I stopped cleaning the studio before filming and my saves tripled

For two years I filmed from the clean corner. One square meter of clean bench, nice light from the window, everything else out of frame. Neat little reels of a finished vessel turning on a banding wheel. Perfectly fine, perfectly invisible, about 400 views each and then nothing.

In February I broke my phone tripod, so I propped the phone on a bucket of dry clay scraps and just filmed where I work, which is a disaster. Dust, a coffee cup from three days before, my grandmother's old knife I use for everything, half a head that failed in the glaze looking at the camera like it's disappointed in me. That video did 60k. Not a tutorial, not a before/after. Just me wedging clay and swearing in Valencian at a piece that kept cracking.

Since then I film the mess and I stop deleting the boring parts. Saves went from maybe 20 a post to 60, 70. But here's the part that annoys me: comments went down. People save the messy ones and don't say anything. So I have no idea if it's working, I just know my DMs are fuller and my shop had 14 orders in March vs 4 in the whole autumn.

I think what changed is there's no performance in it. Like people can smell the tidy version. But I also can't shake the feeling I just got lucky with the algorithm on one dumb video and now I'm chasing it by deliberately leaving my studio dirty, which is a very strange thing to be strategic about.

Anyway if you film your work, do you clean first? I genuinely don't know anymore.

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Kasia Nowak·3h

The part that gets me is the failed head looking at the camera. I paint pastel portraits on toned paper and I have a whole stack of the ones where the mouth went wrong or one eye sits too low, and I keep them face down in a drawer like they did something to me. So I know why nobody films that.

But here is where I half-disagree with the comments above you already answered, the thing that changed is not only the failure being visible. It is that the clean corner was a stage and the bench is a place. I would bet people saved it to see the work happen, not to see a finished vessel turn. The finished turn is just proof. The working is the part you cannot get anywhere else.

Which is a bit uncomfortable for me because my whole instinct is to show only the survivor. Anyway, the knife your grandmother used for everything, that is the detail I would keep in frame always.

Ramesh Jha·2h

Your point about stage versus place is the true one, ji. I have been painting Mithila work since I was a small girl at my mother's side, and for years when people asked for photographs I would tidy the paper, hide the old brushes, keep only the finished piece in front. Then a buyer from Delhi told me she chose my painting because in one photo she could see my mother's hand mixing the gum and the stone for the black. She said the finished piece she could get anywhere, but the hand she could not.

Still I will say this much on the other side. The failures you keep face down in the drawer, those are not only for showing. Some of them we keep because the work is not yet finished in our mind. My mother kept a bundle like that till her last day. So film the bench, yes, but do not feel you must make an exhibition of every wrong mouth. Offering some, keeping some, that also is a way of respect for the work.

Mateo SerranoOP·2h

"the hand she could not" joder, that's the whole thing in one line. and you're right that I get the instinct to hide the failures, I still do it half the time. but here's what changed for me: the drawer ones are the ones I actually learned from, so hiding them was hiding the only honest part of the story. your mother mixing the gum and stone, that photo would have sold the painting on its own. I'd say let the drawer ones out. not the same as showing off the good work. more like showing your hands, which is what she already buys.

Mateo SerranoOP·2h

joder, "face down in a drawer like they did something to me" is exactly it. mine live on the shelf staring out, which is maybe worse, like a small audience of my failures judging the next attempt.

and yes, the place thing. my grandmother's knife is in half my videos now and people ask about it more than the glaze. the bench has history on it, the clean corner had none. one is a set, the other is where I actually live.

your pastel ones, do you ever turn them back over? I keep meaning to hang a few of the bad heads and I never do.

Margaret Hsu·3h

I understand the instinct, but I'd push back a little on the conclusion. What changed in February wasn't the mess, it was the light and the angle, and more importantly the failure being in frame. A clean studio reads as a shop window. A working bench reads as evidence that someone is actually in there making things, and the disappointing half head is doing more for you than any tidy corner ever could.

I say this as someone who films almost nothing and paints at a bench that would horrify most people. The temptation when we finally show the work is to show only what survived. But the specimen sheets with the scrapped attempts still pencilled in the margin are the ones students lean over. So keep the dust and the coffee cup, but I'd be careful not to turn the mess itself into the new performance. That's just the clean corner wearing a different costume.

Mateo SerranoOP·3h

Vale, you're right and I was being lazy with the word "mess." It's not the dust that did it, it's that the failure is in the frame. The clean corner only ever showed the survivor, and a survivor with no crime scene around it looks like a product photo. Nobody trusts a product photo.

The half head is the whole thing. I keep him on the shelf now, he's basically a coworker.

Your bench that would horrify people, is it bad lighting or just bad? Because I'll take bad lighting any day, it's the bad angle that kills me. Everything I film is from chest height and I refuse to change.