Leo's tone has changed recently, and not surprisingly. He had a moment of wondering whether to continue his current work, making videos to sustain the project. He concluded he will now make only videos he wants to, in service to his own vision. Between the lines, that means he has encountered the reality of life by YouTube, in which audiences want certain elements, and huge audiences are not guaranteed.
To make a living, that means satisfying veteran viewers and also trying to attract new ones. It leads to aggressive, semi-hysterical titles and thumbnails, which are the keys to clicks. I noticed recently that he began to add exclamation marks to his titles, which I (ahem.) disapprove of. But he seemed to have quit that. Perhaps it felt unseemly to him, too.
He puts out, in addition to his finely crafted YouTube stuff, a barrage of shorter vids for smartphone viewing. Creation of such videos takes much longer than anybody would believe.
No wonder he looks tired. Tally Ho, for all else it is, is a maintenance nightmare built at a time of cheap labor, shipyard refits and disposalble commercial vessels. Of his love life, he is reticent in the British tradition, and it is of interest to me how he shields what's-her-name, whose presence really helps his story. She makes a good addition, but it must be complicated.
I think Leo made jackpot figures during his rebuild, which he spent like an artist on his dark materials. His views, formerly ranging from 500k to the millions, are down, as is to be expected. The return to Europe via the Canal ought to get big numbers, but the issue will be what story they tell. There are scores of excellent cruising sagas in which paradise is attained, and the realities of the cruising life made pretty clear. And everybody is now an expert producer, with good equipment and a story sense refined by success.
Leo was a dreamer and his project is now come true. it was among other things a course in boatbuilding with a cast of marvelous eccentrics. The future will now depend on new revenues, and like any business he will have to adapt to a new model, which I take to be sailing a famous yacht hither and thither to meet interesting people and cope with what comes.
Lots of competition for that. It will be interesting to see how he does. I'm not so sure he is really willing to give people what they want to see, or that the entertainment business interests him as much as making things for himself.
I recognized the valve-lash segment as primarily a subject for a video, rather than answer to a need. That's new. It is getting below-average number of views.
