TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide

How Dodford Turns Interviews Into Full Stories

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We sit down with filmmaker Danny, the creator behind Dodford, to unpack how he went from film school and viral TikTok editing tutorials to building cinematic YouTube documentaries. He breaks down the quote-only storytelling system that lets his subjects narrate their own lives, plus the money, mindset, and workload choices that keep the channel alive. 
• film school expectations and rejecting the traditional career ladder 
• the accidental TikTok niche that rewarded high quality editing 
• what short form taught him about hooks, pacing, and iteration 
• why long form YouTube felt more creatively fulfilling 
• keeping expectations low to protect authenticity 
• freelance editing as the bridge to full time creator income 
• why Patreon becomes the most reliable revenue stream 
• converting viewers into supporters without being on camera 
• building documentaries where the subject tells everything 
• creating massive quote documents and assembling scripts from archives 
• why a documentary needs a thesis rather than a timeline 
• using AI only as a last resort and still trusting the human eye 
• one person workflow, monthly upload cadence, and speed gains 
• burnout, social life trade-offs, and redefining deadlines 
• picking subjects using press cycles plus personal inspiration 
• integrity versus making something a celebrity will share 
• post-upload decompression and a healthier relationship with analytics 
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Cold Open And Welcome

SPEAKER_01

Is this doable? Can I make other people say my words? Because it's usually I'm wrong. I think this might change my life, this video, and it's the ones you least expect that always do end up changing your life.

Film School To Viral TikTok

SPEAKER_00

Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that's faceless with a face. I'm Travis, and I have an incredible guest today. I'm so excited, so excited about this. If you've watched documentaries on YouTube, you may have come across Dodford. And I'm here with Dodford? Danny. My name is Danny. Of course, it's Danny. I wanted to give people an idea of like they only know you as Dodford, but we'll get into that a little bit. If you're new here, we talk to creators all over the YouTubes and we help you grow your YouTube channel. It's so exciting to be here with someone who's doing something that I think is interesting. You're doing two things that are really cool. Um, basically documentaries, which I love documentaries, period. I think they're fascinating. Um, but you're doing it in a unique style. Before we get into that, if you're new here, hit that subscribe button. And if you're listening to the audio podcast, there'll be show notes that'll give you everything that you need to know. Um, Danny, tell me a little bit about who you are and what your channel is, and then we're gonna go into your past.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. My name is Danny. I own the channel Dodford. I'm first and foremost a filmmaker. I went to film school to study film, thought I was gonna become an editor or a director and climb the conventional ladder upwards, realized early on that I would be bored of that and I didn't want to be running coffees in an edit suite and take years and years uh working on a job that I wasn't gonna be fulfilled by. And so I started making TikToks and it was all about editing tutorials. I'd watch music videos and break down the effects and then uh reconstruct them and teach tutorials on that. It it transformed into color grading, it transformed into overall filmmaking philosophy videos. Um, but that was my start, and I found a very quick climb and rise on TikTok. It took maybe three years for me to fully transition over to YouTube, and it was a slow, staggered thing with lots of fails and lots of successes, but uh it ultimately ultimately took a long time, and it did take me a long time as well to discover my documentary taste, and I didn't know that I was gonna be making documentaries when I first started, but it's something that kind of naturally evolved into this thing. Um, and even when I started the documentaries, if you watch those old early ones from 2022, they're very different to the ones that I make now. So it's still, even though I found my thing, it's still growing and climbing. Um, but that's kind of my whole story. It's been five years, maybe six years at most. Um, but I still feel like I'm just starting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think that never really changes. Um, I mean, I talked to creators uh of all sizes and lengths of being on YouTube, and uh the learning part never ends. What were you doing before YouTube? How did you get into YouTube? So, what were you doing right before? I assume you were going to college and stuff. Actually, I went to school for video editing myself, so I know what that's kind of like. But talk to us about just before YouTube and what what made you go into like TikTok and then uh make that transition specifically.

