A Quick Guide to Chroma Key Background

The world of video-making owes much of its magic to small leaps of innovation. One of these leaps is the use of the chroma key background, which most people know by the more colloquial term—green screen.

Chroma key, also known as green screen or blue screen, is a cool hack for seamless visual storytelling, allowing content creators to replace backgrounds with any image or video they want. This technique is widely embraced in film, television, and online content, and has opened the door to limitless creative possibilities. Aside from its ability to maximize creativity, it is also cheap to employ and convenient to set up, which has made it a staple for everyone who works with visuals.

In this simple guide, we’ll delve into the fundamentals of the chroma key effect, how it is used for video making, and how to leverage that as you perfect your visual content.

YouTube Video Background Creating realistic video scenes at your will is easy to complete with Filmora green screen removal.

Create Video Backgrounds Create Video Backgrounds Learn Green Screen

How Does Chroma Key Work?

Chroma Keying is done by singling out a specific color (usually green or blue) from the foreground, removing it, and replacing it with a different background (for example, a sunset). This process typically follows a series of steps:

• Background Selection:

A solid, single-color background, often green or blue, that contrasts well with the subject must be used. The color chosen should not be present in the subject or any props in the camera field to avoid unintentional transparency.

• Color Keying:

This requires the use of specialized visual effects software to key out the chosen color. The green or blue background is designated as transparent, making everything of that color see-through. The software distinguishes between the keyed color and the subject, creating a mask for the transparent areas.

• Foreground Filming:

This involves filming the subject against the live chroma key background. During filming, the chosen background color (green or blue) won’t appear in the final result due to its transparency. The subject is captured as if separately from the isolated background.

• Post-Processing:

In post-production processing, the editor takes the keyed-out color and replaces it with the new background of their choice. This step creates the illusion that the subject is in a different setting or environment. The transparent areas become filled with the chosen background which, if done right, results in a cohesive and visually appealing composition.

Why Green?

Theoretically, the chroma key background can be any solid color. However, the most commonly used colors are studio blue and bright green, with the latter far more common.

The choice of background color depends on the specific requirements of the production and the colors present in the scenes being filmed.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Contrast

The less similar your chosen background color is to natural skin tones, the easier to isolate and replace in your footage. Bright green provides a strong contrast to most human skin tones and is less likely to be present in costumes or natural surroundings, making it easier to isolate subjects during the color separation.

Luminance

The color green emits light with greater intensity than blue, allowing for far more effective isolation by cameras during filming. This also means that blue screens demand increased lighting for proper exposure compared to green. This situation may be less than ideal if you lack powerful lighting or you don’t have the big bucks for them.

Digital Sensors

Many digital cameras and sensors are more sensitive to green wavelengths, resulting in cleaner and more accurate color keying during post-processing. Modern technology has also evolved to optimize for a green background, making it a more practical choice for the chroma key effect.

Wardrobe and Set Design

Bright green occurs less naturally in costumes and set designs than other colors, making green the optimal choice for reducing the likelihood of color spill and keying issues. However, if you know your scene will have lots of green, it is probably best to film with a blue screen, so there’s less risk of color spill and less post-production work.

Setting up Your Own Chroma Key Studio

Setting up your chroma key is convenient and straightforward, but there are some key factors to consider while setting up to ensure maximal performance.

Choosing the Right Background Color

The first step in the chroma key setup is selecting the right background color to be keyed out. This choice determines your effective color separation and ensures a smooth keying process during editing. Choosing a chroma-key background color that contrasts distinctly with the subject’s colors is essential for effective color separation. This prevents unintentional transparency, color spill, and ensures a polished final result.

Lighting Considerations

Lighting is an important part of the chroma-keying process. Bold, uniform, and consistent lighting on both the subject and the background makes it easy to delineate one from the other fully. This minimizes shadows and variations in color, creating a smooth and seamless keying process. Multiple diffuse lights from different angles are often used to illuminate the green screen evenly.

Positioning/Camera

Proper subject and camera placement are necessary to ensure an even color-keying process during post-production. To prevent shadow interference, the green screen should be smooth, tense, and without wrinkles or shadows.

High-quality cameras are essential every time, especially for chroma keying. Images with better definition are easier to key, so camera quality significantly affects the outcome. Even if your camera isn’t the best, merely shooting well can ensure a clean color-keying process during editing, resulting in professional-looking visuals.

