Burl & Bench
412K subscribers
Building a tool chest from one sheet of plywood
A weekly build channel that was losing people at the cut list. We moved the plan to the front and cut the build to the sound of the tools.
Footage in
4 h 05 m, two cameras
Runtime
16:20
Turnaround
Three days
Formats
Long-form, one Short a week
Published
3 weeks ago
9:48
Average view duration, up from 5:44 before us
+71%
Watch time on the last ten uploads
Subscribers now, rolling up from the day we started
How we cut it.
Brief, changes, numbers.
The brief
Theo films every build start to finish on two cameras and sends us around four hours a week. The videos were good and slow: a long cut list up front, then the build, then the reveal. Viewers left at the list.
What we changed
We moved the plan to the front and drew it in one take, then cut straight to the first board. The build is cut to the sound of the tools, so the rhythm comes from the plane and the saw rather than from music. The reveal is held a second longer than feels comfortable.
What happened
Average view duration went from 5:44 to 9:48 over the next ten uploads. The saw pass at 6:12 is now the most replayed minute on the channel, and the channel added 88,000 subscribers in five months.
We used to lose half the room at the cut list. Now the plan is the part people rewatch.
Theo Marr, Burl & Bench
2:06
The whole chest drawn in one take, then cut to the first board
6:12
The first pass on the saw, cut on the beat
11:40
Ten minutes of sanding in forty seconds