Short Form Skills For Long Form

SPEAKER_01

Right. Well, so when I was about to graduate university, I didn't study any editing at university. It was all um like how to be a director, how to like be a filmmaker. I didn't learn anything about editing, even though I've always been fascinated and passionate about editing since I was a child. Um, but as I was about to graduate from university, there was a final task or course where we had to set up an online profile and create a show reel and essentially establish ourselves and give ourselves some credibility for employers to say, hey, this is what we've worked on at university to help ourselves get a bit of grounding before we found a job. Um and in doing that, I set up an Instagram account. And to my 30, 40 followers that were in my course, I just started making some random little tiny videos that were just um kind of tutorials for random visual effects, um, not expecting anything from it at all. But one of my flatmates at the time said, Hey, you should post this on TikTok because there was kind of, I mean, early doors, this is 2021. So TikTok had only been really been popular for a little over a year, to be honest, which is crazy to think about. Um, but at that time, yeah, it was people were still kind of finding their feet and understanding what TikTok could be. Um, and I found this accidental niche where I started posting high-quality um, you know, videos that I would spend some time on and really edit and make them feel high quality and prestige, um, which maybe didn't really exist on TikTok at that time. And I overnight, I think the first video, maybe the fourth video I posted, I went, I went to sleep with like 90 followers, woke up with 20,000. And so it was suddenly this new thing that had opened up in front of me, and it was a new door where I thought, okay, maybe this is more interesting and more fun and more fulfilling to me than the idea of just following all my uh peers at university and working their way up the industry. And so I still, in a way, I'm on that ladder in a different different way because I do one day want to be in the industry, the traditional media. Um, and this is kind of my stepping stone in a different direction, but I get to have a bit more fun and get to have a bit more control along the way. So it's it's a different way of looking at it. I don't feel like I've completely chosen a different career path, I've just chosen a different road. Um, but the YouTube kind of evolved after many, many years of eventually getting bored of TikTok because I didn't feel like it was creatively fulfilling enough for me. Something about the aspect ratio and the length and also the gamifyingness of it, where I never knew what was going to pop off and what was gonna not succeed. And I didn't like that idea of um really feeling like I had no control or having no interest in playing and learning the game enough on TikTok to try and understand how to succeed. Um, whereas on YouTube, I just kind of believed from the start, maybe naively, that if you made a good enough video, it would perform well eventually. And um that obviously didn't prove completely successful the first few times, but it didn't take too many attempts. I made one documentary um about the YouTube channel, The Corridor Crew, way back in like 2021. And that was like kind of my first true attempt where I really gave everything I had to it. Um, but that, you know, I had maybe two, three thousand subscribers at that point, but it got like 300,000 views, which was um yeah, massive, massive win. They reached out to me. It was my first true taste of what it could be. Um, but then I tried for another year or so to try and replicate that success, and it just didn't work. Nothing clicked. I couldn't really find the formula, I didn't um understand what my audience actually was, and I kept just well, listening to myself more than I should have listened to the audience. Um, but these were all things that I just didn't know I should be paying attention to, and I was still in that mindset early on where I was like, I'm just gonna make videos that I really feel like I want to watch and I believe in, which is exactly how you should be feeling, some part of your brain should be feeling all the time. Um, but I definitely listened too much of that side well early on, and ultimately couldn't ever replicate that early success. And I think it took me a long time to finally find the trajectory I'm on now. Um, maybe that taught me some lessons that helped me down the road, and you have to fail a lot and a lot and a lot. Um, but I'm ultimately very happy with the outcome and the way that my journey has progressed.

SPEAKER_00

Do you think that the experience on TikTok in any way helped you or hindered you uh learning YouTube? Because, you know, at that time, this might even have been right around the time YouTube shorts were still just kind of new. Um, but TikTok's always been short form. So you come into a short form and go into long form, which are two completely different things, but you might be able to take some things away from short form. Was there anything that you took from TikTok that you brought to YouTube that even that you maybe still use to this day?

SPEAKER_01

Um, I think that being a short form editor first taught me how to be a better editor. There's one thing when you're just working on short form, at least in my output at that point, I was making hopefully more than a video a week. So maybe two to three videos a week. And just in working at that rate, even though they're short, um, just starting and finishing multiple projects every single week and putting it behind you and iterating and learning from those lessons, that was a huge benefit for me at that point, where um I was it felt like I was expanding my toolbox in various different directions um tenfold over and over and over again. And that could I couldn't, I don't think I could have done that if I was working um for longer on less projects on YouTube, for example. And so just doing on TikTok where I felt like I could just be really hyper highly passionate about one thing for three days, finish it, put it out, forget about it, but still learn all those lessons I did. That was a great place. And I think maybe just because TikTok and short form has to be faster, you have to be more um as an editor, you've got to have an insight in how to engage an audience from the first frame. People say it's the first two seconds, but like that first frame when it first loads is has to, you've got to pay attention to that and understand why that type of thing uh would keep someone in. Um, and so I think that perspective, that mindset has lingered, has lasted on my channel now. I definitely um, I mean, when I first started making long-form YouTube videos and they first started succeeding, they started doing really well. But I would go home to my parents' house, my mom would be like, uh, I just can't really understand what's going on. You know, she'd watch the you know the 20-minute Adam Sandler video, but she'd be frazzled by it because even though it's an extended 20-minute piece, I've using my short form brain to create that. And um, I'm since then I've been juggling this thing where those early videos on YouTube were very successful, but also the users, the the audience satisfaction from the people like my mum who can't really process it because it's all happening so fast. I'm trying to balance those things. So now you watch my my videos. I'm hoping that you'd um recognize that there's more of a drawn-out professional feel to them where they're I'm not forcing you to pay attention every 30 every five seconds. Um, and it's not this frantic energy that's gonna just bog you down. It's more of this uh I'm trusting you to understand why you should stay. Um, but that's something that's taken a long time to figure out.

SPEAKER_00

I'd be interested to see if uh, because I'm an analytic nerd, um, what your percentage of people watching on television is. Um I guess it could be pretty high compared to most channels. Uh do you ever look at that?

