Reid Rosefelt

Here's the latest. The end of the video has a story that is actually a little painful for me to tell. I don't want all my videos to be all happy stuff because that wouldn't be honest. I'm pretty happy with the format now, except now the reflections on the glasses really bothers me. I'm going to focus on alleviating this with the next one. I don't think I'll be able to really fix it unless I take off my glasses. I don't want to do that, but I may have to. The way the thing is set up now, I can't see the monitor anyway.

Yes, the music was an experiment, but at the moment, I don't think I'll continue it for the "memoir" videos. If I'm just telling stories I should try to make it as relaxed as possible, and not look too prepared. The only thing I do in advance is to write down a series of topics. And then I do it three times. So far I've never done any editing from one take to another. These first two have been edited from one take. Going to try to do Francis Coppola today, and I'll tape another Madonna one later in the week.

It was meant to be funny. Kind of making it seem like I was on to some kind of momentous epiphany before the punchline. But maybe it takes away from the more direct storytelling. Makes it look too "produced." I'll think about it. I still think there might be times when music might add something. This surprised me. You don't know what your personal cliches are until somebody points them out to you. Thanks! That's a good note. I find it... interesting. 😄 I realize this will never get as much attention as the DSS video, but I like it better. I'll keep trying to make them better.

Does anybody have any comments about technical issues with the MOSQUITO COAST video? I tried to address issues like: 1) sound mainly coming out of right channel; 2) me not looking at the camera; 3) reflections of computer monitors on glasses. Even if you don't feel like watching the whole video, can anybody give me some notes about improvements? I tried to lessen the overall reflections on the glasses. I don't think I'll be able to get rid of the two lights, but I can get better at it by not moving so much. But I did get rid of the computer monitor reflections by covering them with black foil. Other things I did was to cut to photos, so I could edit more and tighten it up. I did use a bit of music, something I'll do more of in the future. Everything you guys say is helpful. Thanks! Working on Francis Ford Coppola now and will do another Madonna video after that.

It is really a super-rare thing for anybody to become successful on YouTube. I would consider 10,000 subscribers to be success. 100,000 is beyond imagining. Rick B has almost 3 million. But these people are kind of chained to it. They are obliged to keep churning it out for their "fans." I think Mary Spender has been doing one every day lately. 😮 I have worked long and hard for the privilege of doing nothing if I want to. And I want to save time for myself for composing and other stuff. One a week sounds good to me. Let's see if I can even keep that pace. By the way, I did put up my videos in the Coffee House.

You may not know me, but I've been active on the Deals Forum here for years. Some of you may know me as Tiger the Frog. I posted these videos on the Deals Forum because everybody there knows me. People said there might be more interest in them here. So here goes... 😄 Please let me know what you think. People on the Deals Forum pointed out a lot of tech issues on the DESPERATELY video that I've tried to address in the MOSQUITO COAST one.

I loved her, but she wasn't the easiest person to deal with. i will probably dance around that in future videos about DSS. She claims that Harvey Weinstein ruined her career... but one of her most memorable parts after her heyday was in PULP FICTION. I was very impressed with John Gielgud's memory about stuff that happened decades before. (I will do a video on him.) He said, "I remember everything up until the warrr... then it all becomes a blurrrrr." I think it's that way with all of us. I can remember all the lyrics to "Mr. Tambourine Man," but I forget what I had for breakfast. I think I have clarity about that. I'm doing it to do it. If climate change doesn't wipe out the world too soon, then maybe there will still be a YouTube twenty years after I'm gone who will listen to one of my stories and be amused by it--or it might even mean something to them. Doing these videos means my stories have the chance to live on after I do. And I've lived through times like New York City in the 70s that are kind of interesting. Making the music videos was torture. Cubase! Voicemeeter! OBS! Funky software! Arggh! Making these is a lot more fun. It's just me and the camera. Also, I have a thousand subs now, and am making progress on the 4000 hours. I'm now at 3100. So if I keep knocking these out, and invest a little time promoting them on social media, I'll get there. I don't know when, but I hope by sometime this summer. I didn't even want to be a YouTube partner in the old days, because I liked that you could just click on my videos and they would play. But now, YouTube puts ads there anyway. For me, it's the principle. Even if I only get five cents, I should get something. All my work shouldn't go to them.

