Matt Gray's Patreon Posts

Where to see Matt in person, and more videos in the pipeline!

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 13:10:35 +0100

Events

I'm going to be at some events over the next few months! If you see me there, come up and say hi if you'd like.

16/17th May: Superbooth, Berlin – I'm just a normal attendee, but figure some of you might be there
18/19th May: Makers Central, Birmingham
31st May - 3rd June: Electromagnetic Field Festival – I'm on the organising team
15/16th June: https://opensauce.com/ – I'm not on the schedule but I'll be there!

I will note however that it really helps if you say that you recognise me off the internet, otherwise I'll be wondering if I should know you!

What's a humble brag only Brits would understand?

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 11:10:40 +0100

Not put off by my ice cream antics, Evan Edinger invited me back for another video on his channel!

A Park Bench Throwback

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 00:50:07 +0100

I have no recollection of making this video whatsoever, but I found it interesting to see me discussing the idea for Matt Gray is Trying nearly seven years ago!

So yeah if you wondered how long that idea’ s been kicking around in my head it’s been about a decade at least!

I’ve got several more episodes in the works, including at least two with Hazards that need to be Risk Assessed Appropriately!

“British ice cream expert, Matt Gray”

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 01:44:55 +0000

Evan Edinger invited me onto his channel to help taste and rate a load of British ice creams.

Matt Gray is Trying: Biomedical Research

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 16:06:40 +0000

I can't remember when I last spend a whole day going wow like this, the research has got so much further than I would have expected!

Assembling single shot plates - Unused footage from Matt Gray is Trying: Fireworks

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 19:58:57 +0000

Matt Gray is Continuing To Try!

Fri, 23 Feb 2024 19:58:17 +0000

I've got some good news for fans of the series, I've decided to extend the run, and will be making eight episodes not four!

The original plan was to make four episodes, see how they went, and then keep going if the financials looked promising. And they do! I'm not breaking even, but after only 3 videos it's looking promising! For my last video, the combination of sponsorship, your Patreon subscriptions and YouTube ads covered nearly half the cost!

There's no video this month because the filming schedule got pushed back, but I'm still aiming to release monthly going forward.

I filmed March's video this week and had so much fun with the people who spent time with me, all of whom explained their specialisms with such wide-eyed excitement! I could have spent hours with each one of them.

How To Remove Bad Line Marking

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 17:51:26 +0000

A little extra from Matt Gray is Trying: Line Marking.

They had to remove the lines I marked (because they were terrible), so I had a go at the first step: grinding.

It's a big disc grinder on a wheely thing, and you push it back and forward for ages until you've scraped most of the resin off the ground.

In this month's video, Matt Gray is Trying: Stenography!

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 17:54:33 +0000

To the Youtubes!

The Cat is Finally Out of the Bag

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 13:42:27 +0000

Yes, today’s update nicely follows on from my last one in which I teased my new project, and briefly discussed the economics of making videos.

Going Pro & My New Video Series

Matt Gray is Trying

In each video I get to see something you don’t normally get to see, and I’m bringing you along with me!

I started by spending time with Titanium Fireworks, showing everything that goes into planning, preparing for, and firing a professional display:

Months of Planning to launch 5000 fireworks in 20 minutes! Matt Gray Is Trying: Pyrotechnics

I then followed up with having a go at road painting with Total Line Marking:

Road Painting Is Surprisingly Artful! — Matt Gray is Trying: Line Marking

How It Came About

When I was a teenager trying to work out what I was interested in or what career options were available, I found very few resources discussing science and engineering roles apart from the top-line most generic ones like Doctor, Structural Engineer, and Statistician. I ended up stumbling into broadcast engineering, which has been great fun, but my constant curiosity always has me wondering how something works, or what’s happening behind the scenes of day-to-day things.

I had the original idea in 2019. A video series in which I have a go at a load of different STEM jobs, to help showcase not only their existence, but the effort that goes into so many things that get taken for granted. And also give me a chance to have some fun along the way of course!

I’ve worked behind the camera on video productions on and off YouTube over the years, and know that to produce something compelling and good quality is very hard to achieve without help. I also know from my own tendencies, that planning, pre-production and Actually Getting Started are not my biggest fortes when working for myself. This meant that at the very least I knew I’d need a producer to get the whole thing going, and could decide if I wanted any help with the filming of it afterwards.

As with any project around this time, Just as I was about to get going, we pause for a few years due to COVID’s outbreak.