Recording Tips for Chroma Key

• Proper Lighting

Maintaining uniform and well-defined lighting during recording is essential for a successful chroma-keying process. This consistency ensures a seamless keying process during post-production.

• Keep Distance from the Green Screen

The optimal distance between the subject and the green screen minimizes color spill and allows for natural movements. Proper distance between subject and background allows for easier isolation of the background and much smoother post-editing. A recommended starting point for the issue is around 6 to 10 feet from the background.

• Subjects and Clothing

As mentioned before, the choice of costume for Selecting appropriate clothing that doesn’t match the chroma key color prevents transparency issues. Subjects also have to be positioned in such a way that there is minimal light interference and reflection. These contribute to a flawless chroma key outcome.

3 Basic Troubleshooting Strategies

• Color Spill

Sometimes, reflected light from your green background can be cast on your subject and may remain so when the background light is keyed out. This phenomenon is known as a color spill. It is usually because of uneven lighting or shooting around reflecting surfaces. Avoiding spill can differentiate between good and lousy chroma key aftereffects.

Human hair is one area where color spill can show up unsuspectingly. Due to the translucency of hair, it is common for some unintended light to seep through. This allows some background visibility, which you do not want with a chroma key. This is especially notable with lighter hair colors like blond hair.

There are ways to account for this. Many video-editing software have features such as spill suppression and screen matte adjustments that can enhance the final footage. Specialized plugins also go a long way in ensuring minimizing spill. Addressing spill correction tackles unwanted green artifacts and ensures a clean keying process.

• Poor Lighting

Suboptimal green screen lighting can lead to inconsistencies in keying and editing, undermining your product. One way to avoid this is to light the screen and subject separately. Another tip, although expensive, is using multiple diffuse light sources and trying to maintain even lighting across every square foot of your scene. Super bright or dark spots can ruin your output, so it’s worth the extra effort if you don’t want to deal with problematic post-production.

• Poorly Refined Edges

Chroma keying should leave your videos with crisp, defined, natural-looking edges. But post-production editing can make all the difference if it doesn’t come out to your taste. Softening and refining edges make a smoother transition between the foreground object and the new background. Light adjustments to edge thickness and screen matte settings can also help enhance overall visual quality and add finesse to your work.

Conclusion

Green screen photography produces excellent results, and its ease of use makes it indispensable for videographers of all levels. In this guide, we’ve discussed chroma key technology, its role in the industry, and how to apply it to your craft to elevate visual content.

Chroma key, also known as green screen or blue screen, is a cool hack for seamless visual storytelling, allowing content creators to replace backgrounds with any image or video they want. This technique is widely embraced in film, television, and online content, and has opened the door to limitless creative possibilities. Aside from its ability to maximize creativity, it is also cheap to employ and convenient to set up, which has made it a staple for everyone who works with visuals.

In this simple guide, we’ll delve into the fundamentals of the chroma key effect, how it is used for video making, and how to leverage that as you perfect your visual content.

YouTube Video Background Creating realistic video scenes at your will is easy to complete with Filmora green screen removal.

Create Video Backgrounds Create Video Backgrounds Learn Green Screen

How Does Chroma Key Work?

Chroma Keying is done by singling out a specific color (usually green or blue) from the foreground, removing it, and replacing it with a different background (for example, a sunset). This process typically follows a series of steps:

• Background Selection:

A solid, single-color background, often green or blue, that contrasts well with the subject must be used. The color chosen should not be present in the subject or any props in the camera field to avoid unintentional transparency.

• Color Keying:

This requires the use of specialized visual effects software to key out the chosen color. The green or blue background is designated as transparent, making everything of that color see-through. The software distinguishes between the keyed color and the subject, creating a mask for the transparent areas.

• Foreground Filming:

This involves filming the subject against the live chroma key background. During filming, the chosen background color (green or blue) won’t appear in the final result due to its transparency. The subject is captured as if separately from the isolated background.

• Post-Processing:

In post-production processing, the editor takes the keyed-out color and replaces it with the new background of their choice. This step creates the illusion that the subject is in a different setting or environment. The transparent areas become filled with the chosen background which, if done right, results in a cohesive and visually appealing composition.

Why Green?

Theoretically, the chroma key background can be any solid color. However, the most commonly used colors are studio blue and bright green, with the latter far more common.

The choice of background color depends on the specific requirements of the production and the colors present in the scenes being filmed.

Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)

Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later

Contrast

The less similar your chosen background color is to natural skin tones, the easier to isolate and replace in your footage. Bright green provides a strong contrast to most human skin tones and is less likely to be present in costumes or natural surroundings, making it easier to isolate subjects during the color separation.

Luminance

The color green emits light with greater intensity than blue, allowing for far more effective isolation by cameras during filming. This also means that blue screens demand increased lighting for proper exposure compared to green. This situation may be less than ideal if you lack powerful lighting or you don’t have the big bucks for them.

Digital Sensors

Many digital cameras and sensors are more sensitive to green wavelengths, resulting in cleaner and more accurate color keying during post-processing. Modern technology has also evolved to optimize for a green background, making it a more practical choice for the chroma key effect.

Wardrobe and Set Design

Bright green occurs less naturally in costumes and set designs than other colors, making green the optimal choice for reducing the likelihood of color spill and keying issues. However, if you know your scene will have lots of green, it is probably best to film with a blue screen, so there’s less risk of color spill and less post-production work.

Setting up Your Own Chroma Key Studio

Setting up your chroma key is convenient and straightforward, but there are some key factors to consider while setting up to ensure maximal performance.

Choosing the Right Background Color

The first step in the chroma key setup is selecting the right background color to be keyed out. This choice determines your effective color separation and ensures a smooth keying process during editing. Choosing a chroma-key background color that contrasts distinctly with the subject’s colors is essential for effective color separation. This prevents unintentional transparency, color spill, and ensures a polished final result.

Lighting Considerations

Lighting is an important part of the chroma-keying process. Bold, uniform, and consistent lighting on both the subject and the background makes it easy to delineate one from the other fully. This minimizes shadows and variations in color, creating a smooth and seamless keying process. Multiple diffuse lights from different angles are often used to illuminate the green screen evenly.

Positioning/Camera

Proper subject and camera placement are necessary to ensure an even color-keying process during post-production. To prevent shadow interference, the green screen should be smooth, tense, and without wrinkles or shadows.

High-quality cameras are essential every time, especially for chroma keying. Images with better definition are easier to key, so camera quality significantly affects the outcome. Even if your camera isn’t the best, merely shooting well can ensure a clean color-keying process during editing, resulting in professional-looking visuals.

Recording Tips for Chroma Key

• Proper Lighting

Maintaining uniform and well-defined lighting during recording is essential for a successful chroma-keying process. This consistency ensures a seamless keying process during post-production.

• Keep Distance from the Green Screen

The optimal distance between the subject and the green screen minimizes color spill and allows for natural movements. Proper distance between subject and background allows for easier isolation of the background and much smoother post-editing. A recommended starting point for the issue is around 6 to 10 feet from the background.

• Subjects and Clothing

As mentioned before, the choice of costume for Selecting appropriate clothing that doesn’t match the chroma key color prevents transparency issues. Subjects also have to be positioned in such a way that there is minimal light interference and reflection. These contribute to a flawless chroma key outcome.

3 Basic Troubleshooting Strategies

• Color Spill

Sometimes, reflected light from your green background can be cast on your subject and may remain so when the background light is keyed out. This phenomenon is known as a color spill. It is usually because of uneven lighting or shooting around reflecting surfaces. Avoiding spill can differentiate between good and lousy chroma key aftereffects.

Human hair is one area where color spill can show up unsuspectingly. Due to the translucency of hair, it is common for some unintended light to seep through. This allows some background visibility, which you do not want with a chroma key. This is especially notable with lighter hair colors like blond hair.

There are ways to account for this. Many video-editing software have features such as spill suppression and screen matte adjustments that can enhance the final footage. Specialized plugins also go a long way in ensuring minimizing spill. Addressing spill correction tackles unwanted green artifacts and ensures a clean keying process.

• Poor Lighting

Suboptimal green screen lighting can lead to inconsistencies in keying and editing, undermining your product. One way to avoid this is to light the screen and subject separately. Another tip, although expensive, is using multiple diffuse light sources and trying to maintain even lighting across every square foot of your scene. Super bright or dark spots can ruin your output, so it’s worth the extra effort if you don’t want to deal with problematic post-production.

• Poorly Refined Edges

Chroma keying should leave your videos with crisp, defined, natural-looking edges. But post-production editing can make all the difference if it doesn’t come out to your taste. Softening and refining edges make a smoother transition between the foreground object and the new background. Light adjustments to edge thickness and screen matte settings can also help enhance overall visual quality and add finesse to your work.