SPEAKER_01

I I don't well, I'm not really a data nerd at all. I don't really pay attention to any of it, which is uh maybe that's interesting to you, but I don't I don't really know. I think, yes, maybe it is uh a large chunk. I don't know how it's changed or grown or or gotten smaller over the years, but I'd imagine it's only grown. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean YouTube in general, it's become a big thing. It's like the most streamed platform on television. It's kind of your your content. I mean, it's above like Netflix and stuff, and your content's perfect for television and the length is kind of perfect for television. I'd be, I think um, probably you you may not learn much from it specifically because you're already kind of making the content that way. But I think content creators that are kind of coming up and trying to figure out what their content strategy is, if you have like documentary style stuff, you need to be thinking about the television because that's where a lot of your your viewership's gonna come from. So if I had to guess, I bet television is pretty big for you. Let me ask, um, so you get into YouTube, you first you you kind of touched on this, but I really want to get back to the expectations. You come from TikTok. I'm sure you've had a couple of successes by the time you got to YouTube, and you upload like this first video. What was your expectation of like the first video? Did you think it would pop off after a while? Like, did you come in thinking, oh, it's just like TikTok. Within two hours, I'll have 5,000 views. Like, what was your expectation?

SPEAKER_01

You know, I'm not somebody who has high expectations of my work in general. I think that uh my my advice I always try and give to people when they're first starting out is um if you're gonna put your eggs in one basket, if you've got two baskets and one basket is um expecting all the rewards and success and the best possible possible outcome from that video. And the other basket is investing all of your um emotions and your your feelings into this one project, pick that basket. And so I definitely um no matter what project I'm working on, if it's a 30-minute large documentary now or if it was a short TikTok back in the day, um, the main thing I care about is have I enjoyed making this? Do I like the finished product? Um, and what have I learned from it? So I don't really have expectations still to this day about um what I should expect because it's usually I'm wrong. Usually the ones that uh I'm like, this might be special, this might be something that's really gonna work. I think this might change my life. This video is one thing that nobody ever responds to. And it's the ones you least expect that always do end up changing your life. And I think it's part of that um lack of expectation in videos, in anything you're working on, that ends up feeling more authentic. And if you end up being a bit too uh, I don't know, relying or thinking too much about what might happen, it it influences how you're working on the thing, and people can kind of subconsciously taste that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So when you were doing TikTok, were you working like a part-time job or full-time job?

SPEAKER_01

Uh at that point, I was making most of my income from freelance editing.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, okay. So you were it was almost like um having your own pizza business, but still being a cook for like little Caesars on the side or something. So you were already in the production. Okay, so that's cool. At least you didn't have to go to like another job or anything. Was that also the case when you first started YouTube? Like, is that how you continued to make money?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I've I've never had a real job, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01

Um, it's always been doing something that I've been interested in somewhat. I've definitely had clients in the past that I've had no interest in editing for, but I needed the money. Um but yeah, even when I was if you go back and like there was a point um late 2022, early 2023, where the channel was really performing well, and that was when it was first starting to kick off. Um at that point I was still needing uh to do freelance work. I was still needing to edit, and I was at that point, it was I was editing for YouTubers, I was editing for the occasional brand. Um, and it wasn't I wasn't being able to survive purely on the channel, but that that was a kind of a I mean, once the channel started kicking off, very quickly I could start living off it. Um, but no, I've had a lot of experience working with other YouTubers and editing their videos, um, or just consulting.

Making Patreon Work Without A Persona

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So do you now it's uh probably a mixture of like AdSense and sponsorships, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, plus Patreon.

SPEAKER_00

Plus Patreon. Oh, oh, so how is Patreon working for you? Because you don't really hear about that anymore. Is that working pretty well?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, in fact, it's I would say the place I am now financially, probably the the most reliable share of my income I can have. I think that my my AdSense fluctuates so much, everyone's does, but it really, really does go up and down. And because my views kind of do the same thing, um, it's really hard to pinpoint how much I can expect from a brand deal as well. And so we try and stay a few months ahead of that and make sure that it's all this tries to be a predictable thing. Yeah, but um ultimately the Patreon I know if I have this X amount of subscribers per month, I know what to expect from it and I can pull out the same amount every single month. And so it's um definitely the best choice I've made in the past few years in terms of my brand. Um, and also it's creatively fulfilling. You know, it's types of things where I can sit down and just talk and record um something that before I wasn't able to get off my chest, or you know, a piece of information that I feel like is valuable, but I had nowhere to put it. Um, and now I can monetize it too, where and people can support me where that wasn't really something that was available, people could do before I started the Patreon. Um, it's definitely one of the best things I've done in a long time.

