I Almost Quit YouTube After Three Months With Just 47 Subscribers
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about starting a YouTube channel: the first 90 days are brutal.
When I launched my channel to showcase the short films I’d been making — projects like Going Home and Married & Isolated — I figured people would just find it. I’d spent weeks on those films. Surely that mattered.
Wrong.
My first video got 37 views, most of them probably me, checking obsessively. The second video got 28. I was moving backward. Three months in, 12 videos uploaded, 47 subscribers total. Average view duration: 1 minute 42 seconds, on videos that ran 8 minutes. Click-through rate: 1.2%, against a “healthy” range YouTube puts at 4-10%.
I remember sitting in my apartment at 2 AM, staring at a flat line on YouTube Studio, coffee gone cold, seriously considering deleting the whole thing and pretending it never happened.
Then something clicked. I stopped trying to game the platform and started actually understanding how it works. Within 90 days of that shift, I hit 1,000 subscribers. Six months later, 5,000. The videos didn’t get dramatically better overnight. My approach did.
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To start a YouTube channel, sign into YouTube with a Google account, create a channel, verify it by phone, and set up your channel art and About section. From there, pick one specific niche, plan your first 10 video titles around searchable topics, and commit to publishing consistently. Long-term growth is driven by search-optimized discoverability and audience retention — not subscriber count or expensive equipment.
Why Starting a YouTube Channel Is Harder Than You Think
YouTube isn’t social media — it’s a search engine that happens to run on video. If your content doesn’t surface in that search or in the suggested feed, it doesn’t functionally exist, regardless of how good it is.
Most beginners (myself included) start out treating YouTube like Instagram: make something cool, hit upload, wait for the algorithm to notice. It doesn’t work that way. Someone opening the YouTube app isn’t scrolling for their friends’ posts — they’re looking for something specific, and the platform’s entire job is matching that search.
I learned this the expensive way. I uploaded a behind-the-scenes clip from Noelle’s Package titled “BTS from our latest shoot.” Generic. Unsearchable. Two years later it has 91 views. A video I posted three months after that, titled “How to Shoot Sunrise and Sunset Videos,” has 500 views. Same channel, same production quality, completely different title logic.
The Common Beginner Mistake: Treating your video title like a caption instead of a search query. Nobody searches “BTS from our latest shoot.” Plenty of people search “how to shoot sunrise and sunset video.”
The other early trap is obsessing over subscriber count. I refreshed YouTube Studio every hour hoping the number would tick up. It didn’t matter nearly as much as I thought — a channel with 500 subscribers who watch every upload will beat a channel with 5,000 dead subscribers who subscribed two years ago and never came back. YouTube measures engagement, not the vanity number sitting under your channel name.
There’s also a filmmaker-specific trap worth naming directly: the instinct to over-produce your first video. On a narrative set, a slow push-in and a considered color grade are the job. On YouTube, if your video’s core answer isn’t clear in the opening seconds, none of that craft gets watched long enough to matter. Unlearning “beautiful shot first” in favor of “answer first, beautiful shot second” is the single hardest adjustment a trained filmmaker makes moving into this format.
How the YouTube Algorithm Actually Works
The algorithm has one job: keep people watching YouTube for as long as possible. It isn't biased against small channels, and it doesn't grade on production value — it grades on three measurable signals.
| What the algorithm ignores | What the algorithm actually tracks |
|---|---|
| How long the edit took you | Click-through rate — did they click the thumbnail |
| How artistic the cinematography is | Average view duration — did they keep watching |
| Your subscriber count | Session time — did they watch something else after |
| What your camera cost | — |
That's the whole mechanism. It's not mysterious, and it's not rigged against you — it's just optimizing for exactly those three answers being "yes." Once I stopped chasing "good videos" in the abstract and started optimizing for click, watch, and session time specifically, the channel grew faster in two months than it had in the previous six.
The technical reason production value ranks lower than retention is straightforward: watch time is a directly measurable signal the algorithm can act on immediately, while "cinematic quality" isn't something YouTube's recommendation system evaluates at all. A gorgeous 4K frame that loses the viewer at second eight produces worse data than a flat, evenly-lit frame that holds them for six minutes. The platform can't see beauty. It can see whether someone left.
