Every Video I Never Released (So Far)

I thought about April Fools Day for a couple of days and almost had something locked down, but I didn’t have enough time to film it. However, as I sat here this morning watching other YouTubers put up funny videos, I got the idea to release every video I’ve ever shot and didn’t publish.

I didn’t have time to really break it down beyond the introductions to each of them, but I think it’s still funny to see how much time and effort I’ve put into things that never made it to the light of day. It’s also a bit of a relief because now I can archive a lot of these projects and clean up my backlog folder since I finally did at least something with them.

There were actually a couple more that I deleted footage from or forgot to include so the real total is probably closer to 30.

Repairs to a DJI Mavic Air Drone

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Old Water Damaged Drone

This story starts back in January 2018 when I fell through the ice.  I was carrying my old drone on my back when I went into the water. The batteries took on a lot of water and haven't worked exactly right ever since. 

I figured after 2 years with the old drone, given the crazy advancements in safety, size and performance and the fact that my Old 3DR Solo drone was no longer supported by the company and the software was getting buggier with every OS Release, it was time to make the switch to DJI.

I picked up a DJI Mavic Air and what a difference. It's so small.  The app is amazing, the sensors work great and it's quieter. Anyone who complains about drones now being "loud" haven't had a drone 2 years ago from a different company.

Well, I was out in South Dakota recently and was standing way up on top of one of the Needles in the Needles District. It was hard enough to keep my balance, let alone fly my drone.  The one thing I keep forgetting about my Mavic Air is that there are no sensors on the side of it. The front, back and bottom sensors work so well that I just assume it will be able to save itself from all of my bad flying.

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Flying the wrong direction

Well, due to my concetration on maintaining my balance, I wasn't able to "get into the direction" the drone was flying and pressed the stick the wrong way on several instances until I actually slammed it into a rock.  

The drone tried to save itself (it's done it before when I ran into a tree), but wasn't able to and it fell about 50 feet.  The damage was pretty extreme, breaking an entire leg in half.  Fortunately, I had sprung for the DJI Refresh Care insurance. 

With the Refresh Care, you get 2 claims in the first year paying $69 for the first claim and $99 for the second one.  After the second claim, you're out of luck. If you don't use both claims in the first year, you can pay to extend that claim one more year.

The funny thing is, then sent me a different drone that had the opposite side repaired on it.  I damaged the left side and they sent me a drone with repair stickers on the right side on the same parts. Funny coincidence I guess. 

Check out the video for the crash and a test montage video at the end.

Computer Bench Build

I moved and I'm no longer renting so that means I can finally put down some roots and set up my office to meet my needs instead of doing whatever I can to get by until the next time I move.

So to start, I decided it was time to build a proper computer bench instead of using a random mix of plastic tables and an old oak writing desk.  The only problem is, I haven't built anything since shop class in 1997.

So, with that in mind, off we go into designing and building a corner computer bench for my office.

While waiting for a music copyright flag to get cleared, I realized I missed a part of the video and decided to just add that part and re-upload the video. The offending song was from a GoPro Quik movie. GoPro pays for licenses for the songs, but Facebook and YouTube still flag them as copyright infringement so you have to file a dispute.  Despite keeping the original song and adding another song from GoPro, this time Part 2 went up without any Copyright issues at all. Weird. Anyway, enjoy the final part below!

First Year Review of a YouTuber

Well, it's been just over a year since Flarecorp Media was founded! Happy Birthday to us! Woo! It's been really enjoyable and we've gained 61 subscribers in the first year! Hello to all of you and thank you!

The video below explains most of it (it's certainly long enough to not leave much out), but I started this YouTube Channel as an outlet for my video creative endeavors. I've been fascinated by videos and movies since i was 10 and used to steal my parents' camcorder to make little home videos.  If there was a video camera in the area, I'd walk in front of it and steal the show.  It's just always struck a chord with me.

So after years of playing around, including some serious attempts on my storm chasing website, Unreal Weather, I decided to give it a go.  I was happy seeing the quality I could produce with the Drone Christmas Lights video in December 2016, I figured I'd learned enough to at least not put out completely amateur looking stuff. 

Along the way, I've been on a journey finding out what I like to make videos of and refining my technique. I've given myself until the end of 2018 to just have fun with it, regardless of subscribers and build up a library of videos of the best quality I can make.  After that, I'll decide if I want to put more effort into it as a real business or just continue having fun.

Thank you for being here for the first year. There's some good stuff planned already for the next year. Please subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss out on it. I also put out bonus content on Facebook, so like that page to see all of that.

I'm taking a short 2 week break to recharge my batteries and catch up on somethings, but at the end of January, I'll be right back to work making videos.

Have a Happy New Year!

Christmas in the Old Market

This is a peaceful video the beautiful lights in Omaha, NE set to "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear". This is one of my favorite videos that I've made.  I was so happy with how it turned out that it motivated me to start Flarecorp Media. So this was the first official video.  We're now 32 videos in 1 year later. Thanks for enjoying our content. 

This is a re-upload of the video because I realized I didn't have a watermark on the original (I didn't think I needed them when I first uploaded it).