SPEAKER_00

So for those who don't know, Patreon's a website that you can sign up for as a creator and have people donate to you based off of really anything. Like you can say, hey, this is my YouTube channel, and if you want to support me more, go to my Patreon. And on Patreon, the website, um, they can pay you for just, you know, sometimes you give them behind-the-scenes stuff, or and it's kind of similar to memberships on YouTube, which uh launched after Patreon was around. Um, but we don't talk about it that much, and maybe we should. What and it's unusual because um a lot of the Patreons I think of are are channels that are like personality-based, so you know who you're giving to. Your channel is not you, really. Like it's all these other people, and we're gonna get into the content itself a little bit later on. But how do you get people? I I guess in a way I understand it because when I'm reading your comment section on your videos, people are in awe of what you're making. So I think they're supporting the art. But on Patreon, you almost have to be a person that people are supporting. So, how do you get people that are watching a documentary to like support you? What's the value proposition that you're giving them that makes them go, yeah, I wanna, I wanna pay on Patreon?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I think that historically there's always been two main types of Dodford subscriber. And there are the people who come in because, oh, they see a title and thumbnail that interests them or the person that I'm covering interests them. Um, but there's also a recurring chunk of people who uh know what a Dodford documentary feels like and how it makes them feel. And um, the Patreon is trying to target that group of people, and um my my my Patreon perspective has shifted since I first started because at the when I first started it, I thought a Patreon's point is to provide value. Like why would anyone pay money to you if you're not providing something in return? And so I stressed with making um all this content and behind the scenes and tutorials and packages and stuff that people could buy and download and pay for. Um, it wasn't until I made a video on the the channel uh last August, which was called The Rise and Fall of Dodford, which was a video about me. And it was the first time I'd ever covered my story. And um it was I tried to do a Dodford documentary on Dodford um in only a few minutes, but ultimately the call to action in the end was uh making people funneled to the Patreon because I was trying to do exactly what you said. I was trying to inform people of who this person is who's kind of doing all the work here, tell them my story of how I got here, um, and also the ups and downs, you know, how it's not all sunshine and rainbows doing this job, and I need a bit of help. And sometimes so the Patreon is is meant to be nowadays. I'm providing as much as I can, and every time I'm free. Um, but I want to position it in a way where people say, well, I'm saying, if you want to support me and you want to see the can the continuation of these videos, this is where you can do it. And that's kind of my approach.

SPEAKER_00

That makes sense. That's really uh that's really smart because I think a lot of people don't do Patreon because they think uh I can't, I don't have the time, or or I don't know what people would pay for. There's a lot of that, especially for even smaller creators like I don't know that anyone would pay for anything. Uh it's like the imposter syndrome for this sort of thing, and I get it, I totally get it. Um, so I mean I can get what you were thinking about and how you kind of transitioned it to the look, here's the thing. You if you like my content, this is how I'm gonna continue to do it. Otherwise, I'm gonna be editing for people I really don't want to edit for. Um, we I guess we didn't really talk about the name Dodford. What's that from?

SPEAKER_01

I grew up on a street called Dodford Lane and very well as when I was young. I just made a username called Dodford and it stuck.

The Documentary Style Only Subjects Narrate

SPEAKER_00

It's always something simple. It's always something like that, right? Um, all right, so let's get a little bit into your content now, like what you've been doing. For those who don't know and haven't seen it, go to Dodford on YouTube because it is the most interesting channel I've seen in quite a long time. I like I said, I love documentaries, and typically you have um, you know, a voice actor or a narrator either on screen or off-screen explaining what's going on screen. And while that part is the same for Dodford, the thing that's different about it, it's the person who's in the documentary that's telling their story. But what makes it so interestingly hard, and again, I've seen this comment on multiple of your videos, like, how did you do this? Like, I can't believe you were able to do this. These are just little blips and blobs of interviews from the subject. For example, uh, like I have the John Cena um one one right now. There's like a uh uh Robert Downey Jr. one, and just throughout the entire documentary, you're just taking these little clips here and there to tell the entire story in a cohesive way, which must be a nightmare to plan and figure out and get the clips and then try to put them away. I really want to hear your process of how you do this because just trying to wrap my own head around it, I assume you have to do some type of script, but the thing is, you can't really do like a word-for-word script because you have to find the words of them saying it. Take me through the process. First of all, before you take me through the process, how did you come up with this idea and then take me through the process?

SPEAKER_01

I started well, I think before I started making documentaries completely 100% in this style. If you watch my old, old videos, um occasionally I'd have a 30 second sequence where I would experiment with this idea. And in fact, there's um there's one video really, really early on my channel where I'm talking about the Beatles, and it's about this. Moment where Paul McCartney is trying to, he just pulls a song out of thin air. It just kind of comes from the ether because of a creative constraint. There isn't enough time and he has to make a song now. And he just it just happens, it emerges. And in that video, I was talking about that moment. And I was trying to do the same thing in the creation of that video. And so what was my constraint at that point? It was okay, I am going to not show my face. I'm not going to have any face cam in this video. I'm only going to have my voice. And I'm going to only use lines from existing materials. So movies and videos and stuff like that. I'm just going to pull things and make that script other people saying my lines. And that was the first time I really sat down and thought, okay, is this doable? Can I make other people say my words? If you go back now, it's kind of you see the early seeds of what was going to grow into my style now. Um and it worked. It wasn't that difficult. Yeah, it was a different process then. I'll tell you my my process now, because it is, you said it can't be word for word. It is like my scripts are 100% word for word. Um what what you read in the script, you can go through and you read it word for word for what the video is. But the way it works is I'm not writing the script before finding out what people said. I'm finding out what people said and then making the script. Oh, okay. Um, so I have 20,000 page documents, 20,000, 20,000 word documents um with everything somebody could have said about a particular subject categorized into different buckets over the years, different themes, different eras. I'm thinking about story, I'm thinking about how to transition, thinking about how what the thematic connections are between certain lines. Um and I'm just trolling YouTube. I'm I'm scouring the internet to watch every possible interview somebody has made from 1983 to 2026. You know, so I'm going through their entire career, I'm making sure I pay attention to everything they could have possibly said. Um obviously I've become very skilled at quickly searching for these types of things and knowing where to look and pulling archive from the right places. Um, but once I do that, once I have a, you know, a large document with just thousands and thousands and thousands of lines, um, that's when I can start kind of cutting it up. And by that point, I've become very familiar with how this document feels and what they've said. I've I've annotated it and noted it, and I know exactly how it's, you know, the things that stand out. And I cut it up and I rearrange it essentially into a script. So I'm not really writing anything, it's all stuff that exists, and I'm just reorganizing it to fit my story, to fit my thesis, and then cut that into a video.

