Y - Youtube

Starting out Youtube with my best friend Meg back in 2013, we first thought of the idea after joking around in our English class at school that we were the next Ant and Dec. I can't even really remember where the idea came from; but the idea of Meg and Al started out as a bit of a joke and after mentioning to Meg that we should actually create Youtube videos as a duo - it became this great idea that made us change from school friends that only talked in class to really close best friends within a couple of months. And now it was probably one of the best ideas we've ever had; I don't know what I'd do without Meg now. We planned to post one video every Saturday which worked out for the first month or so, but when our GCSE exams came around it kind of fell through and we just posted a video every so often; eventually stopping altogether for around a year, due to my a-levels and Meg's college work. Until recently, when we started up filming again.

Our first vlog was a typical "Introductory" video; we both look so young, and I'm so awkward in front of the camera it's quite embarrassing to watch back now. But it was our starting point, whatever we created back then, of course we're going to have a different outlook on it now, now we're a few years older. Our favourite videos are the ones where we've filmed memories and day trips with our friends; being able to look back on that specfic day whenever we want to and remember the trip not only through photos but through a video is amazing; a video helps refresh your memories better than photos do - you can actually see yourself and your friends laughing and smiling regularly and you can laugh at a joke that was told in the video that you had forgotten about previously - it makes all the time of holding up a camera, or walking behind your friends instead of running ahead with them worth while as you capture different moments. Even when the editing can get a bit tedious - laughing at hilarious moments in the video footage makes it so much fun. I would recommend to anyone starting up a YouTube channel, just to be able to film and upload videos of memories with your friends and family, that are easy to look back on months, or years later.

It's nice filming and uploading vlogs and videos that aren't trips to Weston or Bristol too; mine and Meg's first cooking video was so much fun to film and so was our Pretty Little Liars tag. It's nice just sitting down with a camera and a video plan, and filming with your best friend sometimes and it mixes our channel videos up a little bit too and gives us some variation.

Even just an hour or so after filming me and Meg always question and wonder what we were doing in some parts of the video footage. Although it's gotten easier to watch ourselves back and cut down bits of footage, we still cringe at ourselves sometimes and get annoyed at how we were acting; but I think that's always going to be the way, we're always going to criticise ourselves and want bits cut out of the final video, but that doesn't matter, as we improve each time we film, we know what works and what doesn't on our channel, we know our style, and we film because we have fun and we enjoy filming together, not because we have to.

To visit mine and Meg's YouTube channel click here!

"Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself"

Until Tomorrow,

Alice x

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P - Pretty Little Liars

First airing back in 2010, Pretty Little Liars is an american drama/mystery-thriller TV show. The pilot episode begins with the 5 lead girls having a sleepover in a barn when one of the girls - Alison DiLaurentis goes missing. Fast forward to a year later and the discovery of Alison's body, the four remaining girls - Emily, Spencer, Hanna and Aria - begin to receive messages from the mysterious "A". Who's identity isn't revealed to the audience until the finale episode of season 6A (5 years later).

I began watching the TV show in January 2015 after being told for years by various friends how good the show was - I binged watched through the 110 odd episodes in a month; until I had finally caught up with the currently airing season at the time, Season 5B. I was hooked on the show - the first seasons had so much drama and so many cliffhangers once I start watching it was impossible to not want to carry on and spend every spare minute I had watching another episode (I even spent some Media lessons watching the show instead of doing work oops). I think my favourite episode has to be "How the 'A' stole Christmas" because all the lead girls and boys come to together and enjoy the festive season by embracing the fact that they all get to be together even though there's still a threat hanging over their heads. Some episodes were so dark and mysterious, I'm not ashamed to say I had to sleep with the light on a few times - after watching a freaky Halloween episode or a particularly creepy A situation that the girls had gotten themselves into - late at night I refused to sleep in a pitch black room when I had just watched a TV show where the characters were constantly being watched and spied on by a character that lurked in the shadows. Saying that though, I did also really enjoy those episodes, the really tense and creepy moments made the show even more exciting because you just want to know how they're going to deal with it and what was going to happen to them next. 

It's because of those kind of episodes that the earlier seasons were definitely my favourite. Lately in seasons 5 and 6 the show seems to have lost it's interesting aspect. I think it's because the show has been going for so long, the writer's have just lost new and unique ways of continuing the story and the scary situations the character's get themselves into don't really seem scary any more; they seem more deadbeat than sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat. The huge A reveal was also quite disappointing - the way the writer's had managed to twist all the clues that had been revealed during season 6 made the whole thing very anti-climatic. If I remember correctly my reaction was "That's not A that's just their decoy". The cast and crew had also made a huge deal out of the reveal by creating an episode and day countdown to the finale, so when it didn't turn out quite as good or as big as we expected, it was annoying, as this character was supposed to have done all these horrible things to the girls we had come to love, and the identity wasn't even that good. 

But, although the A reveal was a disappointment and the following season (Season 6B) didn't have the most interesting or attention capturing story lines, the winter finale of 6B did have a lot of shock moments which made watching the frustratingly, boring, previous episodes actually worth while. And the wait for Season 7 seem even longer as the now rare, dramatic cliffhangers seemed to make a return and the anticipation to find out what happens to our favourite characters makes me hope the (apparently) last season of the show is more like the early seasons rather than the more recent ones. 

You can watch Pretty Little Liars on Netflix where they add the new episodes weekly when the show is airing.

Me and my best friend, Meg, also did the PLL Tag on our youtube channel - so if you're already a fan of the show give that a watch (beware it does contain spoilers).

"Things change you know, people grow" 

Until Tomorrow, 

Alice x 

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