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How to Actually Start a YouTube Channel: The Setup
Creating the channel itself takes minutes. The setup choices you make before your first upload — name, branding, niche — are what determine whether YouTube can figure out who to show your videos to.
Step 1: Create Your YouTube Channel
Go to YouTube.com, click your profile icon, select “Create a channel.” You’ll be offered two paths:
- Personal name. Fine if you’re building a brand around yourself (think Casey Neistat, Peter McKinnon).
- Custom brand account. What I recommend for most people — you can name it whatever fits the content, and multiple people can manage it later if you bring on help.
I went with a brand name. “Trent’s Random Film Stuff” didn’t inspire confidence in anyone, including me.
Step 2: Design Your Channel Branding
Your channel art is the first impression. It signals whether you’re serious or three-videos-and-gone.
- Profile picture: 800×800px minimum, must read clearly at thumbnail size, works inside YouTube’s circular crop.
- Banner: 2,560×1,440px, with the mobile-safe text zone at 1,546×423px so nothing critical gets cropped off on a phone.
I build both in Canva’s free tier, which ships with pre-marked safe zones for exactly this.
Step 3: Complete Your About Section
Don’t write: “Hey! I’m Trent and I make cool videos about stuff I like!”
Write: “Filmmaking tutorials for indie creators working with small budgets. New videos every week on cinematography, lighting, editing, and storytelling.” That version has keywords (filmmaking tutorials, cinematography, lighting) and a promise (new videos every week) doing actual work.
Step 4: Verify Your Account
Go to youtube.com/verify and confirm with a phone number. This unlocks custom thumbnails, videos over 15 minutes, live streaming, and eventually a custom URL. Custom thumbnails specifically are non-negotiable — YouTube’s auto-generated frames are a click-through-rate killer. Verify before you touch anything else.
Step 5: Pick Your Niche
This is where most new channels quietly fail before they’ve posted a single video. “Filmmaking AND travel AND cooking AND gaming” doesn’t give YouTube anything to categorize, which means it has nobody specific to show your videos to.
When I committed to practical filmmaking tips for people working with minimal budgets, people understood the channel in five seconds. Before that, nobody knew what I’d post next, so nobody had a reason to subscribe.
The Budget Reality: Niching down costs you nothing and saves you months. The alternative — “I’ll figure out my lane once I have an audience” — usually means never getting one.
Good niche examples: budget filmmaking for beginners, film editing tutorials for Premiere Pro, behind-the-scenes of indie production. Bad ones: “lifestyle,” “creative content,” anything that could describe half the internet.
Step 6: Build a Channel Trailer
A 60-90 second video that auto-plays for non-subscribers. It needs to answer three questions in order: who are you, what do subscribers get, how often do you post. Mine ran like a movie trailer — quick cuts, a clear promise, a direct ask. Thirty seconds, no wasted motion.
Plan and Publish Your First 10 Videos
Your first 10 videos are a research project disguised as content. Specific, searchable titles beat vague ones every time, and the difference shows up in views within the first week.
Before uploading anything, write out 10 specific video titles — not “a video about lighting” but “How to Light a Scene with $30 Worth of Lights.” Specificity is the whole game. You’re competing against millions of uploads; “Camera Review” has no chance against “Sony ZV-E10 Review for YouTube Beginners Under $700.”
Thumbnails and Titles Matter More Than the Edit
Your 40 hours of editing don’t matter if only 47 people click through to see it. A few rules that hold up consistently:
- Faces with clear emotion outperform gear shots or landscapes.
- High contrast, minimal text — three to five words max, tested at phone-screen size.
- Consistency in font and layout builds recognition in a crowded feed.
- Titles front-load the keyword and stay under 60 characters so mobile doesn’t clip them.
I design the thumbnail in Canva before I film anything. If the thumbnail doesn’t work as a concept, the video usually doesn’t either.
What Audiences Actually Feel: A viewer scanning a feed isn’t evaluating your lighting setup. They’re pattern-matching for “does this solve my problem” in about a second and a half. Your thumbnail is answering that question before your video ever gets the chance to.
Optimize Every Upload
Rename the file before uploading — “how-to-start-youtube-channel-2026-beginners-guide.mp4,” not “FinalExport_v3.mp4.” The first 150 characters of your description are prime real estate; front-load the keyword and the actual promise, then add timestamps, resource links, and related videos below the fold.
