Why One of Climbing’s Best YouTubers Hasn’t Gone Full-time

Sam Lawson's Wedge Climbing is is one of the most artful climbing channels on YouTube. But he worries that relying his passion for his livelihood “would potentially ruin it for me.” We asked why.

The post Why One of Climbing’s Best YouTubers Hasn’t Gone Full-time appeared first on Climbing.

Two years ago, while doing research for an article I ultimately opted not to publish, I asked the biggest climbing nerd I know to give me a list of the 10 best climbing channels on YouTube. He emailed me with a 25-channel list—each entry accompanied by a short description of what he liked—and then responded almost tearfully when I asked, via text, if he could winnow his list down any further. “There are so many good ones,” he protested. “And they’re all so different.” I studied his list, decided he was right, and opted not to pursue my article until I had time to personally watch all those channels, which hasn’t happened yet. But before I gave up, I noticed that my friend had imposed the slightest sliver of a ranking in his list—a single line next to Wedge Climbing: “In my opinion,” he wrote, “the best overall climbing YouTube channel.”

I was already familiar with Wedge Climbing by that point, and though I wasn’t well enough versed in YouTube’s climbing landscape to confidently make a qualitative judgment of my own, I was not surprised to see Wedge taking my friend’s top spot.

It was—and still is—my favorite climbing YouTube channel, too.

Wedge Climbing is run by Sam Lawson, a boulderer based in Sheffield, England, and his channel tends to feature various UK-based professional climbers sending outdoors or training on their dingy boards. Like many of Wedge’s viewers, I had initially been lured to the channel by the promise of seeing Aidan Roberts, a regular on the channel, doing some of the world’s hardest crimp lines. But after that first visit, I returned to Wedge again and again regardless of whether Roberts was featured, captivated by the combination of filmwork and low-key storytelling that seemed to capture an almost mystical essence of the climbing experience—despite, or perhaps because, so many of the films transpire on umber-colored moorlands or dank Sheffield basements.

Fan though I am, I would probably have remained a distant viewer if I hadn’t recently learned that Lawson, unlike many of climbing’s most influential YouTubers, does not work on Wedge full time. Though he’s been consistently prolific, he still spends about 50 percent of his work time freelancing for various outdoor and climbing brands. On its own, the fact that Lawson has another job isn’t all that surprising; many artists do. What was surprising, to me anyway, was that Lawson prefers it that way.

That’s when I finally decided to get in touch and learn more about the man behind the camera.

Lawson, 27, grew up in Norwich, East Anglia, and began merging his interest in sports and film when he was a child. After watching numerous BMX videos with his older brother, Joe, Lawson began his film career by shooting Joe’s stunts with “one of those early camera phones where you could pause the clip and then start it again at a different point—essentially trying to edit the video as I was filming it.” (“They weren’t very successful,” he adds.)

When his brother picked up climbing, Lawson—who at 12 “just blindly followed” whatever Joe was doing—started climbing too, and it wasn’t long before he began working in his film interests. Because there’s not much rock near Norwich, just a lot of “mud and chalk,” the Lawsons climbed mostly in the gym, which they supplemented with the occasional four-hour pilgrimage to the Peak District. “Filming,” Lawson says, “became a way of getting a bit more longevity out of my climbing days.” He could go bouldering, then return to Norwich and “relive it again while fiddling with the footage.”

He also watched and re-watched a lot of climbing films, finding himself especially enthralled by Winter Sessions, which features various Sheffield citizens bearing down on their local Peak District gritstone, and the “On the Fringe” segment of Dosage V, in which legends Dave Graham and Ty Landman do their goofy thing while bouldering in the Ozarks.

When Lawson eventually moved to Sheffield to climb—and also to study Production Design at Sheffield Hallam University—he continued making climbing videos, many of which he published on his LawsonBetaProductions Vimeo account before launching the Wedge Climbing channel in June 2019. Wedge’s earliest episodes largely consisted of two parallel series, one focused on gritstone bouldering, the other featuring British bouldering more generally, both of which can be seen as an homage to Winter Sessions.