Okay, here is THE MOSQUITO COAST. I did a lot of things to address the technical issues people had here with the DESPERATELY video. Let me know what you think. In general I'm still figuring out what it will be. I'm less focused on it being a performance where I don't stop talking. I don't think anybody but me cares about it. Using pictures allowed me to do a lot of editing on this. There's even a bit of Elysion at the end.

I think he's brilliant and I've learned a lot from his videos. I do think about how long he's going to be able to keep this up. The ten greatest ukelele solos! Why this Kalimba solo makes me weep!! But he always makes things interesting, knows a ton about music and production, and is quite a guitar player.

What you see is me trying to hide all the wrinkly stuff in my neck.

Do you think that's okay? I've never once gone on any of the other Cakewalk forums. (Maybe I should.) Wouldn't it just seem like I was some random guy from nowhere posting his YouTube video? Is it "music-related"? But I guess you guys think it's okay or you wouldn't be recommending it. I guess I can just do it and see if people get mad. I will wait until I have two though., Maybe I should start paying more attention to The Coffee House. "

First, I think the Rolling Stone cover was their own shoot, so... my bad. I better post that on my video. 😄 You ask a lot of questions. The involvement of Orion during the shoot was nil. I am still good friends with Nina Baron, who was at Orion at that time, but I don't remember her or her boss Fred Skidmore ever visiting the set once. I don't think they saw this as a big film. I don't think many people working on the film did either. There will be more videos and you'll understand. But this was a movie where somebody got conked on the head and got amnesia. One major member of the production team once said to me that the film had a plot "too ridiculous to be filmed." My PR firm handled the release and they trusted me and gave me free rein. I can't think of anything they told me to do or told me not to do. Fred and Nina were super supportive. And afterwards, when I closed my company, they gave me the unit publicist job on F/X, which was my second job as an on-set publicist. They were great. Fred just didn't think it would do well because A) he didn't think Madonna's fame would last and B) HONEYSUCKLE ROSE with Willie Nelson was not successful. It's too easy in retrospect to look at what he thought because nobody thought it would do as well as it did. But I believed because I was around her so much and knew all the things she had planned. STRANGER THAN PARADISE came out around the same time as this was shooting. It's been a long time, so I don't remember what other projects I was on, but I know I did ERENDIRA around that time., which was the first foreign film Miramax ever released. That was a big job. My company was just me and one other person working out of my apartment, so I didn't need a lot of clients. The focus of the channel is my entire career, so we're talking the 70s all the way until I turned in my last pressbook, Woody Allen's RIFKIN'S FESTIVAL, in May of 2020. It really depends on how interested people are. I definitely want to talk about the movie I wrote and directed with the late Adrienne Shelly in 2003, because that starred a rubber frog named Tiger. And yeah, New York City in the late 70s and early 80s was a very interesting time, and I became friends with a lot of people like Kathy Bigelow who became famous later. I worked with Redford on his film THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR so he brought me in now and then on Sundance Institute matters. Eventually he asked me to be the Publicity Consultant for the Institute. I lasted a year before I was deservedly fired, because I was so bad at that job. A learning experience. My publicity firm, Magic Lantern, took a lot of films to Sundance so I will talk about this, but also other festivals like Cannes, Toronto, Venice, and others. And yeah, if I don't get sick and tired of doing this and quit (very likely) then it will show the many ways that marketing specialty films changed from my start in NYC in 1976 and when I closed Magic Lantern in 2003. I do have opinions about what came after that, so who knows. I mainly did publicity writing from 2004 to 2020, so that's the only way I kept my hand in. Now I'm just happy to be out of it. I am pursuing music which was the thing I always loved and kept for myself. I never wanted to make money out of it, because making money out of my love for movies was really painful.

