Community - The Video

// The Video

The difficult second album (which is actually the third video I've made for the You Are the Media Creator Day event) but it's the real 'second' video I've made following on from 'Relevance' last year which was a deeply personal and anxiety ridden video to create, although the benefits and the reception of that video eventually ended up being far greater than any stress I endured creating it.

Sorry - the difficult second album turned out to be truly brilliant. I loved making it, I loved the creative process in actually coming up with the idea and I loved sharing it.

People know what to expect now from a 'Matt King' video - there will be light moments, there will be depth but there will always be a story and I think that was the 'problem' with the Relevance video.

The Relevance video from 2025 was the first time that I'd shared my work in front of an audience where I was the subject matter - where it was my story and it was my voice sharing that story and as it was the first time I'd shared anything, it held added pressure.

In 2025, I wanted it to be brilliant for Mark (because he'd given me the opportunity) and I wanted it to be brilliant for the people watching but this year, I didn't have that pressure - it was just the pressure to have an equally high standard of video.

'Community' took just over a week to make but it was far longer 'in the making' in my brain.

// Creative Process

The video was based around the premise of collecting jenga blocks and those blocks representing 'moments' through the spine of a community - these moments are just that - moments and you can stack them up, you can build something on the moments that happen within a community and when you stack them up over time, they build into something but they are a still a tower.

A tower which can collapse at any moment but when you add people (the super glue) - those people hold everything together and they make sure that the community is built into something solid.

The whole kicker of the video was that the people hold the moments within a community together and they are the glue, without the people, you've just got moments.

Now that idea wasn't the first one I worked on - in fact, before October 2025, I held meetings with Bournemouth and Poole College because I had a different idea based around people in isolation - the wonderful team at the college were going to offer up the theatre to me and allow me to use the expertise of the theatre team to create spotlights around people.

Again, this was going to focus on moments but the people were going to be isolated through light (spot lights, beams of lights) and it would require other people to be involved.

The idea around the lights was to then have the spotlights move together and create a lighter, more welcoming space - the lighter space was going to represent You Are the Media.

That was the one idea that had a lot of traction in my head - because I actually went to hold meetings for locations.

Another idea I had was based around me being lost - waking up somewhere isolated - this was going to be on the top of the Dolphin Centre and then holding a similar monologue in an isolated and solo setting. This would involve a high level drone shot - coming in from wayyyy up high and through clouds to find me laying on the top of a building.

Again, this was another idea which I held meetings about and ultimately, it came down to logistics that this wasn't the idea that I created.

// The Casey Inspo

Casey Neistat is someone who I've been inspired by for a very long time. I remember watching one of his vlogs for the first time on Youtube and being blown away by its creativity - his style of filmmaking appears (and I say that word deliberately) to be very 'off the cuff' and almost ill-prepared but I have to tell you, to get to that place - to actually film something and make it look natural, off the cuff and as if it's being filmed 'in the moment' is very tough to pull off and even harder to plan for.

Casey has a wonderful editing style - one which weaves sweeps of the camera, different camera angles and a 'handheld' feel with a narrative and an overall storyline. I've toyed with vlogs, I've done what every filmmaker does when they're inspired by someone else, I've copied elements and woven them into my own video but I feel like I've now found my style which weaves comedic elements, impromptu moments with non-cast members and a story line narrative with a hand held feeling.

But what I've learned over the last 3-4 years of creating videos is that there is a lot of work that goes into making something feel a certain way.

Last year - the Relevance video was made without a plan written down - it was all in my head. I knew what the narrative was supposed to be and I knew what shots I needed to make but everything was in my head.

Looking back, that probably added to the stress of it all so this year, I focused on writing everything down.

I created a formal shot plan, I planned out the shots and which cameras I would use and what I was planning to say at different stages of the video - what the script would look like.

That made everything a lot easier to plan and it meant that I was able to form a proper narrative, especially at the start.

// The Result

Having a script, having a shot plan and making sure I captured what I needed to so that I can (at the very least) create a video with a specific aim/narrative meant that as I was filming, as I was constructing the video - I was able to ad-lib in certain areas and create those 'funny' moments whilst filming. For example, the first 'laugh' I was expecting in the video was the sequence when I am skating to the first location and I stop to kick my board around a tight bend.

I distinctly remember filming that section impromptu and knowing that as I film it that I can weave that into the edit with a duck of audio to emphasise the comedic element - it was because I knew what I was filming that I was able to weave in additional comedy elements and I was able to think outside of the script to find additional camera angles.

There were plenty of 'overshoots' in the filming process - lots and lots of footage which was shot and then never used but I would rather that than having not enough footage to cut from.

The finished video was one I was very happy with - it was a video which was created with a plan and I added to that plan with creativity. The creativity is what seperates the video from a purely narrative video to one which has personality.

Creating videos is my passion and I've been very lucky to have earned money from the whole creative process but I've never created a video of my own with a plan written down and I think that was the difference in my attitude towards the final result.

I feel very blessed with the feedback and the very kind comments once the video was shown (I think I was called a genius four times during the day which is very very kind) - but I also want to say that I worked very hard on the video. As I said before, without the planning, without the structure - I can't make something look 'off the cuff' and then make it feel personal.

That was the hard bit - the planning, the thinking and the generating of the idea before writing it all down so I can work through it. The filming was the easy bit (it took about 4 hours) then the editing was again, pretty straightforwards because I had a plan.

// What I Want to Tell You

There's one thing I keep coming back to after all of it - the moments in that video that people laughed at - the skateboard kick around the corner, the impromptu stuff with strangers, the bits that felt alive and unplanned - none of them would have existed without the plan sitting underneath them.

That's the bit nobody really talks about when they talk about creativity.

Everyone wants the spontaneity, everyone wants the feeling of something that's just happened, caught on camera, real and unpolished and human. But the spontaneity only has somewhere to live when the structure is already there holding the door open for it.

The script didn't kill the funny moments - it created the conditions for them and I think that's true of most creative work, if I'm honest. The wandering only works when you know roughly where you're trying to end up and the improvisation only lands when you've done enough preparation to know what you're improvising around.

I spent years thinking that planning was the enemy of creativity - that writing things down made them rigid, made them safe, made them less mine but it turns out it's the opposite.

The plan is what sets you free.

So if you're sitting on a creative project right now - a video, a talk, a piece of writing, anything - and you're telling yourself that you'll figure it out as you go, that the spontaneity will carry it, that structure will ruin the feeling of it - I used to be there - stop doing that to yourself.

Write the thing down first.

Then go and make it yours..