elainebansilcapstone

[elainebansilcapstone]

Reflection

What were your thoughts about your research topic going into the first week of the semester? My thoughts about my research topic going into the first week of the semester was that I wanted to know how to work around the social media algorithms to prevent burnout from happening. I made content before and was never consistent with it because I didn't know how to come back from a burnout phase.

What are your thoughts now about your research topic and your project/practicum? My thoughts now about my research topic and my project is that there is definitely solutions to preventing burnout. However, I would like to say that there is no way to completely get rid of burnout, it is something that happens sometime in your life while working. Knowing how to move on from it is what I learned from my project and there are ways from my research that helps work around it. I discovered how important rest really is, as well as, knowing exactly what you need to do instead of thinking of what you think you can do is important.

What did you learn about yourself as a creative through this journey? What I learned about myself as a creative through this journey is that being perfect slows me down and that it isn't important to be too perfect all the time. I was letting myself down by being too into the details of things. I also learned that I thought I could do a lot when in reality I can't and that's okay. I don't have to be doing the most all the time. I can do things little by little.

What did you learn about the creative and production process? I learned that it really is a lot of hard work and dedication. It isn't easy at all. It may look easy from the outside, but the time it takes to plan things out is a long process before you can even move towards producing anything. Making sure the plan is set before producing anything helps time move along efficiently. Creativity really forms when you do things you like to do rather than doing what everyone does. The post-production phase of producing anything can take such a long time, making sure to find ways to be more efficient in doing things is important.

What advice would you give new senior capstone students? My advice to give new senior capstone students is to do things as early as possible. You don't realize how much time you have left when you do things later than you planned. You find yourself running out of time when you wanted to work on a project and do it well. Making sure to have time to do it well and not just last minute is important.

Where to now? I will be implementing what I learned from this experience. I will continue working on the strategies I learned from my project on my actual social media accounts. I'll work on content creation while developing my portfolio.

[elainebansilcapstone]

Update #7

Whatʻs been happening over the past 2 weeks? I have gotten out of my burnout rut that lasted for three weeks. I have since uploaded instagram reels and youtube shorts for the last two weeks. The above YouTube short being the upload for today as I type this update.

Whatʻs coming up for the next 2 weeks? I am working on my last week of the self study and compiling the results from the self study. Comparing my experience with feelings of burnout and combatting it as a content creator with the research I had done last semester in the pre-capstone class. I will compile the information into one video that explains what I had learned and my current solution to keeping up with making content while not burning out so fast.

Hiccups/Hurdles/AHA moments: For me, my AHA moment was during my burnout rut I had. While in that state, it really occurred to me how important it is to know what your brand values are as a content creator before you even start making content. This is important because coming up with ideas and actually wanting to make that content all the time is important. You have to actually like what you are making to be doing it all the time or else you find yourself stuck when you don't know what to make or finding the idea not matching with previous content. This for me is one reason I probably burnt out for so long. It also made me realize how hard it genuinely is to be a solo content creator because it really is a full-time job. You have to pre plan videos, where you want to film them, which platforms to post it on, what your title is gonna be, what your thumbnail will be, etc all before a video is even produced. It's more than just pressing record on a camera, editing it a bit, and uploading it. A hurdle for me would be only sticking to one editing software which was premiere pro in this case. I say that is a hurdle only because it means making a very time consuming edited video, at least for me. I tested this out by editing on a mobile editing software, capcut, to speed my editing process up so that I didn't spend so much time on editing a video. It definitely saved me so much time and I will definitely continue not strictly sticking to Premiere. I'd use it for more of my videos that I'd like more polished depending on what story I'm trying to tell.

Visual documentation of the progress: I have shared my youtube analytics and on the views from certain videos from this past week. I uploaded two shorts that got at least 2k views. Which surprised me because the videos were both from my capcut experiment. It showed me that a video doesn't have to be too long to be engaging for social media.

Where you are on your timeline? I am right on schedule on my timeline. I am at the end of my production phase and working on my post-production work very soon.

[elainebansilcapstone]

Update #6

What's been happening over the past 2 weeks was trying to get over the hurdle of burnout. I wasn't able to upload anything until just yesterday as I am typing this. Which is the Instagram post that is presented in this update post. I gave some insight into how I've been feeling, which is helping me keep in mind how someone feels when they are burnt out with content creation. I discovered that it is important to know what you want to share, your brand values, making sure that there is at least two to three to allow for flexibility on what to make content on, so you aren't stuck in a rut for so long. As well as keeping in mind exactly who your target audience is because that way, you know what this person would want to see rather than just hoping someone will watch. This insight came to me while in my burnout phase, I couldn't answer the question of who do I want watching my content and what exactly do I want to offer them. I had thought real hard about answering this that way I don't feel so burnt out creating. In conclusion, I came to three/four brand values, which are about travel, food, and content creation/hobbies. And that my target audience is a younger version of me who desires to follow their dreams, someone struggling to handle the weight of societal expectations, and someone who hopes to travel the world, creating content, and being happy with their life experiences. So with that in mind, I am going to finally test out batch filming content these next two weeks. And keeping the amount of posts to 2 IG posts/2 YT short posts/1YT long form video a week. In the last week after these next two weeks, I will lessen the posts to 2 IG post/1 YT short/1 YT long form video to see if that does anything. Then compile all the information I have gathered from my burnout tracker and put together one final video explaining what I'd do to keep a sustainable content creation schedule and advice I'd keep in mind to prevent burnout from forming. I have three videos already lined up to post that I'm excited to share about BTS of my stop motion group project (short clip shown below), morning routine before I get started on school projects, and a storytime video on why i wanted to create content.