Conclusion

Green screen photography produces excellent results, and its ease of use makes it indispensable for videographers of all levels. In this guide, we’ve discussed chroma key technology, its role in the industry, and how to apply it to your craft to elevate visual content.

Personal Evolution: Building an Enduring YouTubing Identity

How to Build Your Personal Brand on YouTube

Shanoon Cox

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

How can you build a personal brand on YouTube that stands out?

YouTube is oversaturated. If you do comedy, fashion, gaming, vlogging, or any other major genre then you are competing with thousands of other channels. In order to grow you need to stand out, and that’s why it’s important to build a strong, clear, brand.

1. Your Brand is Your Unique Message
2. The Elevator Pitch
3. How to Start Building Your Brand
4. Being Consistent

Bonus Tip-Make A Creative YouTube Video with Wondershare Filmora

No Doubt, Filmora is the one of the best tools for newbie editors, vloggers and vine artists as it has all the features and tools they might be looking for. Some features make it the most reliable tool of all times. The split screen presets, royalty-free music, video transitions, filters, text templates, and advanced color tuning, etc are the first and foremost requirement of an editor who is looking ahead to build a personal brand on YouTube channel and earn some money from it.

Your Brand is Your Unique Message

Competing on YouTube is all about offering value. Viewers should be able to find something on your channel that they can’t find anywhere else. This doesn’t mean you need to bend over backwards trying toinvent brand new video ideas that nobody has ever tried before – it just means you need to focus on building your unique brand. That is what will make viewers subscribe to you instead of just watching one of your videos and then clicking away.

The Elevator Pitch

If you had 20 seconds – a short elevator ride – to describe your channel in a way that would make someone want to subscribe, what would you say?

Think about if you were trying to describe your new favorite show to a friend. You wouldn’t stop at saying ‘it’s a comedy’ or ‘it’s about lawyers’ – that doesn’t really tell them anything. You would describe the style of comedy, the personalities of characters you love, and the kinds of plots the show offers.

You need to be able to do that when you talk about your channel.

What is your style of comedy?

What is your attitude towards fashion?

What will a viewer get out of watching you make pasta that they won’t get from watching someone else make pasta?

Work on developing an elevator pitch for your channel. It will help you define your brand for yourself, and it’ll be useful if you make a channel trailer.

How to Start Building Your Brand

Building a brand should be intentional. You need to be yourself, but it’s not enough to just ‘be’. You need to create yourself.

In order to figure out what unique value you’re bringing to YouTube you’ll need to pay attention to your channel stats and comments your viewers make. It can also be a good idea to ask for feedback from friends who you know will be honest with you.

You will notice patterns. There will be things you do in your video that people consistently like more and less. The way you build your brand is by cutting out the stuff that isn’t working and focusing more intentionally on the stuff that is. If people like it when you do meme humor, for example, do more meme humor and make incorporating that in your videos part of your brand.

Banners and thumbnails are also a part of your brand. More on that here .

Being Consistent

The key to branding is consistency. People need to be able to set expectations.

For every video you do, ask yourself these questions:

Who are you?

What is your message?

What value are you providing?

Who is it for?

The answers to these questions make up your brand. They may change gradually over time – i.e. if you start making videos as a 16 year old, for other 16 year olds, then the ‘Who is it for?’ will change as you and your subscriber base get older – but in general the answers should always be the same. If your ‘message’ is positive and empowering, then it should always be positive and empowering.

When you intentionally create your personal brand on YouTube, you take charge of the message you’re sending.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

How can you build a personal brand on YouTube that stands out?

YouTube is oversaturated. If you do comedy, fashion, gaming, vlogging, or any other major genre then you are competing with thousands of other channels. In order to grow you need to stand out, and that’s why it’s important to build a strong, clear, brand.

1. Your Brand is Your Unique Message
2. The Elevator Pitch
3. How to Start Building Your Brand
4. Being Consistent

Power Tools add-on for Google Sheets, 12-month subscription

Bonus Tip-Make A Creative YouTube Video with Wondershare Filmora

No Doubt, Filmora is the one of the best tools for newbie editors, vloggers and vine artists as it has all the features and tools they might be looking for. Some features make it the most reliable tool of all times. The split screen presets, royalty-free music, video transitions, filters, text templates, and advanced color tuning, etc are the first and foremost requirement of an editor who is looking ahead to build a personal brand on YouTube channel and earn some money from it.