Use 10-15 specific tag phrases (“how to start a youtube channel”), not single words (“youtube”). And the first 30 seconds of the video need to deliver a hook, not a greeting — “Hey guys, welcome back to my channel” is wasted runway that costs you retention before the video’s even started.
Pick a Schedule You Can Actually Keep
One video a week, one every two weeks, two a week — the specific cadence matters less than whether you can hold it. I started at every two weeks, then moved to weekly once it stopped feeling like a scramble. Inconsistency confuses the algorithm and trains viewers to forget you exist.
Build the Habits That Keep the Algorithm On Your Side
Comments, end screens, and playlists all feed the same signal the algorithm is chasing: session time. The more of it your channel generates, the more it gets recommended.
Reply to every comment, especially early. At 47 subscribers, someone leaving a comment is a real event, and replying thoughtfully does three things: builds a relationship, signals engagement to YouTube, and hands you content ideas for free.
There’s a direct parallel to four-star hotel work here — reading an anxious commenter is the same instinct as reading a guest whose room isn’t ready. You don’t argue with the mood. You solve the actual problem underneath it, quickly and without making it a production.
Add end screens and cards pointing to your next-best video. Once you have five to ten videos, group them into playlists by topic — auto-play between related videos is one of the most reliable ways to stack session time, and YouTube visibly rewards it.
Promote Without Looking Like You’re Begging
Cross-promotion works when it’s specific and relevant, and reads as spam the moment it isn’t. Post where your video genuinely answers a question someone already asked.
Post a 30-second teaser to Instagram. Share a specific stat or quote on X. Drop the link in a relevant subreddit only when it directly answers the thread’s question, and disclose that it’s yours. Skip the blanket link-drop entirely — it does more damage to your credibility than the traffic is worth.
The goal is a burst of early views in the first 24-48 hours, since YouTube pays attention to early momentum when deciding how far to push a video into suggested feeds.
Read Your Analytics Like a Filmmaker Reads Dailies
For your first 30 days, ignore analytics almost entirely. After that, three metrics tell you nearly everything: click-through rate, average view duration, and traffic source.
- CTR: under 3% means your thumbnail and title aren’t working; 7-10%+ is strong.
- Average view duration: under 30% signals a hook problem; 50%+ is solid.
- Traffic source: “Suggested Videos” and “Browse Features” both mean YouTube is actively pushing your content, which is the goal.
Study your three best-performing videos and look for the pattern — topic, thumbnail style, hook structure. Do more of whatever that pattern is.
What Actually Works in 2026
Longer videos, face-to-camera delivery, and Shorts used as a funnel — not a strategy on their own — are the three shifts that moved my channel the most this year.
- YouTube Shorts work best as a discovery funnel into your long-form content, not as the whole channel strategy. If you want the deeper mechanics of using Shorts specifically to grow and monetize, we cover that in a dedicated guide.
- Longer videos win on watch time. A 15-minute video holding 60% of viewers generates more total watch time than a tighter 5-minute video with better percentage retention — my 12-15 minute uploads consistently outperform my 6-minute ones.
- Face-to-camera beats voiceover-only. Even in gear-focused videos, showing my face raised click-through rate noticeably over the screen-recording format I used early on. [Needs verification: exact percentage — flagging until a specific comparison video can be cited rather than a round figure.]
- Niche down, then expand. Once you cross 1,000 subscribers, you’ve earned enough algorithmic trust to widen the lane.
- Consistency beats polish. A decent video every week outperforms a perfect video once a month — and your skills improve faster under a real cadence than they do in isolated bursts of perfectionism.
- Collaborate early, not once you feel “big enough.” Creators in the 500-2,000 subscriber range are usually the most willing to trade audiences.
Free vs. Paid Tools
Free tools cover almost everything you need through your first few thousand subscribers. Paid tools earn their cost only once you have enough published videos to actually analyze.
Free, and still what I use:
- Canva (free tier): thumbnails and channel art. I didn’t upgrade to Pro until 3,000 subscribers.
- DaVinci Resolve (free): professional-grade editing with a steeper learning curve than iMovie, but no cost ceiling to grow into.
- Audacity (free): cleans up voiceover and podcast-style audio.
- YouTube Studio mobile app: comments, quick edits, and analytics on the go.
