Transcripts
1. Introduction: Your power as an editor
is your own style. It's your own identity that
is deeply connected to you. As you grow, your style is
going to grow with you. My name is Ryan Kao. I'm a freelance video editor and cinematographer based
in Los Angeles. You may have seen some
of my work on YouTube where I have a channel talking
all about film making, storytelling, my experience as an editor, and a
cinematographer. I'm regularly doing
freelance commercial work for brands like
Adidas, Nike, Jordan. I also have been more recently tapping into the
narrative space, doing some documentary work, and also some
scripted short films. In this class, we're
going to go over things like finding new sources
for inspiration. How to translate your visual
style into client work, and even how to reflect
on your past work to help you maybe grow past previous
versions of yourself. I want to share with you some
of my personal experiences, the things that I've found
new inspiration from, share some of my
creative references, and also a tool that I've been
using as a style guide for myself as a video editor
that you guys can follow along here within
the class project. By the end of this class,
you'll hopefully have a better sense and
understanding of style, and how you can find new
ways to influence it and really understand how you want to translate
that into your work. I couldn't be more
excited to talk about this information
with you guys today. It's absolutely something
I wish I understood when I first got my career
going. Let's jump in.
2. Finding Inspiration: Today, we're going to
go over a few ways to hone and develop your
own unique visual style. This is an incredibly
competitive industry. It's also one where our work and the work
of our competition, it's all around us. Whether it's social media, the YouTube content that
we're consuming, TV, movies, we're constantly seeing the edits that other
people are pushing out. There's been plenty
of times in my career where I'd watch an
incredible piece of content and instead of feeling motivated and inspired to get out and go create something, I'd find myself feeling insecure about my
own edits and style. Instead of focusing
on the differences between what you create
and what you consume, it's important to focus
on the relationship between your own visual style
and your editing style. Developing at this practice will allow you to more
confidently create those striking edits
that will stand out and more like the ones you probably find yourself
watching on repeat. It's important here to think about diversifying our
media consumption. As a video editor, you need to be fluent in a variety of different
visual aesthetics. Maybe you're a person who's
a regular YouTube consumer, you're watching content from a bunch of your
favorite creators, and maybe that's the style
that you aspire to create. But one thing that I think we
should all be conscious of and actively practice is consuming different
types of things. Maybe spend some time watching films from
different genres, different cultures,
even time periods. Take note of those emotions that those stories
leave you with. It seems sad in some ways, but in Western culture,
particularly American culture, we are limited to a certain
amount of taste that we're given within the films that make headlines in
our current market. There's so many amazing films from different countries
that are evoking totally new forms of emotional cinema
and storytelling that I think we could
learn a lot from. I've personally been
really enjoying watching a lot of
South Korean films. There's been some
incredible stories that have been
coming out of that. I think Parasite is a
perfect example here. I think just getting
out of your box a little bit and searching
beyond what's just currently on social media and on the main pages is something that we could all be a little bit
better at doing. Music is also another way we can diversify our
content consumption. I know we all have
our favorite genres that we like to listen
to on a regular basis. Me personally, I regularly
like listening to hip-hop, of course, R&B, even alternative or ND music. But I find that in filmmaking, in storytelling,
in video editing, music is such a
strong driving factor to creating emotional
response in your viewer. Choosing to listen to
genres that might not necessarily be comfortable to you and expanding that palette, that library for
sounds for rhythms, for emotional cadence is such
a strong way that we can begin to build a
more diverse palette for our editing styles. When it comes to
editing with music, choosing the right track and syncing it flawlessly
with the rhythm and the emotion can do so much for elevating the narrative in the story that the edit creates. The rhythm, the tempo, the mood of the song can do
so much to guiding your cuts, your effects and transitions
and help to create a deep connected visual
experience for your viewer. One huge key to doing
this to diversifying our inspiration sources is consuming as a viewer and
not always as a creator. Watching a magician, it's like one of the purest forms
of entertainment. Usually, it's
because we're not so concerned with all of
the smoke and mirrors, we just want to see
something that amazes us. Watching content is in
a way, no different. If we're spending
time trying to figure out and dissect how
