a gaming YouTube channel, which is mostly right now uploads of old streams on Twitch. But here's the exciting part. I think we're going to start playing with the idea of simultaneously streaming on both Twitch and YouTube through that channel. We're still in the works with that, but if we can make it work, I would love to do it. Now, I think we're about 3200 hours away from Monetization on that channel. YouTube has a 4000 hours restriction. I think it used to be 1000, that is to say 1000 hours, but now we're at 4000 hours. I guess that's just YouTube's way of calling the herd and keeping out the riffraff. Who knows what their motivation is? All I know is it's just making it that much harder to get Monetized for anyone who's interested in jumping into this whole field. Also it's interesting is they're encouraging everybody to make new channels for every show. Well, what's the motivation there? If it's going to take me months to get to this arbitrary number that allows me to make a living off of it, or at the very least contribute to my side hustle, I don't know. Anyway, we're getting off track. We got those channels going on. The new gaming channel is live. We just finished all of Marvel Ultimate Alliance Three, and we are about three episodes deep into Jedi, whatever the hell it's called. It's the one with the cool, cute droid and calculus. I think I remember the character's name. Anyway, that's happening and maybe we'll start streaming on that channel, who knows? 

Con season. New York Comic Con. The reason I brought it up in the first place is because we've been thinking about what to make. What do you want to see? We've actually asked you on a number of occasions, what do you want to see from New York Comic Con? Last year we shot a ton of B-roll on our phones, which we then converted into both vertical and horizontal videos. The horizontal stuff became our only New York Comic Con video of the year, which was just kind of a showcase, a walk the floor, so to speak, that says, this is what New York Comic Con was through the lens of Comic Pop. It was a cute, fun video. Tiffany edited it and I'm thrilled with it. Her skills as an editor have far exceeded any expectations I may have had when we first started. When I first introduced her to premiere in the first place and her shot composition, her whole approach to filmmaking. I mean, she has become, in essence, her own filmmaker. And I'm thrilled to see her thrive, and I'm very excited to see what we produce as a result of her efforts and also our desires to pull out of this con. Because here's the thing. I have, I think, come to a realization about con videos and what people want from them. Because I've asked Facebook, YouTube, you guys, Twitter, discord, and you all have very similar answers. And the answer is basically just do what you do. The largest among you would typically say, make the show. I like, but at that convention and the fact is, I don't think that's really true. I think you are being incredibly helpful, and I think that you are being very sweet. And I think you were like, okay, this guy clearly wants to make a video at this con. I guess we'll tell him what we want. And it's like, really what you want is just what we make for you. And you want it to sound good. You want it to look good. And so you don't want back issues at New York Comic Con. You want back issues from the studio on your favorite book with good audio and good video and no bullshit. The only thing that might be valuable about shooting back issues in New York Comic Con now is getting a special guest who would normally not come out to Jersey and film with us at the studio. That's the only benefit nowadays. And that's not going to happen. We're not going to be able to get anybody to sit with us for an hour or two at the con when they could otherwise be doing what they do at the con. And so I doubt sincerely that we're going to shoot normal shows at New York Comic Con, but I think that nobody really wants any videos from New York Comic Con. I think at the end of the day, cons are for people who go. So if you are physically there, there's a huge amount of enthusiasm and excitement. It's palpable. You can tell. You can feel the excitement just emanating off of the people who are in attendance. People who want to go to these cons, who go to these cons, they have a whole unique experience that is fundamentally theirs and irreplaceable. That's really awesome and unrecopicatable. I can't create that, and hopefully the best I can do is demonstrate that. But even if I did, the majority of the audience isn't interested in that because the majority of the audience isn't going to the comp. If they were interested in that, they'd go. But we did an informal poll on the community tab a few months ago, and it looked like the majority of people aren't going. I think it was about 95% of the channel audience members on Comic Pop Prime are not going, but 5% are, and that's a pretty big number out of 100,000. And it was always 5%, by the way, even when it was like only a couple of hundred people had voted 5%, a couple of thousand people voted 5%. So it's 5%. Okay, 5% of 100,000, that ain't bad. But it doesn't pay the bills. It doesn't make for a huge video that we should definitely put out on the channel. Now of course it wouldn't go out on Youtube.com pop anyway. It would go out on column returns, it would go out on like, TikTok, it would go out on Instagram reels if you still want to look at those. But the fact is there's no grand secret video. There's no formula because the formulas that exist right now what are the cosplay compilation videos which we've done. Nobody cares. And I don't blame you, by the way, or if you do, we're not the ones to give it to you. We are amateurs when it comes to that and why would you come to us to make that? So that's out. Then there's the interview portion. Now, interviews are fun because you get some unique insights, you know, how I feel about them. But you also may know if you've been around for a long enough. That's how we started. When we first started going to Con, the first thing we did was interviews. And if you go to a convention and you keep an eye out, you will always find fledgling YouTube channels who are trying to piggyback off of the cachet and popularity of a comic book writer or artist by doing an interview. And their audio sucks, their video sucks, their candor sucks, and I'm not ragging on them. I'm saying that objectively it isn't going to be great because it's their first videos. It's going to be lousy. Even if they have the best equipment and the most skilled actors, it's still going to be what it is, which is a relatively uninteresting video in which you ask questions on the fly of a person who doesn't want to do an interview. So we don't do those and I know that nobody wants to watch them because we used to do them and nobody watches them, so that's out. But that's also a trend you'll see from Cons. So it's like, okay, fine, none of that one. And then there's the walk the floor video which is becoming more relatively popular among those three brackets, which is just here's a GoPro in my head. You get to go to the cons, see what was there. But the reality is if you've seen one, you've seen a million of them. What's going to be there? Booths, merchandise you can't buy. Maybe you might see an artist or a writer if you go to Artist Alley. But even then, to what end? Going to the con is the fun part. If you saw a writer or artist you were excited about, you just go up to them. But in the video, you can't do that. If you see some merchandise you want to buy, you probably won't see the merch booth name, so you won't know where to buy from. So it's relatively self-defeating. And again, what will we give you that is uniquely ours? What says us about those? I think the closest thing we did was last year's video where it's mostly just seeing us in a location, which is fun, but as you saw from the views, not blowing anybody away, which, look, I'm not trying to blow you away when I'm making these videos, but I am trying to justify going and trying to generate something original and interesting and fun for you. That's my end game when it comes to going to these cons is what can we learn or get that we can then get and spin for you? And so I've been scratching my head over what to provide because the other thing is New York Comic con doesn't give press passes to people who don't make content. So you got to come up with something. And what we discovered is the video we made last year, or rather the video that we shot last year that we made this year, it was nice and it was cool, but New York ComicCon did not think that was enough. So I'm thinking I've got a few ideas. The first one is a walking tour of New York ComicCon. Now a walking tour of New York comic Con. You've seen the name probably before, but here's the difference. Here's where we make a difference. A walking tour of New York Comic Con would be, hey, it's me and Ben or, hey, it's Tiffany and Ethan. And we are walking the floor at New York Comic Con. And so it's us taking you to New York Comic Con. So it's more of a virtual experience where you get to go with us to see this show and it will be much more geared towards our kind of content. So we get to riff and talk and make jokes or observations much more unique, much more original, maybe interviews. 