Paid, and worth it — eventually:
- VidIQ Pro (~$39/mo): genuinely useful keyword and competitor research, but only once you have enough published videos to compare against each other. Buying it at video three is buying a spreadsheet with nothing in it.
- Epidemic Sound (~$15/mo): unlimited royalty-free music, which removes the copyright-strike risk that comes with YouTube’s built-in Audio Library.
The Budget Reality: Every paid tool on this list has a free-tier equivalent that’s genuinely enough for your first 20-30 videos. Don’t pay for research tools before you have anything to research.
The Gear You Actually Need
Gear matters less than beginners think, but it isn't irrelevant. A cheap mic placed well beats an expensive one placed badly — buy the audio chain first, everything else second.
| Category | Top Pick | Why It Matters | Who Should Skip It | Budget Alternative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Camera | Sony ZV-E10 II, or your current smartphone | Reliable autofocus and clean color with minimal configuration | Anyone with a modern smartphone (iPhone 14+ or equivalent) and a manual camera app | Your current phone + a $15 clamp mount |
| Computer | Apple 2026 MacBook Pro M5 | Smooth 4K 10-bit timeline scrubbing in DaVinci Resolve | Anyone editing 1080p talking-head content on a tight budget | A base M-series Air or a capable Windows machine |
| Audio | DJI Mic 2 or RØDE Wireless GO | Clean wireless audio — bad audio causes faster bounces than soft video ever will | Anyone filming stationary in a treated, quiet room can run a wired USB desktop mic instead | A $20 wired lavalier (Boya or Rode smartLav+) |
| Analytics | VidIQ Pro ($39/mo) | Keyword and competitor research once there's a body of work to analyze | Anyone under 20-30 published videos — there's nothing to benchmark yet | VidIQ or TubeBuddy free tier |
Apple MacBook Pro M5 — the full breakdown
- Best for: creators cutting 4K, multicam, or color-graded footage in DaVinci Resolve on a regular schedule.
- Honest drawback: it's a serious price for what most beginner channels actually need in month one.
- Who should NOT buy this: anyone editing straight 1080p talking-head videos with basic cuts — you're paying for headroom you won't touch yet.
- Real production use case: multi-camera edits and heavy color work stop feeling laggy, which matters once your upload volume climbs.
- Budget alternative: a base M-series MacBook Air, or a mid-range Windows machine with a dedicated GPU.
VidIQ Pro — the full breakdown
- Best for: channels with 20+ published videos looking to close specific keyword and competitor gaps.
- Honest drawback: the competitor-analysis features are close to useless without existing videos to benchmark against.
- Who should NOT buy this: anyone under video 20, full stop — this is the single most common early-channel overspend.
- Real production use case: spotting a searchable keyword gap your last 15 videos all missed.
- Budget alternative: the free tier of VidIQ or TubeBuddy, which covers basic keyword lookup fine at this stage.
How Many Views Do You Need to Make Money on YouTube
YouTube runs monetization eligibility as two tiers, confirmed against YouTube’s official eligibility page:
- Tier 1 (Fan Funding & Shopping): 500 subscribers, 3 valid public uploads in the last 90 days, plus either 3,000 valid public watch hours on long-form video in the past 12 months or 3 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days. This unlocks Channel Memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers, Super Thanks, and YouTube Shopping — not ad revenue.
- Tier 2 (Full Ad Revenue): 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 valid public watch hours on long-form video in the past 12 months or 10 million valid public Shorts views in the last 90 days. This is the tier that unlocks traditional watch-page ads, Shorts feed ads, and YouTube Premium revenue sharing.
To earn ad revenue on YouTube, you need 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months, or 10 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days — but a 500-subscriber tier unlocks fan-funding features like Super Thanks well before that.
One easy-to-miss detail: watch hours from the Shorts feed, unlisted or private videos, and ad-campaign-driven views don’t count toward either long-form watch-hour total. Only genuine public long-form viewing counts.
YouTube pays per 1,000 views (CPM), and the range varies hard by niche — commonly cited figures put filmmaking tutorials around $3-8, tech reviews higher, finance content highest.