Here's the update: I passed 1000 subscribers pretty easily, but I haven't cracked YouTube at all yet. Everything is coming from the three places I put this: Facebook, here, and VI:Control. Because of this, the growth came to a halt last night. On the other hand, there are share links on YouTube video, so probably some of the FB links are coming from YT. But what you want is for people to discover it on YT and that is not happening yet. @dubdisciple 's suggestion to tweak the titles to "something honest but more clickbait" is right on the money, although I was defensive about it. So I tweaked the title just now. The Inside Story. I shot MOSQUITO COAST yesterday and I'll try editing today. If I like it, it should be up by Wednesday. If not, then I'll shoot again and it will be this week for sure. I am addressing a lot of the tech problems brought up here. One of the things I did was to cover my monitors with black foil, so hopefully you won't see the monitor reflections. Maybe you'll see black foil reflections! 😄 Once MOSQUITO COAST is up, I will hit social media a lot harder with links to the DSS one. I want there to be more than one video, so waiting a few days is no big deal. I've already scanned the photos for THE NAKED GUN, which is currently planned for video #3. They all will appeal to different kinds of people. That's the idea. Coppola is getting a lot of press now for spending a hundred million of his own money on his next film, so I am going to do GODFATHER III next. My conversations with him back them really feed into that. But that one will be a big, more serious job, so it comes after NAKED GUN, which is fun.

That is my plan. I believe that stories about celebrities will bring people to my channel. But then, once some people are interested in my style of storytelling, then they may be interested in me telling showbiz stories about people they haven't heard of As long as the stories are fun. We'll find out. 😄 I currently have 998 subscribers, so I think I'm going to pass 1000 subscribers today. But I still expect it will be a few months for me to get to 4000 hours. Seeing as how my big dream was to get to 4000 by December, that's pretty good!

I also like the way Rick is looking at the other guy in the picture.

The actual title of the thumbnail is "This Song Blows Me Away," but this is better. You would think by now he'd pay attention to the way his videos are presented in various places on YouTube.

Here's the update on today's tests. I moved the camera around and problem solved. I will be looking at the camera for the third video, MOSQUITO COAST, which should be out by Thursday or Friday. LOUISE BROOKS will be out by Monday. I can easily do two a week until I build up a stash. When people find a video, I want there to be a bunch of other ones there for them to try. Maybe after a while I will slow down to one a week, but at this point I think the more content up there the better. I can't figure out what is wrong with the sound. I'm recording with a mono mic into a Beachtek. It is going into the right channel, which is the only XLR. The left channel is for using two mics. It's output stereo. What I'm doing this weekend is that I split the channels into two files using Audacity and then I'm remixing them in Cubase. I could also just bring the two files directly into Premiere, I guess. Any suggestions about the best way to deal with this? It doesn't take long. There's no question that this is my most successful video. 298 views already, which is more than the Betty Page video from a month ago. And I now have 974 subscribers, up from 953 when I uploaded it. If that keeps up, I'll be passing 1000 very soon. A much bigger hurdle is the 4000 yearly hours. I was at 2950. In a day it's 2990. So if this keeps up I'll get to 4000 in three or four weeks. But with many videos, maybe it will be even sooner than that. I feel like I'm on my way. Thanks for all your encouragement and support.

I am sitting at my desk in front of the computer. The camera is above, like a webcam. There's no other place where I can do it in my apartment. Maybe if I'm staring directly at the camera then this will be a little different. I do want to have less reflections in general.

I love this idea, Paulo, but I'm not sure. First, I'll be uncomfortable without my glasses on. I want to see things like the microphone light blinking, so I know I'm not wasting my time. And the real truth is that while I'm not reading, I am checking out how I'm doing in the monitor. The pauses. The smirks. All part of the YouTube theatre. So I think I will keep trying to moderate the reflections.

People here are helping me in a way that only people here could ever help me. It is so appreciated. I wish I read this before I shot the next video. Oh well, people seem to like it. YouTube is really all about Search. Somebody wants to find out about a certain kind of software. They search and discover Simeon. And then they hear him play and his passion for what he does... and they are hooked on Simeon. They want to watch all his videos. The celebrities in my videos are searchable. I've been told there are a few people out there who are fans of Madonna. It will just keep adding up. I did Louise Brooks today (not a star that everybody knows, but a beautiful story) but next week I am thinking about "The Mosquito Coast" so that will be Harrison Ford and River Phoenix and Helen Mirren. On and on. I've encountered a lot of people over more than 40 years as a publicist. So many stories that I'll have to break it up. I will eventually do another 3 or 4 videos on "Desperately Seeking Susan," but I didn't want to do them all in a row, so that people think this is a DSS Channel. And I'll seed these things in social media eventually. The first goal is to get five or six of them up as soon as I can. If people discover one video, I want to have some other things around for them to try. Hopefully with not too many reflections on my glasses! You really have to be extraordinary to make it on YouTube. I don't have dreams like that, but what I was doing was not working at all. It would be nice if it would give off enough $$ to pay for my expenses in making them. And I'll still put up videos of my own music because I enjoy it, and I'll do the occasional music software video.