SPEAKER_00

That's I mean, the way you say it, uh, I I'm following, right? But the execution of that is like Omega Brain. Like I couldn't just trying to wrap my head around watching a whole bunch of clips, and then within those clips, kind of figuring out, okay, he said this about this, and this is kind of the beginning of his story. Uh, okay, I found this next clip, and this is like 10 years later, so now I gotta find everything in between it, and then I gotta connect it in some way. Let me find those clips. Like that in and of itself, organization must be number one for you, right? Like that's gotta, you've gotta be organized.

Research Systems And A Careful AI Rule

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I would say that when it comes to my work, I'm a bit of a neat freak. And so um, there is a very polished structure and system to this, and it sometimes is as crazy as just um or as unorganized as starting a document, having 20 tabs open with different YouTube interviews and just transcribing them one by one and then pasting them into the document and then figuring out what it is. But sometimes it's a bit more polished and there's a bit more intention, and I spend a bit more time nowadays at least, I spend as much time as I can very early on in the process, where I just sit down and I think about what is this video about? Where does it start? Why does it end the way where it does, and what needs to be said. And I spend a lot of time just thinking about what doesn't need to be covered in this video, and that saves you from covering every single project somebody's worked on, or you know, their whole childhood life story, if it's not that relevant, you know, all their marriages, that type of stuff. Um, and I'm hyper focused on the specific thing that I want this documentary to cover because a documentary shouldn't just be somebody's Wikipedia page. You need to have an angle, you need to have a thesis, you need to be saying this is why this is interesting, this is what you can learn from it. And as the earliest that you figure that point out specifically, it means that you then have a lens on everything you watch. And you can watch a 45-minute ABC documentary on somebody and skim through the transcript and cut out or just ignore most of it and you see one line and think, ah, that fits in my documentary, and just highlight that one part, paste it into your document. And that saves a lot of time, but it means that you need to move that big brain energy earlier up in the process to make sure you know what you're saying uh and cutting out all the fat.

SPEAKER_00

And in some ways, wouldn't it? I don't know if you use AI, but like this would be a good use for AI to go through all the transcripts and then give you summaries. Do you do that at all, or are you you just you just do it yourself?

SPEAKER_01

Um, well, you really should watch everything with your own eyes. The way Yeah, no, I don't mean that part.

SPEAKER_00

I mean, yeah, you obviously watch it, but when you have the transcripts themselves with all the words, like that seems like a perfect opportunity to use AI to like summarize what's where and to put things everywhere, or do you just do that by hand now? Still?

SPEAKER_01

No, I prefer to do it with my hand. I avoid AI. The only time I would is if there's not much time and there's like a two-hour interview or something that I can't watch right now. I will put that into ChatGPT and say, hey, what quotes feel relevant to about this story? Um, but even then, even then, you know, the AI could say this line works really well because on paper it does, you know, like they say the perfect words and it fits. But when you watch them actually say it, the delivery doesn't quite work, or it's a joke, or somebody else says it and the and the AI doesn't know it wasn't said by that person, you know. So you still need to give your own um filmmaker's eye on it. And because sometimes you'll watch it with your own eyes as well and say, and um something will stand out that didn't happen in the transcript, like the way they look at a person or a certain glance, or you know, the way they stand up and sit down, it's a gesture, the stuff that doesn't get picked up by the AI. You need to be really being paying attention to how uh somebody just acts.

SPEAKER_00

If you had to segment each portion out from like the research to the scripting to the editing, how much time is used in each segment? Like for the idea, is that like five hours? And then is the research like 30 hours? Like, how would you do that if you had to do that?