Your Brand is Your Unique Message

Competing on YouTube is all about offering value. Viewers should be able to find something on your channel that they can’t find anywhere else. This doesn’t mean you need to bend over backwards trying toinvent brand new video ideas that nobody has ever tried before – it just means you need to focus on building your unique brand. That is what will make viewers subscribe to you instead of just watching one of your videos and then clicking away.

The Elevator Pitch

If you had 20 seconds – a short elevator ride – to describe your channel in a way that would make someone want to subscribe, what would you say?

Think about if you were trying to describe your new favorite show to a friend. You wouldn’t stop at saying ‘it’s a comedy’ or ‘it’s about lawyers’ – that doesn’t really tell them anything. You would describe the style of comedy, the personalities of characters you love, and the kinds of plots the show offers.

You need to be able to do that when you talk about your channel.

What is your style of comedy?

What is your attitude towards fashion?

What will a viewer get out of watching you make pasta that they won’t get from watching someone else make pasta?

Work on developing an elevator pitch for your channel. It will help you define your brand for yourself, and it’ll be useful if you make a channel trailer.

How to Start Building Your Brand

Building a brand should be intentional. You need to be yourself, but it’s not enough to just ‘be’. You need to create yourself.

In order to figure out what unique value you’re bringing to YouTube you’ll need to pay attention to your channel stats and comments your viewers make. It can also be a good idea to ask for feedback from friends who you know will be honest with you.

You will notice patterns. There will be things you do in your video that people consistently like more and less. The way you build your brand is by cutting out the stuff that isn’t working and focusing more intentionally on the stuff that is. If people like it when you do meme humor, for example, do more meme humor and make incorporating that in your videos part of your brand.

Banners and thumbnails are also a part of your brand. More on that here .

Being Consistent

The key to branding is consistency. People need to be able to set expectations.

For every video you do, ask yourself these questions:

Who are you?

What is your message?

What value are you providing?

Who is it for?

The answers to these questions make up your brand. They may change gradually over time – i.e. if you start making videos as a 16 year old, for other 16 year olds, then the ‘Who is it for?’ will change as you and your subscriber base get older – but in general the answers should always be the same. If your ‘message’ is positive and empowering, then it should always be positive and empowering.

When you intentionally create your personal brand on YouTube, you take charge of the message you’re sending.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

How can you build a personal brand on YouTube that stands out?

YouTube is oversaturated. If you do comedy, fashion, gaming, vlogging, or any other major genre then you are competing with thousands of other channels. In order to grow you need to stand out, and that’s why it’s important to build a strong, clear, brand.

1. Your Brand is Your Unique Message
2. The Elevator Pitch
3. How to Start Building Your Brand
4. Being Consistent

Bonus Tip-Make A Creative YouTube Video with Wondershare Filmora

No Doubt, Filmora is the one of the best tools for newbie editors, vloggers and vine artists as it has all the features and tools they might be looking for. Some features make it the most reliable tool of all times. The split screen presets, royalty-free music, video transitions, filters, text templates, and advanced color tuning, etc are the first and foremost requirement of an editor who is looking ahead to build a personal brand on YouTube channel and earn some money from it.

Your Brand is Your Unique Message

Competing on YouTube is all about offering value. Viewers should be able to find something on your channel that they can’t find anywhere else. This doesn’t mean you need to bend over backwards trying toinvent brand new video ideas that nobody has ever tried before – it just means you need to focus on building your unique brand. That is what will make viewers subscribe to you instead of just watching one of your videos and then clicking away.

The Elevator Pitch

If you had 20 seconds – a short elevator ride – to describe your channel in a way that would make someone want to subscribe, what would you say?

Think about if you were trying to describe your new favorite show to a friend. You wouldn’t stop at saying ‘it’s a comedy’ or ‘it’s about lawyers’ – that doesn’t really tell them anything. You would describe the style of comedy, the personalities of characters you love, and the kinds of plots the show offers.

You need to be able to do that when you talk about your channel.

What is your style of comedy?

What is your attitude towards fashion?

What will a viewer get out of watching you make pasta that they won’t get from watching someone else make pasta?

Work on developing an elevator pitch for your channel. It will help you define your brand for yourself, and it’ll be useful if you make a channel trailer.