Now, I know I just spent probably a few minutes bagging on interviews, but let me tell you something. We have learned a lot since then. And also we have a few rapport with members of the industry that allow for some fun content, which hopefully you have enjoyed over the years. Thanks to the lockdowns, we had unfettered access to creatives that we otherwise would never have been able to reach and have as a result, forged relationships with so that maybe one day we could do something like go to a con, talk to them and have a fun video as a result. So interviews not as they were, but rather, again, as they could be through the lens of comic club. And another video I'm thinking of is the Beginner's Guide to New York. Comic Con. It's just a simple video that says you're thinking about going, here's what you need. We've done this before but it's been a long time and we've been out of practice and there's a couple of updated things in a post pandemic world that we really should discuss and so there's a potential for that. But I think also in addition to having those videos, it'll be a great opportunity for you guys to see content made specifically geared from this experience and it sends a message to New York, Comic Con and Reedpop that we still know how to make promotional attention getting content that is beneficial to them and allows for us to continue to attend the show. So those are the video ideas I've got. Let me know if you like them, if you think they're the kind of stuff you'd check out over on CPR. But that's what we're thinking as far as Baltimore ComicCon is concerned. Different animal, very different show. Maybe the interview thing, but more likely it will be a walk the floor. Maybe if the tour is the way to go. It will really depend on how the videos perform from New York to how we're going to approach Baltimore. But I would love to do that walking tour. I think a walking tour of Baltimore would actually be a lot of fun because it's such a different show and I think a lot of people discount it because it's a smaller show and who goes to Baltimore. But you've heard me hype that show up for years, so you might just find something valuable from that as well. So those are my ideas. 

That's the Con season as far as making stuff for the channels is going, Jason, my buddy, over from.... nothing. You don't know him from anything and he doesn't do anything online. Well, he's been on Vader's Quest and a number of other Terminator two Cybernetic Dawn, those episodes of back issues. Well, it looks like he's interested in dipping his toe in the YouTube waters. And so we had a chat, he and I, about what he'd like to make and how he'd like to approach it. And so it looks like he's going to start doing it. I'm hoping to get a preview of his first video in the next couple of weeks. If it goes well and if he likes it and if he gets the bug, then we're going to have to start helping his promotion. And as a result we're going to start putting him on the channel a little more, get him on Elseworlds, get him on maybe Back Issues, if he's around, if he can fly out here from Seattle. But otherwise we're going to help out Jason a little bit because he is kind of like an unofficial member of the channel by this point. That's just a little behind this very inside baseball. I doubt he even wants anyone to know that he's considering making these things, much less that he has already shot a couple of test videos that will hopefully inform where he goes from here. That's another idea. 

