The Barisieur Video

Hi everyone. I thought this video was a pretty good time to write something about the channel and future plans, and it is a bit of a long one. Also I should answer the question you might have about today’s video: “Why did you make this?!”

If you haven’t seen it yet, then I’d probably recommend watching before continuing on:
https://youtu.be/UALN1ZoN6bA

The Short Answer:
Honestly it started with backing the Barisieur on Kickstarter, and I knew I didn’t want to film in my home.  It’s an experiment, and I think experimenting is very important and a part of the channel.

The Slightly Longer Answer:
The original plan was to see if I could get a cheap but fancy hotel suite for a day, but COVID made that tricky. Slowly, it started to spiral out of control as finding a location meant wanting to shoot anamorphic (intentionally distorting for widescreen - I blame me rewatching Ex Machina for that one), which meant wanting to work with someone who knew what they were doing, and then it went from having a DoP (Director of Photography) to having a small crew, and producing something that benefited from having a professional colourist work on it at the end. Which made it all pretty expensive. I know that Patreon-backed videos don’t have sponsors, but for an experiment like this, I honestly wanted to reduce the amount of money lost making it. This won’t be a regular occurrence, but I didn’t necessarily want you all to feel like you were suddenly financing this kind of nonsense (unless you would like me to make more stuff like this?)

It makes no sense to have made this (an absurd overproduced review of a bedside coffee maker), but in doing so I learned a huge amount. I wrote my first script (well…  a bit of a script, the whole thing isn’t scripted), it was my first time directing a crew of film professionals and I learned a lot about lighting and creating an image.

Also - here’s the contest to win the Barisieur (it also comes with a wireless charging pad, I can’t remember why - it didn’t make it into the video because of thematic conflict!): https://gleam.io/UO8vh/win-the-barisieur-by-joy-resolve

I’m rambling on a bit, so apologies there. Hope you enjoy these behind the scenes photos just for all of you lovely people.

The Future of The Channel
This always sounds so ominous, I promise it isn’t. I don’t really talk about this stuff publicly but you (as a group) make so much of what I do possible and have been such a supportive and amazing community.

I’m probably going to make less videos per month. The rate has been 5-8 per month for a couple of years now and I’m a little burnt out. I’m thinking more like 3-4 (in case you thought I was going monthly or something).

The goal is to do a comparison review every month for a while. They’re a lot of work, but I think people find them more useful (and it means more stuff to give away each month too!) and if I don’t have a great time with something then I don’t feel like I’m singling them out. I’m glad coffee stuff reviews on YouTube is getting more and more diverse. I think we need contrary opinions to prevent someone like me having a disproportionate impact on a manufacturer.

Alongside that, I’d like to try and make a more ambitious project each month, something that might involve locations, crews and other things like that. It will, of course, have great coffee as its focus and will aim to be as educational as it is entertaining. I have a few different things in preproduction, of varying levels of weirdness.

Then there’ll be maybe one of a rotating cast of the other videos I typically make - recipes, brew techniques, coffee science, stuff on roasting or more on pods or whatever it is going to be.

I think I’ve said this somewhere before, but I want to make the videos that really only I can make. Due to the support of things like Patreon I’m in a unique position to take some risks and make some things that might be fun, challenging or unusual and might bring a wider or new audience to coffee. This probably doesn’t make much sense, but hopefully after a few months you’ll get where I’m trying to go. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll just try a different approach.

Anyway - I hope you enjoyed today’s video and let me know your thoughts on this rambling post. As always - thank you all for your support, I’m very grateful.

James