Ad revenue was never my main income line. My channel’s actual breakdown: roughly 30% ad revenue, 25% affiliate links, 35% sponsored videos, 10% freelance work that came from people finding the channel. That last category is worth naming directly — the channel has brought in over $15,000 in freelance filmmaking work from clients who found me on YouTube, which is worth more than the ad revenue by a wide margin.
The Production Reality: Don’t build your first-month plan around monetization math. Build it around making videos people finish watching. The money follows a working channel — it doesn’t precede one.
Common Mistakes That Kill New Channels
Most channel failures trace back to a small, repeatable set of errors — inconsistent uploads, weak titles, and quitting before video 20 are the three that do the most damage.
- Inconsistent uploads. Three videos one week, nothing for a month, confuses both the algorithm and your audience. Pick a day and hold it.
- Wasting the first 30 seconds. “Hey guys, welcome back to my channel” is runway you don’t have.
- Generic, unsearchable titles. “Camera Review” has no chance against “Sony ZV-E10 Review for YouTube Beginners Under $700.”
- Chasing subscribers instead of watch time. A thousand dead subscribers is worse than a hundred people who actually watch.
- Skipping custom thumbnails. The auto-generated frame YouTube picks for you is never your best option.
- Making videos too short to build watch time, or dragging them out past what the content actually needs.
These structural errors compound fast. For the full breakdown of what typically breaks early channels, read our dedicated guide on avoiding beginner YouTube mistakes.
What to Do When a Video Flops
A flop isn’t a verdict on the video — it’s a diagnostic. CTR tells you if the packaging failed; average view duration tells you if the content failed; traffic source tells you whether YouTube ever gave it a real chance.
- CTR under 3%: redesign the thumbnail and title before touching anything else.
- Good retention, low views: be patient — some videos take months to find traction through search.
- Traffic mostly “External”: you’re driving views yourself; YouTube hasn’t started recommending it organically yet.
I have a budget-lighting video that sat at 400 views for a month, then started ranking in search and now sits at 18,000. Give search-driven videos real time before writing them off.
The First 30 Seconds Decide Everything
Audience retention at the 30-second mark is the single strongest signal in the algorithm’s early read on your video. Lose half your viewers there and YouTube stops pushing it — hold 80% and it starts recommending you harder.
Structure that window deliberately:
- 0-5 seconds: the hook — a bold statement or question.
- 5-15 seconds: the specific promise — what the viewer walks away with.
- 15-30 seconds: visual proof or setup that backs the promise.
- 30 seconds on: deliver.
No “hey guys, welcome back, don’t forget to like and subscribe” — that costs you the audience before you’ve earned the right to ask for anything. Cutting my own intros from 45 seconds down to 8 raised average view duration by roughly a quarter.
Getting Your First 100 Subscribers
Your first 100 are the hardest, because YouTube hasn’t started recommending your channel yet — every one of them has to come from somewhere other than the algorithm.
- Tell people you actually know. It’s awkward. Do it anyway.
- Answer real questions in relevant subreddits, only when your video is the genuine answer.
- Comment thoughtfully on mid-sized channels (10K-100K) in your niche.
- Collaborate with creators in the 50-500 subscriber range — you’re trading audiences, not competing for the same one.
- Optimize your first five videos around low-competition, decent-volume keywords.
- Hold a consistent schedule for 90 days. Most people quit before day 30, which puts you ahead of most of the field just by still showing up.
Your First 48 Hours: The Checklist
Day 1 — Technical Setup
- Create the channel (personal or brand account)
- Design an 800×800 profile picture
- Design a 2,560×1,440 banner stating your niche clearly
- Write the About section with real keywords
- Verify by phone
- Add social links
Day 2 — Content Foundation
- Plan your first 10 video titles
- Build a custom thumbnail template
- Film and upload a 60-90 second channel trailer
- Write a reusable upload checklist (description, tags, category)
- Lock in your upload schedule
Realistic Expectations: What Success Actually Looks Like
Most channels never earn a dollar from ads, and the majority of people who start one quit within their first 5-10 videos. The ones who don’t quit usually hit a second wall nobody warns them about: the mid-journey plateau.
Everyone braces for the brutal start — the first month where the view count barely registers. Fewer people are warned about what happens around video 15-20, once the lighting’s dialed in, the audio doesn’t clip anymore, and the editing speed has doubled — and a video you’re genuinely proud of still underperforms.
