View counts are just numbers, true. However, to me they are important numbers.
VIEW COUNT: 0
Sometime between 2005 and 2006, I was sent a link to a short film on a video streaming website by the name of Youtube. The name of the site was insignificant to me at this time- this was just one of those many sites, I had stumbled upon up until then, that happened to stream video online.
About a year later, after messing around with video mode on a dodgy old 3mp digital still camera, filming odd shenenigans with friends and documenting our skateboarding adventures, I had composed a few short films, editing together pieces of poor quality but nonetheless entertaining footage.
This went on for some time, and I was indeed by this point a regular visitor of Youtube (though it had not yet reached the popularity it has today). However, it was a small whim that sparked within me that I expand the audience of my short films. My friends with whom I filmed these fun, amatuerish videos were my audience: this was probably a grand total of 3-4 fans and viewers.
So, small audience as it was, I decided, hey, perhaps double, even TRIPLE this number could form my audience. So I got a Youtube channel and posted a video or two of we young scallywags rolling around on skateboards and having a jolly good time. I didn't think many people would enjoy viewing such videos who didn't know us.
But surely enough, a few Youtubers must've found my videos interesting over the next year or two, and I eventually pulled in around 15,000 viewers by the end of 2008.
VIEW COUNT: 1,000 (per video on average)
So things were looking good; 1000 viewers on average per video uploaded was an improvement on a mere 3-4 person audience. I continued making and uploading films to Youtube, though the skateboarding/ messing around on camera formula was getting old, so I decided to flex my filmmaker's muscle and start making more serious, more thought out films. I have now dabbled in making short drama films, odd surrealist shorts, and have uploaded a serious of comedies and vlogs. Though something had changed, since I moved from making rough skate montages, towards more scripted, narrative films for Youtube.
VIEW COUNT: 0-50 (per video on average)
This is when the sad realisation hit me. I had turned my back on my audience. The silly, amateurish style of my earlier films had attracted a lot of views, and hence my effort to develop a more mature filmmaking style lost me my loyal viewers.
So today, I upload videos which I put more effort into than ever to produce and edit, and expect to get no more than 20 views in the first fortnight. But that's okay, I tell myself: I'm making the films that I want to make, and as long as I'm making honest expressions of myself in my films, and am enjoying myself, nothing else matters.
And this is true. But sometimes I really wish perhaps 30,000 other people could stumble across a video of mine and appreciate them.
