For my Digital Artefact I made the decision to delve into video making and YouTube in particular as a means to create comedic content. In summary, the digital artefact is a YouTube commentary channel that relies on fast-paced editing and witty jokes about a specific topic every fortnight. The aesthetic of the videos remained the same throughout its duration however the topic of each video varied in topic drastically from fears to peculiar Facebook marketplace listings.

One of the biggest changes I would’ve made looking back on the project’s concept and methodology is definitely opting for a shorter style of videos and potentially on a different platform such as Tik Tok or even Instagram, this is because with the schedule of a uni student it was increasingly difficult to create a consistent routine to edit, write a script and record. This is where I feel having shorter videos would benefit most as they’re not only significantly easier to prepare and easier to digest and get exposure for given the current popularity of Tik Tok. This definitely resulted in a loss of interest and motivation to complete videos as the semester progressed, stagnating it’s upwards trajectory and slowing down it’s growth. 

Following uploading a video I would frequently promote each video on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter as a means to garner views and feedback. Polls on Instagram were also used to crowdsource and garner content ideas (as seen in the Facebook marketplace idea). Another key learning moment experience in this process was realising that using Reddit was a more efficient means of receiving the same information, this was done via asking for feedback and reviews across multiple sub reddits targeted towards growing YouTubers and through this I was able to gather feedback from an entirely new audience who was completely detached from me personally, this was critical as one of the main flaws with promoting videos from my personal social media accounts is that the main audience was friends and family who ultimately provided feedback I wanted to hear, this new audience allowed me to create a feedback loop by providing constructive criticism for future videos by dissecting the flaws in the editing and production of my videos and commenting it.

One of these iterations that were caused by this feedback loop were background music in videos, at first I had no music playing in the background until an Instagram user suggested it in a story post, however I quickly learnt from a Reddit user that the following video that used the music had the volume too high that it contested the voiceover audio to which I fixed in the next video. Feedback such as this was imperative in the improvement of my DA. 

In conclusion that was my digital artefact, a YouTube channel that’s main utility was to provide entertainment amongst an already large commentary community on the platform. Although the channel’s trajectory stagnated towards the end of semester it was still able to create a feedback loop on a multitude of platforms and provide an array of learning moments as it progressed throughout its development.