How to Start Building Your Brand

Building a brand should be intentional. You need to be yourself, but it’s not enough to just ‘be’. You need to create yourself.

In order to figure out what unique value you’re bringing to YouTube you’ll need to pay attention to your channel stats and comments your viewers make. It can also be a good idea to ask for feedback from friends who you know will be honest with you.

You will notice patterns. There will be things you do in your video that people consistently like more and less. The way you build your brand is by cutting out the stuff that isn’t working and focusing more intentionally on the stuff that is. If people like it when you do meme humor, for example, do more meme humor and make incorporating that in your videos part of your brand.

Banners and thumbnails are also a part of your brand. More on that here .

Being Consistent

The key to branding is consistency. People need to be able to set expectations.

For every video you do, ask yourself these questions:

Who are you?

What is your message?

What value are you providing?

Who is it for?

The answers to these questions make up your brand. They may change gradually over time – i.e. if you start making videos as a 16 year old, for other 16 year olds, then the ‘Who is it for?’ will change as you and your subscriber base get older – but in general the answers should always be the same. If your ‘message’ is positive and empowering, then it should always be positive and empowering.

When you intentionally create your personal brand on YouTube, you take charge of the message you’re sending.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

How can you build a personal brand on YouTube that stands out?

YouTube is oversaturated. If you do comedy, fashion, gaming, vlogging, or any other major genre then you are competing with thousands of other channels. In order to grow you need to stand out, and that’s why it’s important to build a strong, clear, brand.

1. Your Brand is Your Unique Message
2. The Elevator Pitch
3. How to Start Building Your Brand
4. Being Consistent

Bonus Tip-Make A Creative YouTube Video with Wondershare Filmora

No Doubt, Filmora is the one of the best tools for newbie editors, vloggers and vine artists as it has all the features and tools they might be looking for. Some features make it the most reliable tool of all times. The split screen presets, royalty-free music, video transitions, filters, text templates, and advanced color tuning, etc are the first and foremost requirement of an editor who is looking ahead to build a personal brand on YouTube channel and earn some money from it.

Your Brand is Your Unique Message

Competing on YouTube is all about offering value. Viewers should be able to find something on your channel that they can’t find anywhere else. This doesn’t mean you need to bend over backwards trying toinvent brand new video ideas that nobody has ever tried before – it just means you need to focus on building your unique brand. That is what will make viewers subscribe to you instead of just watching one of your videos and then clicking away.

The Elevator Pitch

If you had 20 seconds – a short elevator ride – to describe your channel in a way that would make someone want to subscribe, what would you say?

Think about if you were trying to describe your new favorite show to a friend. You wouldn’t stop at saying ‘it’s a comedy’ or ‘it’s about lawyers’ – that doesn’t really tell them anything. You would describe the style of comedy, the personalities of characters you love, and the kinds of plots the show offers.

You need to be able to do that when you talk about your channel.

What is your style of comedy?

What is your attitude towards fashion?

What will a viewer get out of watching you make pasta that they won’t get from watching someone else make pasta?

Work on developing an elevator pitch for your channel. It will help you define your brand for yourself, and it’ll be useful if you make a channel trailer.

How to Start Building Your Brand

Building a brand should be intentional. You need to be yourself, but it’s not enough to just ‘be’. You need to create yourself.

In order to figure out what unique value you’re bringing to YouTube you’ll need to pay attention to your channel stats and comments your viewers make. It can also be a good idea to ask for feedback from friends who you know will be honest with you.

You will notice patterns. There will be things you do in your video that people consistently like more and less. The way you build your brand is by cutting out the stuff that isn’t working and focusing more intentionally on the stuff that is. If people like it when you do meme humor, for example, do more meme humor and make incorporating that in your videos part of your brand.

Banners and thumbnails are also a part of your brand. More on that here .

Being Consistent

The key to branding is consistency. People need to be able to set expectations.

For every video you do, ask yourself these questions:

Who are you?

What is your message?

What value are you providing?

Who is it for?

The answers to these questions make up your brand. They may change gradually over time – i.e. if you start making videos as a 16 year old, for other 16 year olds, then the ‘Who is it for?’ will change as you and your subscriber base get older – but in general the answers should always be the same. If your ‘message’ is positive and empowering, then it should always be positive and empowering.

When you intentionally create your personal brand on YouTube, you take charge of the message you’re sending.

Shanoon Cox

Shanoon Cox is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Shanoon Cox