they colored that shot, what camera that was shot on, what lens was used for that? More often than not, we may end up watching
through that story without even taking away the emotional response that
it intended to deliver us. What this means is that sometimes you can
often be left with a pretty empty understanding of why a visual
story was impactful, what those edits did to
help convey that action, those character emotions or to help better sell a product. For me, one of my favorite
directors is Yorgos Lanthimos. He has this incredible
iconic style of very mundane but unique and
striking dystopian films, stuff that really evokes very
strange emotional response. I've found that while a film like this definitely
doesn't fall in line with the type
of editing that I would really be doing
on a regular basis, and certainly not stuff I
would regularly be paid for. Watching movies
like this for me, can have a huge impact and be massively beneficial
in helping me break past some creative plateaus or sticking points that I'm
feeling in my own creativity. Take some time to maybe go watch a few of your
favorite pieces of work. It can be movies. It
can be commercials, some things from your
favorite creators. Take some time to watch through. Watch the story first. Take away the emotional
impact it left you with, and then revisit it at another time through
that creator lens, and take some time to
take away those notes and those ideas that can help you to guide you in
your next project. If we begin to implement
these practices, this will help us to develop a strong sense of
visual literacy, which is another incredibly
important attribute to have as video editor. What I mean by that is your
ability to look at a shot. Look at a given scene and say, this shot sells this product. This shot makes me feel happier. This shot makes me
feel curious or maybe even contemplative or sad. Being an editor means
you ultimately have the power to turn that footage
into whatever you want. It might sound a little weird, but you could take footage from a funeral and make it look like one of the
biggest parties of the year with the right skills, the right music, the right
editing choices behind it. Maybe that's not the point
here, but in many ways, as an editor, you hold all
of the cards to the story. You in most cases are the last person to touch that
and really determine how this is going to come
across so take time to study shots and
analyze the impact of what a scene or a cut created
in that particular edit. Now that we've
talked about all of these ideas and how
to find inspiration, find reference work, create your own reference library
and this can be anything. Think of it like a
playlist of videos that inspire you from all sorts
of different sources. You can use sources
like Vimeo, YouTube, but I personally have been using a platform
called Milanote and creating my own visual
style guide as a board. This is also a class
project for you guys, where I'm going to
have a template that's exactly like the one
that I'm showing here, and you guys can follow along. In this first card
over here on the left, I have a board for
visual inspiration. If we pull this open, I've dropped in a bunch of references of some of
my favorite content. These are a variety of different commercial
spots from Vimeo. It's one of my favorite
movies that I've referenced from Yorgos
Lanthimos, The Lobster. It's just a palette, a visual place that
I can add a glance. If I'm feeling a little stuck or creatively uninspired
I can pop into this, look over a few of
these references, look at some of these frames and get maybe some new ideas, some new spark of excitement for that next project I'm taking on. Now that we've got this visual guide to reference and follow
along with here, let's jump into our next
lesson in talking about how to differentiate
your visual voice.
3. Differentiating Your Visual Voice: Now that we've
talked a bit through finding new inspiration
from different places, let's talk some steps
on how to actually apply those into your
own visual style. One thing that I've
noticed catching myself doing over time is that
as a video editor, I'm not often
actually practicing. It's this weird thing we do. You think maybe I just
took a vacation and I shot some video clips maybe on your phone or your
camera of some sort. You come back and you're like, I could maybe throw together
a quick little travel edit. This will be good practice. Well, the truth is, well, maybe that's a fun
stylistic thing to do. How often are you as an
editor really going to be hired to edit together
clips from a vacation? Probably not all that often. It seems a little
counter intuitive because the things
that we want to get better with at editing, commercials, short films, music videos, probably not going to have clips
from a vacation. How can we effectively practice? How can we actually get better? One approach that
I've developed this, coping. Now bear with me. I realize that may
seem a little bit odd. Coping being a good thing. It's a weird stigma that we've developed in the
age of social media. People want to identify themselves and stand
out amongst the crowd, and certainly I'm not
endorsing going out, copying the work of somebody
and claiming it as your own. But I do think we should all be very conscious of the
