I notice that a lot of “YouTube vanlifers” don’t like to peel back the curtain and show how the sausage is made. I’m not a real vanlifer, so I don’t mind doing it at all.

Years ago I watched a documentary about how food is photographed for commercials. Hot spotlights can melt food, and depending on lighting and cameras, it can be difficult to capture images of food that resemble the same way we perceive it in real life. You’ve probably heard some of the tricks, like using glue instead of milk in bowls of cereal and engine oil instead of syrup on pancakes and waffles. Ironically, the better food looks in a commercial, the less edible it probably is.

I suspect there’s a lot of similarity between that industry and the creation of vanlife content on YouTube. As a newbie to the YouTube world, I can tell you that you can “do” stuff or you can “film” stuff, but you can’t do both at the same time. While I can’t say for sure, I’d hazard a guess that the more fun it looks like someone is having on YouTube, the less fun they’re actually fun.

I was reminded of these recently during our trip to Arkansas to see the eclipse. During our drive we were listening to news radio and one of the guests we were listening to offered some general advice to listeners: “watch your first eclipse, try to photograph your second.” It’s old news to say as a society we’ve forgotten how to live in the now. Anyone who has been a concert in the past decade and found themselves not only looking at the band onstage but thousands of phones being held up in the air knows what I mean. Some people would rather capture a moment than experience it which, ironically, causes them not to experience it in the first place.

Despite the advice we heard on the radio, I couldn’t help but pull out my iPhone and attempt to record the eclipse. The best footage I got of the event was from my GoPro, standing on a tripod and pointing at the crowd. The few seconds of footage I captured with my phone didn’t capture anything that resembled what we saw. The dramatic pictures I saw later online, taken by people with more photography skills and knowledge than I possess, did a good job of capturing what totality looked like, but none of those photos captured what it felt like. No picture taken that day captured the odd feeling it produced. They say at least 50% of the people who experience an eclipse in totality will cry; I thought that was the dumbest thing I had ever heard… until it happened to me. When totality ended, the crowd we were standing in spontaneously erupted in applause.

The point of all this is I’m learning that to make a good YouTube video, things have to be planned out. The day to day stuff I do, that all of us do, doesn’t make for good videos. The next time you’re watching a video on YouTube — yes, even mine — how their camera started recording right before they woke up in their van. Think about how those shots of people pulling into or out of parking spots are done. Again, I can tell you that the best “spontanous moments” happen when people are wearing microphones, everybody is in shot, and the lighting is perfect.

Anyhoo — most of the clips in this week’s videos were unplanned and spontaneous, which means they were probably more fun for me to experience than for you to watch. I hope you find them at least moderately entertaining. I hope you find me at least moderately entertaining.