SPEAKER_01

Um, well, okay, so my routine's a bit different this year. I'm kind of just all over the place. But in 2025, I uploaded once a month. That was 12 videos. Um, and I got got into a pretty good routine last year of from choosing the subject, two weeks from that point, I was starting to edit. And then two weeks from that point, I'd upload it. So it was two weeks research, two weeks editing, four weeks altogether. And that's working sometimes nine hours a day, sometimes one hour a day. You know, like it was all over the place. I'm really, really just working whenever I feel like it. And sometimes I might be cramming towards the end, but usually I'm above before the deadline. You know, I'll I'll give myself four or five weeks in the future and say I have to upload by now. And like I don't think I've ever, ever crossed that line. It's always, I'm always on schedule. Um, just because I know my system so well down to a T. And I used to have people who helped me on these projects, but I'm a one-man team now, and I'm much faster than I was before. I don't think necessarily I'm making better videos than I was with with them, but um I'm much, much faster as a one-man team.

SPEAKER_00

Uh that's interesting because I feel like um, you know, I've talked to a couple people uh over the last couple of months. Some that are um, it's interesting because it goes from I just talked to a guy who's still in his full-time job, even though he's a very successful channel, he could totally leave his job. He's a teacher and he doesn't even need to do that all the way up to a channel with uh 10 million subscribers. He only has two other employees. But then I talked to channels with like 500 or 600,000 subscribers and they have like 10 employees. So it's interesting to see the different mixture of this. And I and I can understand why you would definitely be on the thinner side because your artistic vision is different and your touch is different on these. So handing this off to an editor would probably be the hardest thing you would ever be able to do. It's it's hard for creators, period, to hand their stuff off to editors because they feel like a portion of their art is being given to someone else. But for you, it almost sounds impossible. But there's got to be a point where if you wanted this to be more kind of if you wanted to do more content, that you would have to either figure out how to take your brain into someone else's or have them do the rough edit, and then you put the the polish on top. Like, have you ever thought about that, or you just you just want to always do this yourself?

Burnout, Workaholism, And Creative Support

SPEAKER_01

No, I think that most YouTubers are a creator who has an editor. I view myself as an editor who has a creator who happens to be me. So I um the editing is first and foremost my main passion and the thing that always excites me about a little bit. And I would never, I can't see myself ever trading that position. So I want to be in full control of everything. I make my own thumbnails too. So I want to have all I want to have my fingers on every single section of the process. And um, even though some of the most proud things that I've worked on have been with the help of amazing help, um, when I work on something entirely on my own from start to finish, that it's a different, it's a different beast. Like it feels uh I'm I end up just looking at it a different way, and it means something more to you, you know. It ends up representing who you were at that point in life more subconsciously. And so I wouldn't ever trade the editing. Where I could have helped is in the research and the the soundbite hunting phase and um maybe like story outlining, but you know, in the actual construction of the video, that's all that's got always got to be me.

SPEAKER_00

What does this do to your social life? Like what how do you view Matt? Do you have one? Let's start there. The social life. Do people know that you exist? Uh, does your neighbor know that you ever leave your house? I mean, what are we talking about? What do you got?

SPEAKER_01

The social life is improving. I think, well, actually, I'll talk, I briefly mentioned how my process has changed this year. I think that the 12 videos last year uh took a toll on me, and it was it ended up just I don't know, the cumulative effect of all that work and all that cram and all that stress ended up weighing down on me. And yeah, I didn't think I really leave the house much. But uh this year, uh my approach is however long a video takes to make is however long it takes. And it's something that's new to me because I'm very deadline focused and I can't really get anything done historically without some pressure saying you have to get this done by now. Um, so I'm approaching this new zone now where I kind of have as much time as I want to finish something which feels like completely alien territory, but in doing so, I do have more time to think about the other stuff in my life, and that's uh it is comforting but also nerve-wracking because um I'm definitely a workaholic and I like to just sit down and get things done because it's um I'm proud of myself and it is a business, but also it's um the main thing that I feel like is healthy for me. It's all my my videos are um like a kind of a love letter from myself to the world, you know. And so I'm giving so much of myself in every video. And um if I put less focus on that, I suddenly get a bit lost.

SPEAKER_00

Do do your family and friends try to encourage you to do more stuff outside of content creation or are they just super supportive?

SPEAKER_01

They're supportive, and I think that you know I get more ideas about my channel than from people who you know are support me and my close circle, but don't really aren't really in the world than anyone else, you know, and I pay attention to those people because they're in a position where they like get me, they don't necessarily get YouTube or the channel, but like they understand what I want and what I need because they just know me. Um, and that is a really like can be a unique and a fresh take on things because if you're very in the bubble in the zone of, oh, I should only listen to creators, I should only listen to um people who are doing the exact same thing as me. Um I don't know, it can be this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy where you end up doing the wrong thing. Um or you know, they just they say the right thing for the wrong reason, you know. And um, yeah, so uh the people around me, they they definitely support and I think they they like what I'm doing because they all sit down and watch the videos once a month, too.

SPEAKER_00

So you you do a variety of people, it's not just um so a lot of people when they say niche down, they mean to a specific kind of genre of something, but you kind of cover a lot of different people, they're mostly actors, but you you've done a little bit of everything. How do you pick your subject? Is it something that that you want to discover yourself, or are they in the news and it just makes sense to kind of go after it? Or like how do you pick your subjects?