benefits that come from recreating work in your own way of defining
your own style. Maybe pick a scene
from a movie or pick a section of a commercial that really caught your eye. Find a song that maybe
was amazing that you watched in a piece and
use it in your own work, and practice recreating some of those elements in that edit. This is such a fast way to, instead of just
practicing the basics, the small technicals,
actually applying it all into a singular piece for you to
improve your own skill set. For example, here in
my reference board, I've got a ton of
different stuff. Some things that align very directly with the work
I'm doing as an editor, but some things that are
totally out of the box. This is a really cool
high energy spot from New Balance for one of their shoes from a
couple of years ago. There's so many amazing little small editing
techniques in here. I love going back to
this one because there's just so much energy
in camera movement. This is an amazing branded, like Docu commercial
from Adidas, talking about the design of a unique shoe
that they put out. There's so many elements
within this edit, the way that they choose to show the interviews that really
captivate your attention. The story itself isn't
even all that exciting, but the way that the
editor bridged all of this archive information,
it's just striking. I love watching this edit. There's this really
beautiful of fashion film. I think it's an
editorial piece for a new collection from Zemo. I don't even really know
much about the brand, but the way that this piece
was shot, the sound design, the editing cadence, it has such an amazing character that I think is really pivotal
into how it was edited. I often find myself watching this piece to study
that and think about the pacing of dialogue and how I'm cutting
a particular scene. Personally, I am so driven
by music, by sound. There are so many times that
I've found songs that I fall in love with and develop a deep emotional
connection to. There's this funny
thing that happens with music as video editors. We're restricted with the songs, the tracks that we're
actually able to use, one way that we can help
differentiate our style and practice these elements is maybe grab one of
your favorite songs, like something that you actually listen to on a regular basis. Don't worry about the copyright, just use that to actually
create a unique piece. I have so many songs
that I've pulled from different artists that
I've fallen in love with, Baby Keem is a really
unique one, Kendrick Lamar. They've developed
such a unique tone within their work over the
last handful of years, and I've certainly found myself envisioning so
many creative ideas. Of course, in a client project, probably not going to
use one of their songs, but to practice, this
is a good way that we can differentiate and get
out of our comfort zones. Music as a whole is not only a place that we can
find new inspiration, but it's also something
that we can use to stand out and differentiate
ourselves as editors. I've personally found that I really get excited when I see an editor use a song that's out of the norm of what you would expect
from a traditional edit. Maybe we see a high
energy sports commercial. But there's a classical
piano ballot underneath it. When that is done with taste and it feels
authentic to the story, the emotional impact that that creates is so unique
and so powerful. Finding ways that we can
utilize genres of music as a tool to help ourselves stand out is just one of
those secret tools. Just like we created our
visual reference library, our playlist inside
of Milena here, I also have another board
for music inspiration. I take some songs from
different genres, make sure they're different, things that have a deep
emotional impact to you. It doesn't have to be songs you'll actually use in an edit, but again, just some things that get your brain turning
and get you inspired. Here in this board, I brought in a handful of some of
my favorite songs. A couple of these I actually
have used in some edits, but they just really
stuck with me. Some of them are pulls from
completely random places. But I use this as just
a quick way to skim through a handful of different
sounds and get my brain in that creative editor's mindset
of really thinking how I can differentiate my style
as I approach a new project. Finally, another way that we can practice differentiating our visual voice is maybe try
a self editing challenge. Put some constraints
on yourself. Maybe give yourself
a creative brief just like a client would. Use stock footage, use a particular
type of music that you've never really tried
to edit with before. I'm sure we've all
heard of those in 24-hour or 72-hour
film festivals where a bunch of people get together
with a specific prompt to create a film in a super
constrained amount of time. I realize those
might seem a little hectic and a little
intense to jump into, but doing a practice like this, just giving yourself a box to try and work within that
you're not comfortable with can really help
you to define yourself as an editor and develop a stronger connection
to your own style. Now that we've walked
through some ways, some actionable things
that we can do to apply these inspirations and
references to our own style, let's move on to
talking about how that style translates
into your client work.
