Heya!
I've just taken a look at your pumpkin-carving video.
Pros
- Great choice of music!
- I like artistic stuff and have never carved a pumpkin, so I went into this interested to see how it's done. It's the kind of content I like to see.
Cons
- The sound quality is very echoey/muffled and has a harsh edge to it. I know that's hard to avoid indoors but if you can do anything to reduce that, then you might want to try. Filming outdoors can help, so long as you're not in a breeze or have traffic noises nearby.
- Visually it's quite pale/yellowy/beige. Perhaps it's worth going for a bit of visual interest, such as putting a house-plant on the kitchen counter beside you and replacing the clock with a fairly large, colourful picture. Videoing during the day when you have more natural light may also cut out the yellow tint.
- The main body of the video is of the side of your body doing the carving. The composition of the scene is also a bit off - the bowl is partially blocking the view, and as I said earlier, the colours are mostly on the yellow-orangey side, which feels a bit unbalanced. The lighting's also quite dark.
- By the time the video's 3 minutes in, all you've done is cut out the stalk, so nothing very interesting has happened by this point. That's a long time to keep a watcher waiting, especially when you consider that a lot of pumpkin-carving videos are out there. On this point, the video's very long considering what you're doing. Having finished watching the video, I think it could have been condensed down to about 3 or 4 minutes. Maybe 5 if your commentary is interesting.
- You fuss a lot about carving the pumpkin: about seeds, about a carving knife that bends, about your camera not working, about your struggles with getting the cat image to stay on the pumpkin. Mentioning the occasional thing like this is fine (that adds humanity to your narrative), but I got a strong impression that you didn't really know what you were doing. Perhaps you didn't - it sounded like this was your first attempt - but being able to convince your audience you're feeling confident about what you're doing is key!
- Your ending presentation of the finished carving is very garbled. I think the carving itself looks great! But overall you seem unconfident about it.
I know that's a lot of points, and it's only about one video, but I hope this feedback helped.