These earliest videos are essentially well-edited beta bangers, featuring hard but not cutting-edge climbing footage that’s interspersed with character-building one-liners and set against nice music; but it wasn’t long before Lawson began incorporating more narrative elements into his films, letting his viewers sit with recurring characters whose voices and personalities bring a sense of unity across scenes and episodes—and turning Wedge into one of climbing’s most admired boutique YouTube channels.

I spoke with Lawson in mid April. I was on a sunny porch in Southern Florida, where I’d flown to meet my newborn nephew. Lawson was at home in Sheffield, where it was already late evening. We discussed, among other things, the economics of content creation on YouTube, how YouTube’s algorithm incentivizes certain filmmaking decisions, why he’s resisted making Wedge his full-time job, and what it’s like to have devoted 20 days to Burden of Dreams (V17) without ever once pulling onto the wall.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

THE INTERVIEW

Climbing: When I watched my first Wedge film several years ago, I was immediately aware that I was watching something different than a normal beta video. You seem to pay attention to aesthetics in a way that captures an almost mystical aspect of the climbing experience, but you also activate those aesthetics with narrative and character. Is that style something you’ve built toward over a long period? And were you working off of any influences?

Lawson: Up until the last four or five years, I basically just made beta videos. A lot of the older films I drew inspiration from were not really narrative driven. My favorite bit of climbing film growing up was that section from Dosage V that follows Dave Graham and Ty Landman in Arkansas. And that’s all it is. It’s just them bouldering. So my early films were basically just of people bouldering set against music. When I started incorporating more story elements, most of my influences actually came from outside of climbing—mostly documentaries. There are loads of really good climbing films that use story now, but because I spend so much time making climbing films, I find it hard to properly appreciate them. I’m constantly over-analyzing. I prefer to get inspiration from other places, other sports. I watch stuff about running. Even if I’m not taking specific craft lessons from it, watching a good documentary always makes me want to go and film something.

Climbing: Do you run?

Lawson: I got into running because I got injured climbing. But then I injured myself running.

Climbing: That aligns quite well with my experience running. How does YouTube’s structure—the incentives baked into YouTube’s algorithm and ad platform—influence the way you craft things for us?

Lawson: That’s honestly the one thing I don’t like about YouTube: the algorithm. You have to decide whether you want the video to hit the algorithm, which I guess is just marketing, but I don’t love it. I’ll make a film, and I’ll be really happy with it, and I’ll want to give it a nice title and a nice thumbnail, but realistically that title and thumbnail won’t get many views. So it’s a bit of a conundrum. You’re happy with the work, and you want people to watch it, but in order for it to get watched you have to be markety in a way that you’re not happy with. I have leaned toward clickbaity titles at times, although I hope clickbait is the wrong word, since I never give something a title that is actually untrue. But I have at times emphasized parts of the video that more people will be interested in clicking on. Recently, though, I’ve stopped trying to play to the algorithms as much. For example, when I went to Finland with Jim [Pope] and Aidan [Roberts] last autumn, I deliberately chose not to put Burden of Dreams in the title or the thumbnail, because even though Aidan was trying it, it was only like five minutes of the film, and I didn’t want people just to watch the film just because they wanted to watch him on Burden. I wanted to emphasize the things that weren’t Burden—which was a large part of the film’s story.

Climbing: What about the actual length and structure of the video? Does YouTube influence that?

Lawson: Yeah, certain video lengths allow you to put more ads in, which obviously results in you getting more revenue. Right now it’s eight minutes; it used to be 10. That’s why you go on some channels and every video is like eight minutes and one second or 10 minutes and one second. A recent positive change, in my opinion, is that you no longer get to choose where and how many ads should go in the film; YouTube just does that for you. Back when you got to choose, you’d always have this dilemma; if you took an ad break out because it spoiled the flow of a section, that meant you’d get less money. Now that YouTube just puts them in, it’s actually easier for me. I don’t have to make that decision.