What else is going on? We shot a few episodes in a row, and I was very happy about that. Not in a row, like in succession on the same day, but we shot Batman Spawn Batman in one full episode. That episode is done, shot, cut, and has been on Patreon up there for at least a week. And I'm excited because Capullo and McFarlane have been hyping the crap out of their upcoming Batman Spawn crossover, which comes out in December. I thought, hey, listen, let's jump on this now before the Hype train comes to the station in December, because it's only a few precious months away. So let's have that. And it's just us talking about it. Not a lot of great behind the scenes info about those, but I still managed to squeeze a little bit of blood from those stones. So that's the video that's coming out this Wednesday. Then we did the Avengers Defenders War, which was really fun. It's another one of those classic older Marvel books, I believe. That was a really fun episode. That one's done, shot, cut, and uploaded. That will be available probably a day after. 

So Thursday, Friday, that'll be up on Patreon for you guys. And then we shot JLA American Dreams, which is the name of the trade I don't think it's the name of anything outside of the trade paperback from Grant Morrison and Howard Porter. This is the trifecta stories of Tomorrow Woman, the Key and Zauriel. They're ridiculous and fun and ridiculously fun. We are about a third, let's say no more like a fifth of the way edited through that episode. So that is not done. But it is in the hopper. It's on the timeline. I've dedicated at least an hour to cutting the show, so that'll be ready in a couple of weeks. We already pulled, what was it? Nine different shorts out of just the Avengers defenders. War. So you can find those on. Actually, in a post that we put up on the Patreon, you saw those. You'll see most of them are on TikTok, and they will come out on YouTube shortly. We're rolling out with those. The shorts algorithm has actually changed significantly. It went from being great in as much as it showed shorts to all subscribers like a regular video, but because the watch time was 100% shorter than any video that you'd put out, it hurt the algorithm. And so they changed it and then made it so that shorts were in their own algorithm. And that was going okay for a little while, but then they changed the algorithm again. And I don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it, and that's just the lamentations of a YouTuber. Why did they change the algorithm again? It was working, or at least it was, in theory, supposed to be working, but they did. And so we are just at the mercy of that. But it used to benefit us to have them come out pretty much like six days a week. Now we're down to Monday, Tuesday, Friday. That's it. Three days a week. That helps me out because it allows it limits the amount of shorts we have to put out, but also hopefully only helps the channel. 

Speaking of shorts, I would also like to start making shorts that feature segments from The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, off the Rack and Elseworlds. So you can probably imagine why those are going to be coming out hopefully on the Comic Pop Returns channel. We have none of them. We have no amount of shorts edited, formatted, or even selected. I have only the idea that I want to do that to help promote CPR and bolster the algorithm a little bit. I don't know how that's going to go. So if you happen to have any ideas for your favorite moments that include Off The Rack, elsewhere's, exchange The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, please don't be shy. Share the timestamps with me personally. Just post them in this post. Actually, if you happen to have them. I'm not giving you homework. This isn't an assignment. But if you are looking for that kind of assignment, I'm more than happy to give it to you because that's what we're looking to do. I'd like to try and start pushing shorts a little bit more on CPR and it looks like we did a community post the other day on that channel and amazingly enough, a lot of people were receptive to it. So I'm not going to argue and I think it might help. So we'll see. So that's the idea that we have for CPR. And so you've heard the plan. We've got new back issues coming out. We got plenty of shorts coming out on Kama Pop Prime. We'd like to start generating shorts out of our three flagship shows on CPR and maybe we'll start streaming more over on the new Comic Pop Plays channel. So a lot of fun stuff coming in through the hopper. Plus, of course, our plans for at least three New York Comic Con videos, maybe even one for Baltimore Comic Con. Although the fun thing is because we're going to shoot so much broll, which is to say, like non vocal side stuff, there's no way we can't also generate a fun little, like walking around, fun video like we did just this past year. So keep an eye out for that. Thank you all so much for your support and I will see you guys next time. I think we need to do a stream soon for this month, so keep an eye out. I'm thinking maybe tomorrow or maybe like Thursday, we will do a stream of me editing the JLA American Dreams episode. 

Hopefully I'll even get the damn audio working so you can hear them talking during it this time. All right? Thanks a lot for supporting us, and we'll see you guys next time.