🧠 5 Visuals for Your Next Video

Author

Rickie Ho
April 06, 2024

Happy Saturday everyone,

It’s been two weeks since my last newsletter! If you’ve been waiting for me to publish, I apologize for not having given any updates but I’ve just been so busy with life! Both editing life and non-editing life.

A few of you have reached out to me about the newsletter which means a lot to me to know that you’ve noticed that I’ve been gone! I’m going to try my best to show up for you guys every week!

Nothing major to really update you guys on. Just hope you have a great week!

Enjoy today’s edition!

- Rickie

5 Visuals I Loved This Week

1. Johnny Harris’ Use of Manual Inputs

  • I find that a lot of video editing takes inspiration from the manual inputs from which modern video is derived from.

    • If you watch enough YouTube, there are a lot of principles taken from an age where black & white film, and physical film reels were the norm.

      • Many editing methodologies pay homage to the early days of filmmaking, and Johnny Harris is usually one creator that leverages this look the most.

  • The reason for this is two-fold (in my opinion):

    • 1. Manual inputs and physical props offer a different look and the visuals are no longer contained purely within a 1920Ă—1080 composition.

      • While many animators try to achieve the look of manual inputs (like moving a camera around in After Effects to show papers on a desk), conventional 2D data visualization and animation usually does not compare to the real thing (when done well).

    • 2. The physical props now add a layer of detail to the normally boring A-roll.

      • A-roll for talking head videos is normally a point of contention because many creators believe that if they don’t constantly have something to show on the screen, it drops retention.

      • However, with the physical props, Harris is able to get the best of both worlds. The end result is visually engaging A-roll.

        • This is also a concept that spans across industries. For example, I know that many stand up comedians want a handheld mic (instead of a headset or a lav mic) to be able to use as a prop!

    • As a bonus, the physical props add to the effort that goes into a video and I think that viewers appreciate when creators go the extra mile. Sometimes that’s in the form of better scripting, more research, or in this case, creative camera angles to capture his manual inputs.

2. These Cinematic Shots Off an iPhone

Video: Shot on iPhone//Gawx

  • If you’ve been reading some of my recent newsletters, you’ll know that I want to include more coverage of cinematic shots to be able to document my travels better.

  • What’s cool about the clips that I selected above is that they not only achieve the cool cinematic look to their travel video, but they also do it with their phone.

    • It shows that it doesn’t take an expensive rig or the fanciest lenses to document your travels. Just some creativity and your phone camera!

  • I especially love the escalator scene that truly shows off how good the image stabilization is on the camera.

    • I don’t know which iPhone the creator has, but I imagine even some of the older ones have decent stabilization as well.

3. This 3D Space Animation

  • This is the first time that Morning Brew has made the newsletter and I’m happy to see how far they’ve come in their motion design!

    • A few times this year, I’d be scouring YouTube for RNDR content and a handful of times I’d click on something from Morning Brew only to see they didn’t put too much effort in their visuals.

  • Although this animation is more toward the end of the video, it’s nice to see that they’re starting to implement this kind of motion design in their content.

  • While the animation is nothing ground-breaking, I think it’s a pretty easily achievable one with a little bit of tinkering.

    • After Effects and Davinci both have pretty good 3D systems to be able to make something like this

4. This Scrapbook Design

  • This is something I haven’t seen on YouTube, and given the title of the video: “Why You Need to Be Yourself to Succeed”, it’s fitting that I find this editing style quite unique.

    • The quick and dynamic movement of the scrapbook editing design is really engaging!

  • Calling back to my earlier points of manual inputs, this is an example of an editing style that pays homage to the days of physical film and scrapbooks, but in a completely digital manner.

    • This entire visual is likely made in After Effects or Resolve, but is an attempt to achieve that retro/vintage look

  • I especially love the first clip where it looks like there’s two layers to the visual. It’s like those old school overhead projectors

5. This Stop-Motion Look

  • It’s interesting to see all the different kinds of editing styles on YouTube. Stop motion is used all across the platform but I feel like I haven’t seen it as abstract as in the case above.

  • What I find the most interesting about this is how time-consuming I’d imagine something like this being.

    • Having edited videos for the last 4 years, I have a pretty good gauge on how long things take and the amount of layers and unique assets, this is definitely not something you just throw together in an hour (or maybe I’m just slow).

  • Really cool use of colors in this kind of editing. It’s different. Probably not for everybody, although, I like the look. If I were to make something like this, I’d probably tone everything down a touch but it’s cool!

X to Inspire

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