Splatter It in Real Time
Don't hoard footage for one polished film nobody watches — release the raw process continuously and let people follow in real time.
Instead of editing months of footage into one polished artifact most of which lands on the cutting-room floor, publish the raw material continuously as constant updates. The process itself becomes the content, and an audience follows along in real time. This inverted the documentary default and seeded Haran's entire multi-channel model.
- The byproduct is the product: the material you would normally cut is the content.
- Continuous release beats the one big artifact — audiences follow a process in real time.
- Obvious in hindsight, unusual at the time: the constraint to remove is "it must be one finished film".
- Low marginal cost per upload turns "wasteful surplus footage" into a back-catalogue.
On his pre-YouTube Test Tube project — embedded with University of Nottingham scientists to film "the reality of science" — Haran realised within weeks he would shoot hours of material, use only a couple, and waste the rest on a feature film "that probably no one would ever watch." He proposed splattering everything onto the new YouTube instead. That decision led directly to Periodic Videos, Sixty Symbols and Numberphile.