Getting Going

Along comes 2023, and I’m thinking about it again. The Technical Difficulties Adventures are doing well, and prove that people seem to like watching me have a go at things. My friend Alex J’rassic was a great help in chatting it through as I got it going. I’d been working with Jacob Trueman on Tech Dif, and learned the value of having a producer research and book activities for those videos, so got him on board working through my list of potential jobs to try.

The hard bit for me here was working out the effort-to-reward ratio. I was already reasonably sure that the project was worth trying, but how much did I want to put into this, and how much would it be worth it in the end.

Screenshot from “Thinking Digital 2009: Tom Scott on graphs, Hans Zimmer, Eurovision and tea cosies” (YouTube)

This is one of those odd occasions as “someone making silly videos on the internet” where what you’re making and how you make it is actually a business decision. Social media revenue has only ever been a tiny amount of my regular income. But spending more time on it means less time available to work.

I decided to make a 4 episode proof-of-concept pilot, and to aim for a reasonably high visual quality from the start. This seemed like a good number to be able to find its audience, and enough data for me to work out a balance sheet at the end of it to see if it showed signs of being able to fund itself.

My plan was to start off doing it affordably as I could, but allow myself to increase the budget where needed, to get both the quality and my workload where I wanted it to be. While planning the first shoot, (which will probably be January’s video), I realised that trying to present, produce, direct, welcome guests, and operate cameras all by myself was a bit too much. So I spoke to my friends at production company Penny4 a week beforehand (sorry!) to hire a camera operator.

The shoot went well but it was one hell of a learning experience, and still a lot to do at once. Then came to thinking about editing, grading and mixing the videos. I already knew I would rather have someone more experienced than me tackle those parts, and after a lot of deliberation I ended up working with Penny4 on all parts of the production process for the pilot. This sadly meant no longer working with Jacob on this, but without him I don’t think I’d have ever got the ball rolling.

So here we are now. I’ve released two of the four videos, and I’m so happy with how they’ve come out. The amount of positivity in the comments is overwhelming, especially after 4 years working on it and wondering if people would be interested in it, and I couldn’t have hoped for better.

How Long It’ll Continue

Well that kind of just comes down to business decisions. Working with many skilled people on a project Costs Money, and I certainly dont believe in the dodgy practice of paying people on exposure.

As you can see from the videos, Matt Gray is Trying is great fun for me to do. But it makes no sense for me to do it entirely out of my pocket and fund my own vanity project. As with all new businesses revenue doesn’t come in immediately, there’s inital outlay, and you have to refine your product and promotion to make sure its the right thing. I’m not expecting money to come out of nowhere, and understand that you have to build trust and prove the reputability of your product before anyone will invest in it.

At the moment, the project’s income is mostly generous donations on my Patreon, supplemented by a small amount of YouTube ad revenue. My main plan though is to fund the majority with sponsorship or adverts in future videos, and I’m represented by The Soho Agency who are working with me on this.

I intend to release two more videos: one at the end of January, and one at the end of February. After these, I’ll weigh up my options and see where it stands!

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the insight to what’s gone into planning the series, and fingers crossed I get to continue with it!

Going Pro & My New Video Series

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 13:27:13 +0000

24th June 2023

For years I’ve been asked why I don’t do “being a YouTuber” as a job, especially with the impression that there’s loads of free money in it. Well firstly, that’s not the case — there’s no free money in it — and secondly, I actually do have a video series idea that I’m now planning to work on part-time…

I’m going to explain some of the production process and how making money on YouTube works as I understand it, then share some info about the video series I’m planning.

The Self-Promo Preamble

But first, as always, here are my recent videos since my last newsletter:

Beating Brexit with Fruit, Veg and Planes

Tomatoes and other salad items became unavailable in the UK earlier in the year, including in Northern Ireland, but somehow the Republic of Ireland and the rest of Europe had loads? I went to Dublin to find out.

Game Boy Camera Photos on your iPhone or Android‽

If you’ve been following my work for a while you’ll know my favourite camera is the Game Boy Camera, which I got in 1998. I’ve finally found the thing I’ve been looking for since then: a way to get all the photos off it in one go, in seconds.

How You Can Repair Your Things!

I collaborated with Morley Kert to run a Repair Cafe in London, where we fixed things for strangers using 3D printing and other resources to hand. Morley’s Video details the repairs we did on the day, and mine shows not only the fix I did for someone who arrived just as we were packing down, but also shares ways you can fix things for yourself instead of putting them in the bin.