4. Navigating Your Visual Style in Client Work: The key to client
work is getting to know their brand
and their needs. It's not necessarily always placing your stamp on that work. Every gig is going
to be different. Knowing how and when to infuse
your own creative style, or when to maybe take
a bit of a back seat, is such an important attribute
to have as a freelancer. In some cases you may have
full creative control, but in many cases you
probably won't have any. In this lesson, I want to talk to you guys a bit
about knowing how and where to flex your own
creative style versus knowing when to let those
personal tastes be a bit more on
the back burner. Your main objective as a
video editor is to use your understanding of visual
style and video formats and use that to dissect your client's brand
and their needs to help better inform your
creative decision making when you take on that edit. But of course, it's important
to be cautious to not experimenting with
your own style within that client work. Your goal is to create a puzzle that looks like
it was never a puzzle, but instead just a
completed piece of art. Good editing is
fundamentally invisible. If a cut or a transition, sound, even color, stands out just a little
bit too much that can be just enough to remove the
audience from that experience. Your job is to do your best to create that seamless
end product. Once you've landed
a new project, a new edit with a client, you'll spend some
time acquiring all of the assets that they'll provide
to you for the project. Of course, that's all
of the video footage, maybe it's graphic assets, maybe it's logos or music. One way that I think
that style can apply to a client project is did they
provide a song for you? If they did, great,
saves you some time. But if they didn't,
that's an area that you can use your own
style and influence from what we just talked
about before to provide your own touch
into that project. As you begin to take on that edit and really
understanding the needs for what is going to happen with that edit
is a YouTube video. Is it a short film, is it a commercial? Using your
understanding of all of those various formats and
the content that you're consuming is the
way that you can influence and inform your
creative editing decisions. Here within our
[inaudible] guide, I've left some boards for you, kind of blank that you can
drop in, brand assets, maybe from the client,
maybe they've provided you some past references
to projects that they've done that they're
looking to use as a guide for this new edit
that you're taking on. Maybe they have
some fonts, maybe they have some graphics. Bringing this in and
visually ordering this stuff for you to
look at in combo with some of your own
personal references is a great way to keep all of
this information contained in your own mind to give you that creative inspiration when maybe you might hit a sticking point throughout that project. One of the assets that
you're likely to get as an editor is a creative
brief or a treatment. We talked about this
in another class about some client facing
definitions and terms that you want to
know and understand. But this is in a
way like your Bible for how you're going to
creatively approach the edit. Now, sometimes these
will be really simple. Maybe they'll just be an
email with a block of text, but sometimes
they'll be a little more visually interesting
for you to look at. This is a past project
that I was working on for Adidas and this is a
slides presentation, and so there's all
sorts of stuff in here. As we walk through, we get
a look at the script and some shot references
for how the edit should feel as we're
reading through the script, like in the timeline itself. As we get later on, you'll see that there's
some mood references. These are going to be shot
angles that the client likes. There's going to be some gifts in here that's always
really helpful, something that I've
seen clients doing more regularly in
these presentations. But this is just
like a master view for you to look and
determine, okay, I see the style that they're hoping to get
out of this project, maybe there's some ways
that I can clearly use some of my own ideas and communicate those
back to the client. The reality here
is that, you might not always get a super in-depth, very creatively thorough brief
treatment from a client. In some cases you
might get something that is super difficult to read as like a big chunk of text
in the body of an email. But as an editor, it's so important for you to be able to thoroughly
read through and understand that those
ideas that they're trying to communicate
to then be able to translate that into the project that they're looking for and hopefully
meet their needs. Or at a minimum, just be able to ask questions about that brief to get you to the place
that you need to be. Now that we understand
a little bit more about visual style and how it applies
to your client projects, I think we should
take a little bit of time to understand a
bit more about how to reflect on our own styles and how to analyze those
in a healthy way.
