Author Archives: nicopolitan

Hello vloggers and bloggers!  Today marks the first day of the traditional and original VEDA event, Vlog Every Day in April. That’s not a joke, either.

Captain Ashley and Nico will not be participating in this year’s April VEDA, but we can definitely offer some strategies to help you be consistent with your videos and complete the challenge.

• Off The Cuff - The most popular way to complete this event is to just turn on the camera and start speaking. Seriously! Say what’s on your mind and upload it every day. While this is going to give you a grab bag of content, it will take you to the end of the project very easily.
• Responder - We learned this technique from another vlogger, but a good way to always have talking material is to respond in video form to other YouTubers’ videos. It promotes them, it promotes you because you get to list your videos as responses, and it supports the very important value that vlogging provides — being social. Plus, you will find through simple searches that there are more vloggers participating in VEDA than you think.
• Scheduled - The August VEDA crew uses this technique and publicizes it to encourage newbies to vlog and to share a common conversation across videos.  While we don’t set these up in April so as to encourage “advanced vlogging” and true improvisation, this shouldn’t stop you from coming up with a calendar on your own. You’ve likely got a bunch of ideas! All you have to do is write down 30 of them and then talk about one per day.¹
• In The News - You can go all Phillip DeFranco style and talk about the news that matters to you, and what’s good about this is that news happens literally all the time. It creates a broad discussion because published news is meant to be shared, and it does give us insight into you as a person because we learn what you care about.
• This One Time - Some people are born storytellers, and maybe this is you. In that case, you don’t have to talk about what’s happening in your daily life if you’ve got some good stories to tell, whether they’re personal anecdotes or fiction and fables. After all, some of us watch vlogs on our phones before bed, and who doesn’t like a good bedtime story?
• Abstract - Some videographers just have a good eye, and if you’re willing to use your vlogging time to compose colors and sounds together to communicate, you should go for it.  This technique does take a good amount of effort to pull off, and you don’t have to do this every day, but it is very rewarding. After all, it’s better to have created mediocre art than none at all, and good art always takes practice.
• Show Us Your Moves² - Karaoke, original compositions, dancing, covers, remixes, acrobatics, dramatic readings, a cappella, you name it. If you’ve got performing arts talent to span the entire length of a video, then why not share? You can even consider documenting the creative process as well.

Obviously, these are all suggestions, and there’s nothing stopping you from mixing and matching techniques to complete the project.

Are you participating in VEDA 2012? Drop a link to your channel in the comments!