A Philosophy-Themed Cooking Show?
A monthlong experiment in content creation and communication
Everybody has dreams.
Some have a legitimate chance of becoming reality, others do not.
Some dreams are noble.
Others are not.
I had a dream. One that I’ve talked about for years and year and years, yet never capitalized on. Until a month ago, when finally I turned that dream into a reality.
I’m from a long line of chefs, cooks, bakers, and regular people who just make really good food. Due to faulty genetics or just lack of interest, I’ve never quite shared their love of the craft—and especially not their skill level.
Despite (or maybe because of?) this, I’ve always dreamed of having a satirical cooking show. I loved the idea of having a show where the host makes a mess, is super awkward and hilarious, and generally acts like they aren’t Martha Stewart. It would be an inspiration to viewers world-wide; the idea that if that chick—covered with flour and dripping with tomato sauce and forgot to turn on the timer—could make some edible food, then so could they.
Last month was the month: the fake cooking show idea took physical form for the very first time.
What I did:
Over the course of April, I consumed some content—1729 minutes (almost 30 hours) worth of content, to be exact. This was in the form of videos, podcasts, articles, and a 30,000 word essay series.
I needed a way to consolidate and re-package all these newfound thoughts and ideas in video format. I was racking my brain, trying to come up with a unified, understandable way of presenting such diverse, heavy information in just four short five-minute videos.
The 3-2-1 structure came to me first: three main ideas, two new questions, and one actionable takeaway. In my mind, this summed up the essence of philosophy—learning ideas, asking questions, and then acting on the new information and questioned assumptions.
The idea to marry this philosophy-themed content with my satirical cooking show idea did not seem like an obvious choice at first by any means. But the more I got thinking of it, the more parallels I could draw and the more food analogies I could make and all of a sudden—it was decided.
3-2-1 Philosophy Is Fun—The World’s Only Cooking Show was born.
How I did it (and some helpful tips for others embarking on a similar journey):
First off, I had to consume the content. This normally took place in solid chunks of time in the morning if I didn’t work, but otherwise in the in-between times of driving to and from various places. One job was structured in a way that I could listen while working occasionally, but that was not always the case.
Pro-tip #1:
Uploading your video is priority. If you’re running out of time to finish your content and you still have to create a video, make the video based on the content you’ve already gone over. Then you can listen to the rest of the content while the video uploads to YouTube for two hours.
After listening to or reading all the content, taking notes, and digesting a little, I would start to write out an outline for the video. Each video needed to fit with the 321 framework, as well as the cooking show theme. At the beginning of the month, I briefly outlined how I thought each week could correlate to food (I wanted to make sure it was a feasible task to embark on). Some of the weeks stayed the same, and others drifted from that initial correlation list, but writing out initially was a lifesaver.
The second video, however, was by far the hardest one for me to think of—I struggled for a very long time. I finally realized that the only way to come up with an idea (even when you have no ideas, not even bad ones), is to go out and start talking until something starts making sense.
Pro-tip: If you think you would like to make things streamlined and easy-to-follow by adopting a similar structure to the one I did (specifically three overarching themes), be careful, again, with feeling like you have to have a mastery of all of the content before even beginning your video. Make your structure work for you, to meet your goals. Placing boundaries on your creative process can be helpful, but only if you don’t let it debilitate you.
Once I had an outline, I would write out—word for word—all the information I wanted to be presented. Even though I didn’t go off of it completely while filming, writing it down and leaving it somewhere visible helped me stay on track and remember key words or phrases (theoretically—sometimes that worked better than others).
Then, obviously, filming. I conscripted various loved ones to hold my iPhone for me because 1) I didn’t have a tripod, and 2) it was actually easier recording when there was a real person on the other end of the camera that I was “talking to” during my spiel.
After filming, editing. I did all editing on my iPhone X using iMovie. It is a little tedious, but totally doable. I noticed significant improvement in my iMovie proficiency by the end of the month after the regular practice in editing. This was the most time-consuming when I didn’t have a script as thoroughly rehearsed/delivered.
Pro-tip: know what you’re saying ahead of time so you don’t spend so much time editing.
Lastly, the most simple part of this whole process—uploading the video to YouTube. This was also my least favorite part of the whole process. I wanted with my entire being to make it upload faster, but alas, I could not. Do not underestimate the damning power of a YouTube upload when you’re in crunch time.
Pro-tip: please, please, please—if you have a deadline, start uploading your vehicle hours before you think you should start that process. If that means you have to start your whole video creation process a day early, do it.
What I learned and the skills I honed:
Confidence in front of a camera.
In my first video, I felt unbelievably awkward. This was not quite nine-year-old me and my siblings taking my dad’s video camera and filming each other being “reporters” when a big tree fell down (because that’s hot news in rural Minnesota). This was something going on my digital footprint that will be visible for the rest of my life.
Over the course of the month, it felt more and more natural to talk to the back of my iPhone. I also got a better feel for how animated and how loud I needed to speak for it to show up naturally on the video.
Video editing.
I feel like at this point, I have a very firm grasp of the mobile version of iMovie. I would love to learn a desktop editing software, but I never created enough time for myself to upload my videos from my phone before editing.
The amount of time it took for me to do the actual editing decreased over the month. However, the better I got at editing, the more relaxed I got in my presentation (because I knew I could just edit it later). That is a stupid trade-off and I would highly not recommend. However, my editing skills got more practice that way, so it works out.
How to be creative using limiting factors.
This has to do with establishing the whole 321 framework and the cooking show theme. I considered dropping the whole idea a couple times because I couldn’t think of any ways to tie it together. However, keeping those limiting factors forced my brain to come up with something anyway—enhancing my creativity, not diminishing it.
Content creation in general.
I mentioned that I’ve always dreamed of having a fake cooking show. And I always take video when I travel and do fun stuff because I’d love to get into video creation as a means of memory-making. But I’ve never just done it. There’s always been too many other things that take priority.
This was a chance to give that video content creation the priority. And it was actually fun (other than stress that I created by myself, but what else is new). I’d never created a video like that, I’d never uploaded anything to YouTube and actually kept it public, and I’d definitely never made a mini-series that tied two seemingly unrelated topics together in a way that somehow made them related. But now I’ve done it, and I’m a better person because of it.
That’s the extent of my behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the world’s only philosophy-themed cooking show!
If you’re considered starting a similar project, or have tips for me in my future videos, please feel free to reach out! I’d love to hear from you for whatever reason it may be.
Thanks for reading, watching, and listening! Drop me a comment below and don’t forget to like and subscribe! (just kidding I’m not a real YouTuber but thanks for listening anyway)
As always, happy philosophy-ing!