SPEAKER_01

Uh it changes. I think that it depends on how I'm feeling about where the channel is, because um, like for example, right now, the channel isn't isn't as doing as well as it has done in the past. And so my focus is what is a predictable surefire bet? And that tends to be people who are in the news. And so I just uploaded a Ryan Gosling documentary. That's because he's doing Project Hail Mary and he's everywhere right now, and it's the press. And then you've got to listen to the press, you've got to listen to the media, you've got to piggyback off all that natural uh buzz that people generate. And so that is usually the primary focus of okay, what projects are coming out at this point. So, you know, in January, I'll sit down and I'll try and vaguely pinpoint every single video I'm gonna upload in in that year to the month, to the day, because I know, I mean, the film industry is so much more ahead than YouTube. They understand they have, you know, 2027 cinema listings are already penciled in. Um, and so I pay attention to those, but it's then beyond that, it's still people who I have to feel personally inspired by and somebody I can I can unsee myself dedicating four, five, six weeks of my life to because I can't dislike them. Um, I have done that in the past where I've ended up by the end, even though I've made this kind of somewhat glowing documentary or you know, open-minded documentary on a person, I've left thinking, I'm a bit exhausted of them. Like they were just not really the person I wanted to revolve my life around for over a month. Um, and I don't really it's not that's not the most enjoyable experience, so I try and avoid that, and I try and um do a bit of early preliminary research where I think, do I like this person enough? Um, and then there's also things that are out of my control, and so there are these um kind of Dodford best bets that tend to be male. I haven't really had a successful woman subject on the chat on the channel yet, which is unfortunate. Um and also people who actors who have this contradiction between humor and darkness, so like Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, um, these people who you know have a this this sort of secret hidden edge underneath this whimsy. And I think that uh when I when I do that right, that feels like the most accurate Dodford subject that usually performs the best.

SPEAKER_00

Up to this point, have you had any of your subjects either reach out to you or or react to your content or are you aware of them seeing it?

SPEAKER_01

Not since I've gone A-list. So I early on um I did a video essay on the hot ones and Sean Evans reached out to me. I did a video essay on Nardwar, and Nardwar reached out to me. I did a video essay on Logic, the rapper, and he reached out to me. Um, but since I've gone, you know, Hollywood, no, not to my not to my complete knowledge. I've been given the emails of some people in the past that um and they say, hey, I've got the email to so and so, you know, like a really one of the people I've covered, like a massive, massive celebrity, just drop them it. And I've I've looked at the email in the past and thought, no, it's not really my position or my field. I'm not gonna hound them with my own documentary. And sometimes I don't even know if I want them to see it. You know, I'm trying to be open-minded and nuanced about this, and that means that I'm sometimes gonna say things they might not just they might not agree with or like, um, which leaves me in a position of, you know, sometimes is it is the option the best option making something that they're gonna love, which might uh, you know, do me well because they could share it or do something with it, or do I make something that I feel like is has integrity and that can um which then they might ignore. So you never know.

SPEAKER_00

So what were those interactions like with the like the hot ones and and logic? That's really cool. What what did they say?

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, it was cool. I mean, they usually just re I mean those three, I think they all reached out on Twitter and just said nice things about the video. Um the hot ones one, I think the um I re got reached out to from someone on the team of Hot Ones first, and they said, Oh, everybody at the everybody in the office is sharing this video around and watching it and watching it. Um and then Shawan Evans himself reached out to me and said some nice things. And so that was like a that was before things really started kicking off, and I had it as a career. So that was real great impetus, you know, this this encouragement to keep going. And that all happened. I think those three videos were almost back to back to back. There was also the Sidemen, if you don't know, yeah, Sidemen the Great. Yeah, yeah. I made a video on them years and years ago, and that was one of the first early videos where um like they reacted to it on their channel. Oh, crazy. And yeah, that was a big, that was a big moment.

After Upload: Rest, Comments, Then Lessons

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean that's uh for those who don't know, Simon are really huge, um, KSI led uh group of guys. Uh, KSI's an interesting dude. I would love to talk to that guy. What an interesting guy he is. Um, yeah, so uh as we're about to land the plane here, we talked right before we went on stream that you had just finished uh the Ryan Gosling video and that you're kind of taking it easy here. Talk us through the process of like you hit publish. Like what happens from that point to the next time that you start to do a project?