Matt Tries Not To Fall Over

Over on The Technical Difficulties channel our third series has just finished in which Tom, Chris, Gary and I have each been on another adventure the others didn’t know about. This time, I tried very hard not to hurt myself while learning to skateboard!

YouTube Will Make You Rich!

Fun fact: the videos on my Matt Gray YouTube channel haven’t broken even never mind profited! They cost more to make than I got back in ad revenue. And that’s been fine: I made them for fun, as a hobby, while I had a well-paying full-time job!

Here are the two main ways people make money off YouTube:

Google sells adverts around your video that viewers see before/after/during the video. Google gives you a percentage of their ad revenue.
Adverts, sponsorships, and product placements integrated into the video by the creator.

While it used to be possible to make a living off YouTube ad revenue, that is very rare now. If you’re regularly getting millions of views, your viewers are in a market share that are hard to reach, and you have very low production costs, you may be alright. Otherwise, you’re probably not breaking even.

This is the reason you will see so many content creators integrating adverts into their videos, selling merch, and offering subscription services like Patreon or YouTube memberships.

I thought I’d share how some of this works.

Making the video

Making a video takes a surprisingly large amount of time. Even if you only consider the editing stage, a good rule of thumb is that it takes at least an hour of editing per minute of finished video.

Never mind the planning: not just sorting locations, people, travel etc. but also working out a narrative so the video is compelling enough to watch all the way through.

Then it comes to the shoot itself. Setting everything up. Making sure that video, audio, lighting are all working. Doing multiple takes, getting different angles and cut-aways (the pretty close ups, landscapes, other angles etc. needed for editing to work), re-doing things because you made mistakes or need alternative options depending on what could happen later in the shoot. This means that even something a simple as a 1-person bedroom vlog could have a few hours of footage for a 15 minute video.

Making that $$$

OK, want your money from YouTube ad revenue? Google totals it up, and if you’ve made over ~£60 they’ll pay it to you at the end of the next month. If you didn’t make ~£60, it’ll roll over to the next payment date.

Want a sponsorship or advertising? Cool. That involves some work. Find someone who might like to sponsor you. Explain what your content is and what your audience is and how it may be useful to them.

Negotiate the terms of your business: how long is the agreement for, what do they want you to say, when and how will they tell you this, how long are you willing to give them in the video, who gets final say, how much will you be paid and what for?

Then negotiate the contract: does it reflect the terms of business, is it mutually agreeable, what happens if one of you doesn’t keep up your part of the deal?

You could instead do this via an agent or management company. If you work well together there could be less hassle, though naturally that will be for a fee or percentage cut. But getting an agent or management and negotiating your contract with them takes time too! And there’s no guarantee they’ll find you anything!

What’s Your Video Series Idea, Matt?

I’ll let you in on a secret: I had this idea years ago, and was just about to start making it in the beginning of 2020. For some reason that ended up not happening.

I really like learning new skills and seeing what cool things people get to do as part of their work, craft or hobbies.

Most of the videos I watch on YouTube are makers, crafters, and engineers doing their own thing. Through my work in the media I’ve been on reports or productions in a wide array of places, and thanks to working on some videos with Tom Scott over the years I’ve had an insight into a wide array of industries.

The one thing in common with all of those situations: I want to try it. I want to have a go. It makes me excited and I want to share with everyone!

OK, Why Now?

Since last summer I’ve been self-employed and working as a freelancer. It’s taken a bit of time to get used to having never done it before, but the advantage of it is I get to choose what I work on. Why not spend part of my time doing freelance work, and part of my time working on making this video series‽

I’ve wanted to do it for long enough, and the reception we’ve got for similar activity-based stuff with The Technical Difficulties has been amazing.

<figure></figure><figure>A few comments from my Technical Diffuculties skateboarding adventure</figure>

How are you going to do it?

With help. As I explained earlier, things take time, but especially on your own.

At the very least I’m going to use a producer to help plan and book some stuff in, and I would also like to use a video editor too if the costs work out. Depending on the activity I may also need a camera operator too!

I’m hoping to get sponsorships or adverts on these videos to help pay for the production costs, including anyone I may use for producing, editing, operating cameras etc.

I’ve also started a Patreon. I’m no starving artist. I don’t need your money to survive. But, if you’re financially stable, have spare money, and would like to contribute towards my video projects then you are welcome to. If you’re not financially stable, please don’t give me your money.