When that plateau hits, the instinct is to blame the gear or the edit. It’s usually neither. It’s a packaging problem — the video was made for the creator instead of for a specific, searchable question a stranger hadn’t asked yet. That’s a fixable diagnosis, not a talent problem, and treating it that way is the difference between pushing through and quitting at video 20.
Money aside, a working channel compounds in ways that don’t show up in AdSense: freelance inquiries, collaborators, a portfolio, and a forced pace of improvement no film program matches. If you’re doing this purely to get rich, you’ll likely be disappointed — the average monetized channel earns under $500 a month from ads alone. If you’re doing it to build something real around work you already care about, the math looks different.
Key Takeaways
- YouTube ranks on click-through rate, watch time, and session time — not production value or subscriber count.
- Pick one specific niche before you upload anything; a broad channel gives the algorithm nothing to categorize.
- Titles are search queries, not captions — write them to match what a stranger would actually type.
- Buy the audio chain before the camera upgrade; bad sound loses viewers faster than soft video.
- Hold a schedule you can sustain for 90 days before judging whether the channel is working.
- Treat a flop as a diagnostic (thumbnail, hook, or traffic source), not a verdict on your talent.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Can I start a YouTube channel with just my phone?
Yes. Modern smartphones outshoot cameras from five years ago, and plenty of channels with 50,000+ subscribers are filmed entirely on iPhone. Audio quality matters more than camera quality — a $20 lavalier mic will do more for your retention than any camera upgrade.
What's the best time to upload YouTube videos?
YouTube doesn’t publicly favor specific upload windows, but consistency in your chosen slot matters more than chasing an optimal one. Pick a day and time your audience can learn to expect, and hold it.
Do I need 1,000 subscribers to make money on YouTube?
Only for full ad revenue. YouTube’s fan-funding tier — Super Thanks, Channel Memberships — opens at 500 subscribers with 3 public uploads in the last 90 days and either 3,000 watch hours or 3 million Shorts views in 90 days. Affiliate links, sponsorships, and freelance inquiries from people who found you on the channel can start even earlier than that — my first affiliate income landed well below either threshold.
How many videos should I upload before expecting growth?
Budget for 20-30 videos as a genuine learning phase. Most creators who eventually break through say their channel didn’t take off until somewhere between video 30 and 50. Quitting at video 12 is quitting during the part that’s supposed to feel slow.
Should I focus on Shorts or long-form video?
Prioritize long-form for durable audience-building, and use Shorts as a funnel into it rather than the whole strategy. One long-form upload a week plus one or two Shorts teasing that content tends to outperform either format run alone.
Conclusion
Starting a YouTube channel in 2026 comes down to a short list of decisions done deliberately: pick one niche, write titles like search queries instead of captions, and protect the first 30 seconds of every video like it’s the only part anyone will see — because algorithmically, it’s close to being exactly that.
The honest production reality is that none of this replaces putting in the reps. Your first 10-20 videos are a learning cycle, not a launch, and the gap between a flat analytics graph and a working channel is usually closed by better packaging, not better gear.
If you’re just starting: build the channel, plan your first 10 titles, and give the schedule 90 days before you judge anything. If you’ve already made the title-and-thumbnail mistakes this guide warns about, the fix isn’t starting over — it’s going back and re-titling your worst-performing uploads with what you know now, then applying the same lesson forward. The channel that grows isn’t the one with the best gear. It’s the one still uploading in month four.
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About the Author
Trent Peek is a filmmaker, writer, and producer based in Victoria, BC, and the founder of PeekAtThis.com. His production credits include set decoration on Netflix’s Maid, and writing/directing Going Home (2024 Soho International Film Festival) and Noelle’s Package (48-hour festival winner, shot on smartphone). He’s also a former President of Cinevic, Victoria’s Society of Independent Filmmakers, and works as a doorman at a four-star hotel — a job that’s taught him as much about reading people under pressure as any film set has.
When he’s not writing articles, testing gear, or working on film projects, Trent enjoys traveling, reading, exploring new technology, and developing future film ideas — many of which may never leave the notebook stage.
P.S. Writing in the third person still feels weird.
Trent recently appeared on the Pushin Podcast — listen to the full episode — where he discussed independent filmmaking, directing actors, production challenges, and lessons learned from working in film.
