The search for a thumbnail.
The top is the one I ended up on. Initially I wanted to go with a thumbnail including fire because of the explosions in the video. But after making a few they just seemed too click-bait like and obnoxious, particularly the one where I’m just holding the banjo. Would stick out on a recommended video page, but not something I would click on. Then tried a few straight up screen grabs from other parts of the video. Those also had a similar vibe.
There’s something about having the subject looking like it was rotoscoped out to be in front of a flashy background that makes me not trust a video. It’s an old school youtuber technique to get your thumbnails to really stand out amongst the crowd. But usually the video itself wouldn’t be worth your time in that case.
The green screen shot I screen grabbed earlier for instagram and really liked it. It has that stand out type of look but is clear it’s not over-altered to be flashy because of the light to the left showing it’s a green screen.
I didn’t intend to use it for a thumbnail but it grew on me.
I made some finishing touches to the contrast, zoomed in to fill more of the frame, traced the banjo and up’d the exposure and saturation to make it more visible, made the light and wall to the left a different layer so it can still have a big part of the frame, and then lastly I got rid of the brand name on the banjo’s headstock.
and yea, thumbnail finished.
New banjo video comes out tomorrow.
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