Inspiration From Film, TV, And Music

SPEAKER_01

I hit publish on a video. Well, I've by that point the scheduled video has gone live. Um first thing I'll do is usually sit my ass down, crack open a beer and and play some PlayStation, and try and forget about what I do for a living for three days. And that means that means I don't check YouTube Studio. I don't, I have no uh I have no space in my mind for what the out of 10 is for the first sometimes the first week. I don't really want to pay attention to that because it fluctuates so much, and I've sometimes got too emotionally attached to it being a high number or a low number, and then lo and behold, four days later it's completely different. Yep. Um, and so I just completely ignore it. You know, I'm trying to the most I'll do is I hit upload, and for the first hour or so, I will check the comments occasionally, and I'll respond to one or heart a few, and I'll just get a general reception of what those core you know notification subscribers think about the video because they're the people who have been and understand my whole journey early on. I want to hear what they think about things. Um, but the the more a video grows and the longer it's been up, in my experience, the worse the comments get. And because it's going out of your field, it's going out of your bubble, and that can is a good thing because now you're getting new newcomers, but it means they don't always understand uh how the dot the videos should be and you know how how you've got there. Um and then eventually I'll start putting my analytics brain back on, or put my cap back on, and think about okay, uh, which of these thumbnails performed best, what can I learn from that? Um, should I be paying attention to any other statistics? But I don't, I'm not a data person, and maybe that's uh held me back over the years, but it's not something that I'm interested in really. And I want to just make something that I mean the biggest data or analytic, you know, and analytics that I pay attention to when I finish a video is I watch it back and where do I feel like, oh damn it, I'm I could have squeezed that forward a bit more, I could have changed that in some way, or I shouldn't have even included that, you know. And that's the biggest thing that I can actually take on to the next thing. And so I'm um always paying attention to what's coming and trying to disregard, you know, being too focused on what's happening now, because I mean that's what I always say, it's like um the best way to avoid that anxiety of checking the current video too much is like I'm already so excited about not only the thing I'm working on next, but what's coming after that, what's coming after that. And I have such a pipeline ahead of me that I'm passionate about, and I know that I'm gonna use all these lessons to work on and make these great banging videos. So, like it's this idea of you don't even know what's coming. Like, I'm working on something that you're not gonna believe. Whether or not that ever lives up to that expectation in my head, it's a different story, but I'm so excited about it that I'm Not paralyzed by the analysis now.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I love that. Um, lastly, who are some you I assume you watch YouTube? That's a now that sounds like an obvious question, but I literally just talked to someone who's super successful and doesn't watch YouTube. So I assume you watch YouTube.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, occasionally.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, occasionally. Who are the channels that you either like to watch or are inspiring to you?

SPEAKER_01

I've just pulled up YouTube now to see what comes up on my homepage.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, who's on your homepage?

SPEAKER_01

Tom Scott's just re-uploaded. He's a great guy. Uh it's bad because I really should. There are definitely are some names that come to mind that I'm forgetting right now. Um well, I don't know. The editing podcast I might watch sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, maybe this is bad. I just don't really I don't really watch YouTube. Most of my inspiration just comes from traditional media, you know, or my life.

SPEAKER_00

Who who is then who on in traditional media is someone that like inspires you or that you really appreciate?

SPEAKER_01

Well, my favorite like directors would be um well, a bit of Scorsese, a bit of Spielberg, a bit of Tarantino, or like the main three. Um Severance was a big was a big inspiration when I watched that.

SPEAKER_00

I just turned another friend on. I've watched the first season like five times because every time I have a new friend, I have them watch and I watch it with them. And I just continue to see. It's amazing. It's an incredible show. Incredible, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. And I think even that show has influenced on my editing style. You know, I use a lot of dissolves and crossfades because you know, that show did that so well. Um yeah, I don't really know. I it's just it's hard when people ask what am I inspired by, it's hard to pinpoint it down because I think that I just absorb so much subconsciously without knowing exactly what it is that's going in my head. Um, and like I said, it's mostly mostly just me. Like music is a big thing, actually. I will I listen to a lot of music, and um I mean music's a massive element in my videos, and um I've kind of kind of ruined music for myself because every single time I listen to a song now, I think, how would this feel in one of my videos? And it it's kind of got in the way of just enjoying the music for the sake of it. Um, but music's a massive thing, and that really inspires me. And I'll listen to a song and just imagine how that scene could go. Um, what kind of emotions or what kind of point in someone's life would that really cover? Um but besides that, it's just me, it's my own personal experience. If I'll experience something in my own life, that will make me think of what kind of documentary subject or what kind of um even just theme in a documentary that I enjoy covering. And if you go through my channel, and if I watch back my own channel, um real personal things that I was going through or am going through is directly covered almost one-to-one in my videos. And I've specifically chosen one subject over another because it's almost like therapy. And um that's yeah, like I said, it's a massive thing for me where it feels like this emotional baggage gets released or um sometimes gets worse, but most of the time it means I'm getting something out there that I don't really have any other way or vessel of saying besides just making a video. That's incredible.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I I love what you're doing, I think it's amazing. If you do a Ben Stiller where you talk about how he went from goofy to severance, I'm all aboard on that. I'm watching that one from day one, minute one you uploaded. I I would definitely watch that.

SPEAKER_01

I will think about it. I definitely will.

Wrap Up And Where To Find Him

SPEAKER_00

Because that's an interesting one. That's a guy who went from really goofy uh comedy to a very intense, serious, amazing show. So, yeah, 100% would watch that. Uh, but Danny's here, and we appreciate you for coming on through. If you're listening to the audio podcast, there'll be links in the show notes to check him out. If you're watching on YouTube, of course, in the description. We thank you so much for joining us, Danny. And uh, I just can't wait to see what you do next. What an incredible idea for and concept for something that I think is a really amazing documentaries. So if you're interested in checking them out, there'll be some links in the description, and we'll see y'all in the next one.