Thank you. Hopefully the storytelling will get people past the technical problems. But I'll try to improve that, of course. Even Rick Beato's first videos... I think it may be working. Eight new subscribers since I put it up hours ago. Normally I get one new one a day. 953 then. 961 now. Let's see if this lasts. Of course some of those may be people who liked my Emvoice video.

Thanks for the advice everybody, It's appreciated. I'm so glad I put it up here because this is the kind of feedback I couldn't get anywhere else. I already shot a second video, but I'll do some more tests before the third one. I think the one I shot today is a little bit better at me looking into the camera, but I'll let you tell me. Now that I know it's a big problem, I have more ideas for looking at the camera in the third video. First I would say that with the videos I used to do is that they would take a few hours to set up all the lights and audio and a few hours to take down. I had lights that had to be set up on heavy stands that needed sand bags, and cables that needed to be taped down. I had reflectors. All kinds of things that had to be unpacked, I had many issues with sound and was constantly working on it. So the idea of this was that I would have my camera and mic always set up and just use my Elgato lights. Hang up the backdrop (5 minutes), turn everything on and go. That's why I just did a new video in an hour. The Emvoice video was two weeks. . I am very depressed that it seems like it's read. Not one word of it is read. It's completely just me talking. I did it four times and each time it was different, because I thought of different things that I wanted to talk about. These are stories about my life. One of the things that makes this go fast is I don't have to write a script, just decide what the story is. But maybe what you're saying is that because I'm not looking at the camera, I looks like I'm looking at notes. If so, I'm going to have to do a better job looking at the camera. In terms of reflections... In the past I really did spend a lot of time trying to solve that, reading up and watching videos and then moving my lights around, and up and down. Over and over and over. I was obsessed trying to get it right. The lights are supposed to be high. You can angle your glasses. It's a sore point. I spent hours on it and was never happy. (Then I discovered that there are reflections all over the place on CNN!) So I decided with these videos, ***** the reflections. All my lights and stands are going to stay in their bags. But thank you for telling me it's a problem. I'll give it another look. It's lazy to just give up on it. Thanks for the great note about the audio. It was recorded with one mic in mono, but I think the problem is that I have very little hearing in my left ear, so I don't pay attention if I hear less on the left. I assume it's just me. Next time I'll look at the meters. Thank you! It can always be better. Video #2 should be up Sunday or Monday. I'll fix the sound at least. Hopefully you will see more improvement in Video #3, which will be out next week.

I'm not getting anywhere as a YouTuber. Sure, I'll have 1000 subscribers by March or April (currently 953) , but you need 4000 yearly hours and I only have 3000 hours. And even if I had 4000 hours, it might make me a YouTube partner, but I'd still be nowhere. The problem is that I spend weeks making videos. So I'm switching to something I can do effortlessly so I can do more of them. So yes, it's not music software, but maybe you will find my behind-the-scenes showbiz stories interesting. I'll also be talking about movie marketing, which may be helpful to some musicians trying to figure out how to promote themselves. Let me know Larry, if it's out of line for me to put future ones here. But I feel like everybody here is a friend and they might be willing to follow me even into non-musical activities.

I don't buy Waves plugins anymore--I just buy WUP. I can get plugins from lots of companies but only Waves sells WUP.

I'm a guy who made not buying Waves into a religion, but a sampler for ten bucks does seem like a good deal. It has a few features that seem intriguing. Somebody said the sampler is similar to one in Reason. True? Definitely they ripped off the graphic design of XO. But without the rhythm patterns in XO.