I don’t really fancy segregating content based on what you can afford, so assume you’ll get nothing extra by subscribing to my patreon. But I may post the odd photo or something.

When will it be released?

Couldn’t tell you. I’d love for it to be by the end of summer, but that may not be doable. There are too many uncertainties and moving parts at this stage. Nothing’s booked in.

How can I help?

I always feel a bit icky when doing any self-promo. Which is probably why I’ve written this whole long thing!

Every video creator asks you to like, comment and subscribe because it actually helps. So if you’re not subscribed to my YouTube channel already, it would be nice if you could. I’ve never been interested in the “numbers” game for numbers sake, but as a YouTuber you get judged on the number of subscribers on your channel and number of views on each video.

As an aside, the one metric I’m usually intrigued by is audience retention: how much of the video people actually watch. And fortunately that’s normally a pretty flat line for my videos, which shows when people watch it, they watch all of it!

<figure></figure><figure>Description of audience retention graphs shown to creators in YouTube Studio.</figure>

Photos from Spaaaaace

Thu, 18 Jan 2024 13:19:48 +0000

5th February 2023

Views of the Earth from space are cool. Below I share how to take your own satellite selfie, and links to several live-ish photos of Earth from space!

EPIC

A few weeks ago I uploaded this video detailing how I made a digital photo frame that shows the most recent photos of Earth from NASA's DSCOVR:EPIC satellite camera.

In short:

DSCOVR (Deep Space Climate Observatory) is a satellite between the Earth and the Sun.
It has a camera called EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera).
You can see EPIC’s photos online.
I wrote some code to display EPIC’s photos with a Raspberry Pi.
And seeing as many people asked, I was wearing Jo Franchetti’s No Worries If Not t-shirt, which is possibly my new favourite!

Several people have commented or tweeted asking if it would be possible to project these images onto a spehere to make a globe. While researching this topic, I found that Scott Manley had animated EPIC’s photos including mapping them onto a sphere. He also goes into detail about the different perspectives from the camera throughout the year, and from different points in the satellite’s orbit.

Other Satellites With Cameras

NASA/USGS have been taking photos with satellites in the Landsat program since 1972. On LandsatLook Explore, you can view its photos of Earth from 1982 to the present day, and export timelapse footage comparing the differences over time
Himawari-8 is a Japanese weather satellite in Geostationary orbit, with a view of Japan, East Asia, and the Western Pacific that takes photos every 10 minutes. You can see Himawari-8 photos in real time, or generate time lapse videos of a given day.

Himawari-8 time lapse (Low quality GIF version)

NOAA’s GOES-East and GOES-West are geostationary satellites aligned with the east and west coasts of the USA respecitvely, and take full spectrum images of the Americas. The GOES Image Viewer lets you pick a region to see photos and animations

Downlinking Your Own Satellite Selfie

In 2015 I learned about the NOAA weather satellites orbiting the Earth, constantly transmitting what they can see below. They use a protocol called APT (Automatic Picture Transmission), and like a fax machine or scanner moving across paper, they send the image line-by-line as the satellite moves over the earth.

Thanks to the increases of computer power, and development of Software Defined Radio, you can downlink the images from these satellites as they pass overhead with nothing more than a laptop and an £8 TV tuner dongle!

I had a go at recieving weather satellite images in 2015 and documented the process. If I can find the energy, I might have a go at this again and capture it on video!

Matt Gray's Patreon Posts

Where to see Matt in person, and more videos in the pipeline!

Events

More Videos

Links

What's a humble brag only Brits would understand?

A Park Bench Throwback

“British ice cream expert, Matt Gray”

Matt Gray is Trying: Biomedical Research

Assembling single shot plates - Unused footage from Matt Gray is Trying: Fireworks

Matt Gray is Continuing To Try!

How To Remove Bad Line Marking

In this month's video, Matt Gray is Trying: Stenography!

The Cat is Finally Out of the Bag

Matt Gray is Trying

How It Came About

Getting Going

How Long It’ll Continue

Links

Going Pro & My New Video Series

24th June 2023

The Self-Promo Preamble

YouTube Will Make You Rich!

Making the video

Making that $$$

What’s Your Video Series Idea, Matt?

OK, Why Now?

How are you going to do it?

When will it be released?

How can I help?

Links

Photos from Spaaaaace

5th February 2023

EPIC

Other Satellites With Cameras

Downlinking Your Own Satellite Selfie

Links