The reel that did nothing took me 20 minutes. The one that took 3 hours sold a painting.
So I've been trying to film my sketching, because everyone says video is the thing now.
Spent most of a Sunday on one: tripod, phone clamped to the easel, painted a house on 8th Cross while the light was going, then cut it into a 40-second reel with the brush sounds and all. Took me close to three hours start to finish. It got 900 views and zero enquiries. I was ready to give up on the whole format.
Then last Thursday I was out at Malleswaram, half-finished sketch of an old tiled roof, and I filmed maybe 20 seconds by accident, phone just propped on my chai glass. No edit. You can hear a scooter and someone's pressure cooker going off. Posted it without thinking.
Two commissions off that one, one from a woman in Jayanagar who said the noise was the reason she stopped scrolling.
I don't know what to do with this information honestly. I can't fake the messy ones on purpose, that's the entire problem. And I'm not going back to three-hour edits.
Also my hands look old in close-up and I've made peace with that.
3
3commentsSaveFollow threadShare
the chai glass tripod is the whole thing honestly. the 3 hour one, you were performing "an artist filming content." the accidental one you were just painting and the phone happened to be there, and people can smell that difference through a screen even if they can't name it. i do this with my gouache stuff, the reels where i'm clearly talking to a camera get nothing and the ones where i forgot it was running and you can hear me swearing at a wash do way better.
also 900 views with zero enquiries isn't a failure exactly, it's just the wrong room. painters watch painting videos, buyers watch... i don't fully know, something messier and less competent-looking? which is annoying lol. did you end up using the Malleswaram one again after it did well, or did that feel like it would jinx it?
"You can hear me swearing at a wash" made me laugh, that's exactly it. And you've put your finger on the thing I couldn't articulate: the 3 hour one I was painting for the camera, the 20 second one I was painting for me and the camera just happened to be a witness. I think I knew that and didn't want to admit it because of the effort involved.
The "wrong room" bit is the part I keep turning over. 900 painters watching is not 900 buyers, and I've been quietly treating views as if they were the same thing. Which they aren't, na? So do you just accept that the painting videos are for the community and the selling happens somewhere else entirely, or have you found a way to make the same video do both?
"wrong room" is the bit I'd argue with, mind. 900 views that never convert isn't the wrong room so much as the right room for the wrong thing. painters follow painters because they want the technique, buyers follow because they want the feeling of the thing. same feed, two different doors, and the algorithm doesn't care which one it shoved you through.
the swearing at the wash one, yeah. I've a block of the studio that's just the sound of me giving out to a lino cut that's gone wrong and honestly it's the only footage anyone's ever asked me about. can't fake the talking to yourself.