But overall, I really enjoy every part of the filmmaking process up until the title, thumbnail, and posting part—at which point I start overthinking everything. If you watched any video about how to be successful on YouTube, the advice is to start with a title and thumbnail and then reverse engineer from there. Whereas for me it’s always the opposite.

Climbing: That’s my exact same experience with journalism. It’s like you’re supposed to work backward through the reporting and writing, which is the opposite of the curious, learner’s mindset I generally prefer to be starting from.

Lawson: Yeah, it’s a double-edged sword. I enjoy doing these videos, which is my main motivation for making them, but satisfaction alone can’t justify putting so much time into them. And yet to make it financially viable you may have to slightly adjust the way you do things, which might affect how you get joy from the process. That said, I’ve built enough of a following that even if I go against a lot of what the algorithm says, there will still be a decent chunk of people who will watch my videos, which I’m really grateful for.

Climbing: I feel like you’ve done something pretty smart by giving us recurring characters for your viewers to get invested in. As an American, I didn’t know who Jim Pope was until I watched him in one of your videos three years ago. Now if there’s a piece of media with Jim Pope in it, I’m going to sit down and watch it. I’m a fan. And that has allowed you to build an audience who’s committed to your content, which gives you some independence.

Lawson: Yeah. When you’re a new YouTuber, you have to do everything you can to build an audience or a market. But once you’ve got an established foothold, you can do things how you want to do them because you don’t need to build an audience from scratch. Obviously, I don’t have the biggest audience. But I don’t really mind that. I feel like the audience I do have really appreciates the videos I make. Reading through the comments is often the best bit for me.

Climbing: You’re not a full-time YouTuber. What percentage of your work is Wedge and what is freelance?

Lawson: It would be hard to say exactly, in part because it’s hard to know if going to the crag to film your friends counts as work. On the one hand, it’s fun. On the other hand, those hours contribute to your final product, and you’d probably have a different kind of day out if you weren’t relying on it to serve as part of your income. But as far as my actual income goes, YouTube’s ad revenue is not a particularly big chunk of it. More of my income actually comes from Patreon than from YouTube. I would say that I put at least half of my work hours into Wedge, but it doesn’t produce half of my financial situation. Which is fine, because I enjoy it more than all my other work. It’s a hobby as well as a way to make money.

Climbing: I was listening to a Careless Talk interview with Emil Abrahamson, who’s a full-time YouTuber, and I was wondering what kind of scale you’d need in order to turn Wedge into a full-time job?

Lawson: If I pushed harder to get sponsors for every video and wasn’t also spending my time doing other work, I could probably go full-time now. But I would worry that once your income relies on the films, there’d be a lot more pressure on them, which could affect your enjoyment and the quality of what you’re making. For example, I recently went on a trip to Font. And when I got back, I was busy with other work. So I haven’t posted a video in over a month. And you just couldn’t do that if it was your only job. Obviously, I would have likely posted another video if I didn’t have the other work. But I guess I’m still trying to keep it a semi-financially viable passion project, not something I’m relying on, because I think that would potentially ruin it for me.

Climbing: I imagine it would also change the type of content you put out. You’d lean more on the sure things.

Lawson: Yeah. It’s really impressive how full-time climbing YouTubers are able to keep putting out high-quality weekly videos, but I’m just not sure that that model would work for me. The things I most enjoy making, and the things of mine that people seem to most enjoy watching, are the sorts of projects that you can’t guarantee you’ll be able to turn around super regularly. I could knock out a board video every week, no worries. But as much as the board videos are great fun to make, and people really enjoy them, my main passion is making outdoor films, which often take a lot longer to make and sometimes just aren’t feasible due to conditions. So being able to post, say, one per week would be really hard for me to maintain. At the moment, I appreciate the freedom I have.

