Youtube Channel
Full history
In 2008, I had my very first experience making a video for YouTube. I used our family channel, and did a couple of LEGO videos. You can embarrass me by watching them here. I also made a few other videos and some stop motion content on my own, which didn't get published. I created a channel for myself in 2012, which was mainly for school videos. It was here that I started to progress in my filming abilities, and storytelling instincts, though to say I had room for improvement would be an understatement.
Finally, in 2016, I decided I wanted to try actually creating content somewhat regularly. My channel originally had the username "Cloud Killer Koopa Troopa", following the name I went by on a different app which involves a long, unrelated story. I went by this name for a few years, uploading content now and then, and I was still using Windows Movie Maker to edit my videos just like I did back in '08.
In 2017, when my family went on a trip to visit our family in various states across the Midwest, I got a free trial of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of apps, including Photoshop, Audition, After Effects, and - most importantly to me at the time - Premiere Pro. I used this to create a video documenting our trip, which you can watch here. I continued to use Premiere Pro for a few years after that, using the student discount on their monthly subscription. It was also in this video that I started to dip my toes into drone videography (though not very well).
Eventually I realized that "Cloud Killer Koopa Troopa" was a bit of a mouthful and not really relevant anymore, so in 2019 I changed the name of my channel to "Fluffball The Wizard" in a video announcing the remodel of my channel. It was from then into the following year that my channel really started to see some improvement, such as a better intro, a real outro, standardized thumbnails and descriptions, and better content.
I've also purchased a drone called the Mavic Mini from the company DJI, who makes lots of professional grade filming equipment, specializing in drones and areal photography. I've used this to capture lots of stunning footage, some of which can be seen on my channel! When combined with the powerful color grading tools in DaVinci Resolve, I can create absolutely breathtaking works of cinematography. Here's a looping video of a Lake Tahoe shoreline from about 100ft up, and a short video of the lights on my street from Christmas of 2020.
One famous YouTuber I'm subscribed to goes by Jazza; he's an artist in Australia and does a lot of fun videos with art and creativity, and has millions of subscribers. In late 2019, he put out a contest for his subscribers to make a creative video of their own and submit it to him. Seven winners would be chosen and given their own feature video on his channel, and unfortunately mine didn't quite make the cut. However, there were several videos that he liked so much that he had to include them, so after the winners he put out an "honorable mentions" video featuring all of those videos. My video was included in that, and as soon as it was released my subscriber count absolutely skyrocketed. You can see me describing that process and laying out my plan in my reaction video that I released shortly after.
After making a few more videos and seeing increased traffic on my channel, I decided to get involved with Patreon in early 2020. This is an online organization that allows people to donate monthly to their favorite creators in exchange for tier-based rewards set by that creator, and now I am one of those creators! I haven't had a lot of activity there and can't offer big rewards since my channel is still far from fully developed, but I hope to dive deeper into this once things get moving in a more profitable direction. You can check out my page at patreon.com/davisdiercks, complete with the video on my channel that I made for it embedded in the "about" section.
Since then, I've learned much more about cameras, videography, color science, social media psychology, and more. I started using a different video editing software called DaVinci Resolve - which was originally a tool only for color grading footage, but has collected a slew of tools to make incredibly professional looking shots, and has been used in many blockbuster films such as Avatar, La La Land, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Les Misérables. My latest videos have been made using that, and I've gotten rid of the Adobe suite entirely.
In 2023, I changed my username once again, this time simply using my real name, which I plan to keep going forward. Technically the first video with this change was when I took my cardboard tube tank for a test drive in late 2022, but it was a process getting everything up to date and was announced officially in my 2023 update video.