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[elainebansilcapstone]

Week 10 Update: (Production phased)

For the past two weeks, I finished my second control week. I discovered from tracking my burnout everyday that I spent less time working on the videos to upload. Proving tha the control schedule really did not work for me because I felt so burnt out already just following that plus working on other projects for my other classes. I was so excited to start the first week tweaking the schedule by batch filming. However, I kept postponing it. I kept pushing the task back , feeling like I couldn't get started. Spring break was supposed to be my dedicated time to catch up, but instead of feeling refreshed, I ended up not filming at all. I woke up always tired and would wake up later in the day than I'd like to. Despite actually having intention to work on videos, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Coming up for the next 2 weeks is actually batch filming for real this time. I had a lot of thinking to do during spring break because it really was stressing me out that I didn't do anything for this project. Besides batch filming, I also think tweaking my niche down instead of trying to come up with a bunch of random video ideas that don't go together will help me come up with videos to film. Especially when they are similar to each other, that way it isn't too hard to film them all in one day. I also found that since I discovered editing and filming take me time to produce, I need to be batch filming for two days instead of one and editing for two days. Im gonna test this for the next two weeks and see what symptoms I get out of this experiment. What I like about this project so far is tracking my burnout everyday because you can really tell when I really didn't feel all that great. Especially during spring break, I didn't even update anything during that whole week. Which was so unlike me because I was really on it before break. That's all I have for now, talk to you in the next update!

[elainebansilcapstone]

Week 8: Update #4 (Production)

For the past two weeks, I've been following the control content schedule from CHATGpt. I've been storyboarding, filming, editing, coming up with video ideas, and uploading the posts to Instagram and Youtube. Coming up for the next 2 weeks is tweaking the content schedule after trying out the control content schedule. I found out what didn't work with me and what needed to change for the schedule to work out better. I can't wait to see if that does anything until the next update. The moments that I was discovering with my project was not having dedicated days for filming and editing on top of doing homework and school projects. I found myself doing a lot of the filming and editing on the actual upload days on the control schedule. I need to try incorporating batch filming days into the schedule, so that I have a dedicated set time just for that. I was finding it overwhelming and hard to keep up with considering I had to upload 2 IG reels and YT shorts plus a long-form video to YT and time to edit it all. I am currently two videos behind on my schedule. Which means I have 6 videos to upload this week as I am typing this. I am playing catch up at the moment, but I am enjoying the creative process of this project. I found myself not really paying attention to the metrics, but the engagement has been nice. I hope to test out growing the engagement in the upcoming weeks as well. That's all I have for now, talk to you in the next update!

[elainebansilcapstone]

Week 6: (Pre-Production Sprint) [Update: #3]

For my third update: I spent the past two weeks clarifying with Professor Sharla my new plans for my project. My AHA moment: I was confused at first as to how to execute my project where I wasn't the one making the schedule to follow. I used the help of ChatGPT to help me form a content schedule to follow based on what a great content creator would use. I felt that I had a better understanding of how to go about my project after that. I have made a content calendar, I made a storyboard for my intro video, and I am currently working on the branding of the social media accounts. For the next two weeks, I will follow what it suggests and track any symptoms of burnout I may feel throughout the process and tweak what doesn't work. I am a week behind my timeline, but I'm pushing through to catch up.

[elainebansilcapstone]

Week 4 - 5: Planning (Preproduction) [Update: #2]

My second update: These past two weeks, I was finding my original proposal kinda challenging. I was in a different headspace when I proposed it and now I found that I was getting lost with what my plans were supposed to be. I had thought of a different approach that I wanted to do that still pertained to my research of content creation burnout and sustainable mitigation strategies. I had decided to develop a different approach. I chose to shift the structure to be more of a study on sustainable content creation, investigating whether alternative strategies, such as reduced posting frequency, batch content creation, and community engagement, can maintain audience growth while minimizing creator burnout. I talked to fellow classmates about what else I could do for it. And I was suggested to create a documentary as the end project that shares all my findings plus including the videos I plan to post on social media. I've emailed Professor about it and I'm currently still in my preproduction phase working on the content ideas, the content schedule, and branding of it.

[elainebansilcapstone]

Week 2 - 3: Initiation (Preproduction) [Update: #1]

Since the start of the semester, I have been trying to figure out which content creators to potentially interview. I haven't narrowed it down yet because of the whole tiktok ordeal. I don't have TikTok, but still want to interview creators from that platform. I am thinking about what platforms to post videos on. I know YouTube and Instagram are definitely options, not sure if I need a third or not. What's coming up for the next 2 weeks is solidifying the platforms I'm going to post my videos on. As well as, who I will be interviewing and what I will be asking them. I am currently in the pre-production part of the timeline I created in my proposal.

[elainebansilcapstone]

Week 1: Introduction

Past Capstone: I chose Tirah Brings' capstone on 3D printing for prop making in the film industry because it combined creativity with technology in a way that stood out to me. Her video series, Let's Print: From Pixels to Physical, documenting the entire process of creating a 3D-printed prop, was especially inspiring since similarly I wanted to create a video series. I was also drawn to her topic because 3D printing was used in movies like Coraline to make stop-motion characters which fascinated me.