Climbing: How long does a 20-minute video normally take you to edit?

Lawson: There are so many factors. A 20-minute board video can be relatively quick. You could maybe get one of those done in a day or two. But the more narrative videos that have interviews, multiple filming days, and multiple locations can end up taking weeks to edit. The hardest part is that there is always more you could do, whether that’s tweaking colors and sound or completely rearranging sections. But it eventually gets to the point where you have to call it done and draw a line under it, or it would just never be finished.

Climbing: You’ve spent a lot of time climbing with very strong people doing groundbreaking things. What’s that like?

Lawson: Well, I’ve seen a lot of people gurning really hard while pulling on small pieces of wood. [Laughs.] But you get a bit desensitized to seeing strong climbers after a while. You’re like, They’re only hanging an additional X kilos to a one-armed hang, and you don’t always remember that you’ve gotta take that many kilos off.

In practice though, it’s almost a different sport. You just don’t feel like you’re even doing the same thing sometimes. A good example is when I’m climbing with Aidan and Jim. I know how much stronger Jim is than me. He’s on a completely different level to me. In basically every situation, I can be like, “Well, if Jim can’t do it, it’s probably impossible.” But then Aidan has this super skill set when it comes to really small crimps, and in those situations he’s on a whole other level again, even to people like Jim.

Climbing: I imagine you also have a sort of intimacy with a lot of the hardest climbs out there, right, because when you’re documenting someone else’s projecting process, you’re engaging with the rock in a pretty close way. You’re not just being a passive observer.

Lawson: Yeah, it’s funny. I have a much better understanding of something like Burden of Dreams than feels reasonable given that I’ve never pulled onto it. I’ve probably devoted 20 days to various versions of Burden, looking at the holds and touching the holds, looking at the replica and touching the replica, and yet I have absolutely no interest in climbing it. I mean, if I was good enough, I would love to, but there’s no way. When you’re filming it, though, you still get something out of it, and you can learn a lot of nitty gritty things about it, even if you’re never going to climb on it yourself.

Climbing: How about some rapid-fire questions to end on?

Lawson: Go for it.

Climbing: What’s your favorite Boulder problem?

Lawson: It’s a boulder in Font called Rencontre du Troisième Type Assis, which translates to Encounter of the Third Kind Sit. I’m pretty tall, and I like drags, and the climb is basically max extension on three finger drags with a mantle up top… so it just kind of ticks all my boxes.

Climbing: Gristone or limestone?

Lawson: Grit is definitely my preference. I’m a bigger, heavier climber, so I don’t get on that well with crimps. I mean, size shouldn’t be an excuse. There are plenty of heavy climbers who don’t have perpetually injured fingers. But my hypothesis is that being a bit bigger doesn’t help on stuff like limestone, where the difficulty often comes from bad holds, whereas on gritstone, where you’re normally climbing a friction-dependent feature with slopers and long reaches, having a bit of extra height can actually be pretty handy. So, yeah, my preference for grit is definitely a case of embracing my strengths and ignoring my weaknesses.

Climbing: What about other climbers gets you motivated?

Lawson: I like it when people get unreasonably psyched about something that’s objectively not good. It’s easy to get psyched on the big lines. I like it when people get worked up about the shit ones. That’s inspiring.

Climbing: What’s a climbing area you’ve never visited but most want to?

Lawson: Probably Castle Hill in New Zealand. It’s beautiful, and the climbing looks awesome, but my main motivation is that I want to go see all the Lord of the Rings filming locations.

You might also like:

• Don’t Be “a Glorified Security Camera”: Cameron Maier on Being a Climbing Filmmaker

• The Problem is “Unchanged by the Number”: Aidan Roberts on the 2nd Ascent of Alphane

• Now You Too Can Set the World’s Hardest Replica

The post Why One of Climbing’s Best YouTubers Hasn’t Gone Full-time appeared first on Climbing.