5. Reflecting on Your Own Style: We've talked a lot about
analyzing the works of others and recreating style
from different inspirations, different things that we're
watching and consuming. But I think that there's an
important thing to take away about reflecting on our own
work and our own styles. It might not necessarily
seem appealing, but diving back into some of your own work can have
some huge benefits. I know it's not something
we all really like to do, but hidden in some of
your early work are traces of your creative identity that you're probably
chasing to develop. I know it's kind of
hard to believe, but it's not something that's
just crafted overnight. It's typically kind of
there from the beginning. Maybe it's a favored
color palette or a particular angle or composition that
you're drawn to. You like wide angle shots, you like low angle shots, you like super quick cuts on
certain beats within a song. These are all elements
that are likely to kind of exist in probably some of your earliest
attempts at creation. But if you take some time
to go back and study them, you may find that there
are things that you could maybe lean back
into and improve upon. A mindset that we
can adopt to go about doing this is treating our old work like we would treat movies from a favorite
director of ours. Don't write off any of their
early work just because it's maybe not up to the quality that they're
currently producing. Take some time to go back and really study those
early attempts at some of your first ideas and see if there's something
that stands out to you. You might be surprised. It's a powerful thing. Your style, it's kind of like
your editing fingerprint. The more you understand it, the more you can use
it to leave a stamp on your work and stand
out amongst the crowd. It's like how you watch a
Christopher Nolan film and you know it's a
Christopher Nolan film within the first 30 seconds. Understanding this and really
having that connection to your identity and your style is just such a powerful thing
that we can use as editors. The next thing to understand
about our style and reflecting on the process
is that it should change. It should grow with
you as an individual. As we become freelance editors, you get to a point where
things do begin to click. You do begin to
niche down and do a particular type of
work on a regular basis. It's a great thing to reach that kind of consistent
level of work. But at the heart of it, creativity thrives
on the openness to innovation and experimentation
and not restriction. As we grow and develop as
individuals and humans, it's so easy to
allow our voices to get defined on the things that we're regularly
consuming and creating. You think over time
as we evolve and grow in our personal lives. We're likely to have interests
that change, like hobbies, new things that we pick up, new types of food that
we grow to appreciate. Our editing should mirror
that in many ways. Our creativity should grow
and change as we evolve. Your creative
identity, your style, your touch on a project, it is intrinsically tied
to you as a person. If you try to force yourself to maintain a certain editing
style in every single project, there's a chance that
you're just limiting your ability to create something
new and something fresh. So being open to that
change and being open to growing and allowing
your styles to change, maybe in ways that you
don't expect or anticipate, it's just one way
that we can help to keep ourselves growing past those plateaus in those
creative dry moments in our time as being
freelance editors. Throughout my journey as an editor and as a
creative professional, the type of content that I consumed and the
lifestyle that I lived, maybe back in like 2016, I was very much into
the vlogging type, like the things
that Casey Neistat was creating or some of the work that was
beginning to happen with the filmmaking content creators. But as I've grown older and as I've been
doing this longer, I found myself finding new
inspiration in new ways that my style is shaping from completely
unexpected influences. Music videos are
something that I never really had a
deep connection to. I've never really
been somebody who spends time watching music
videos from different artists, from my favorite songs. But ironically, some of that art form has begun
making its way into my own work and I've been finding myself
watching music videos from completely unrelated
genres to what I do, but just to kind of see
how other people are utilizing those inspirations
in their own work. In other moments in my life, some of the most
impactful breakthroughs that came and transformed my creative identity came from sometimes
pretty sad things. So I decided to use
those emotions to try something new within the style that I was
applying to my work. Yeah, sad is not
necessarily a great thing, but in many ways I
discovered a new side to my storytelling
from those moments and experiences in my life. So we've talked a lot about
how to find inspiration, how it applies to client work, how to look at your past work. Within this millino, I at the heart of this left this personal reference section. What I've done here is
I brought in one of my favorite edits that
I've done for a client. It's a campaign that I did for Adidas a couple of years ago. Beneath this I've
written three strengths, things that I think I really
nailed within that edit. Then also I've put three things
that I think I could have improved on or I would
have done differently had I approached
the project now. I think that this can
act as a great way for us to find a piece of
work and reflect on it, while also getting
to look at all of these other references
from external sources. We have our visual inspiration, these different
video references. We have our music
references and then we have the brand assets
and the things that we might be using for
our next project. Use this board as a guide and a framework for you to
discover a new sense of your own visual style and maybe help you push
past that sticking point that you are at with a client project or even
a personal project. The important thing that I
want to leave you guys with here is just
understanding that style. While it's easy to
feel like you need to compare yourself
to the style that other people are doing
in this industry, it's you, it's yours, and that's something
you should be proud of and lean into. So I hope that some of these
tools can give you guys some framework and some new ways to approach your own style, and hopefully find new touches that you can leave on
your next project.
6. Final Thoughts: Well, we've made it to
the end of this class. I'm so glad that you guys were
able to watch through this with me and get to go over some of this information
about style, which it's a little weird for some people to talk
about and understand. But hopefully this
class project, the Milano can act as a bit of a new template and workflow for you guys to work through some of these things on your own. We talked through so many
pivotal and important things to understand about style and how it can translate
to client work, and how you can really
refine it for yourself. Please, if you guys
feel inspired to, I hope you will upload your Milano into the
project gallery. I would love to check them out. I'm sure some of the
other students would love to see yours. Thanks for watching. I hope
to see you in the next class.