Why did you start making videos?

In the fall of 2018, I began traveling quite extensively for work. As it turns out, travel benefits from my workplace was pretty sweet, regularly accommodating us in fancy hotels and booking us business class flights. Having fallen into the rabbit hole that is the premium travel market, and having the freedom to choose my own flights in order to attend business conferences and collaborations, I began researching the different airlines and products that fill the sky.

In the beginning, I watched a lot of videos of various business class and first class products, but somehow often felt wanting in terms of the details of the lounge, cabin, and service experience. Hence one day while I was booking a Westjet flight on their new 787, I decided that I might as well try my hand at making one of these “flight review” videos.

The rest, well you know the rest.

How Much do you fly a year?

In a typical year (and yes that includes COVID) I travel around 100,000 to 150,000 miles for work. Add on top of that another 50,000 to 100,000 miles for personal trips and vacations, the answer is quite a lot.

How can you afford to fly business and first class so often?

I’m quite fortunate that work provides business class tickets when we travel. Compounded by the fact that I do travel quite a lot, and accumulate a lot of miles, it then becomes easy for me to upgrade or redeem for premium cabins during personal trips. I also have a couple of credit cards that earn me a sizable amount of miles from daily expenses. I’m not an expert when it comes to the credit card game, there are many much better resources for that. Sometimes, if a cash fare or paid upgrade is reasonable, I may also pay cash for that.

On top of those factors, Youtube also remains primarily a hobby for me, so any revenue I make off of my channel I tend to quite liberarlly reinvest in flights and film equipment.

What equipment do you use to film your videos?

For an up-to-date (sort of) list of all my productions tools, check out my gear section.

What programs do you use to edit your videos?

I’m an Adobe guy, meaning I use Illustrator and After Effects for my animations, Premiere Pro for editing, Audition for sound design and Photoshop for Thumbnails and photos.

Where did you learn to edit and create motions graphics?

I never had any formal training when it comes to video production. I was always interested in creating short movies as a child, hence I taught myself how to use editing software, and later on, animation and photo editing. Learning features and tools mainly through YouTube videos and VideoCopilot.com, I have a more maverick understanding of the software I use. I often find myself discovering features or tools most beginners would learn on their first day.

I also majored in Aerospace Engineering in undergrad, as a result, many of the skills learned in 3D modeling and programming translated over to the YouTube side of my life.

How Easy is it to make a website using squarespace?

It’s so easy a lobotomized shrimp can do it!