Toying with Convention

Knoptop has a new video out in his series briefly titled Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know, a sort-of spin-off of his Quick FX series. It's basically a tips and tricks show, but Dave puts his kooky take on it and makes it unique. Which is really what I want to talk about.

What I like about Dave and his shows is how much he does with so little. I mean, the actual content of this episode is pretty sparse, right? He gives a cool discovery about a game built into the YouTube loading screen. It's something you could reveal in one sentence. So how does Dave make an entire watchable, entertaining episode out of this? This is where his genius lies and why I like his shows so much.

First off, Dave is very funny. The first thing he does is make a joke out of a very common filmmaking technique--cutting to a closeup. He then has a funny "reaction" to the finding of the game. Then he has the clever annotations, and so on and so forth. He always finds ways to pepper his shows with a variety of humor, which even in a simple show (like this one), makes it an enjoyable experience.

I also like the bevy of other information we get via links. Here, he plugs two web series he likes, one verbally and one in an on-screen link (look closely at the cell phone). And don't forget to read the description. There is always good stuff there not mentioned in the video.

YouTube has so much more to offer than "just" video content. Knoptop and his vids are a good example of what you can do with a little imagination, a lot of cleverness, and an bobblehead.