🗞️ RNDR: First-Ever Edition!

Happy Thursday everyone,

Welcome to the first-ever issue of the RNDR newsletter! I’m glad that you all chose to support me in my first independent newsletter project!

For those who aren’t as familiar with my work, let me introduce myself.

My name is Rickie, and I have been a YouTube video editor with Humphrey Yang for 3 years, seeing the channel grow from 30k subscribers to over 1.1M today. I have also been writing a weekly newsletter on finance news published every Wednesday called Hump Days, which has grown from just over 1,000 subscribers to over 40,000 readers today!

When starting this newsletter, I thought to myself, “I wish I had a resource that gave me insight into the editing world as well as provided some inspiration for video/animation ideas”. This newsletter is precisely that. No publication like this existed (to my knowledge), so I decided I was going to start it.

I see this newsletter as a marriage between my two professional backgrounds which allows me to talk about the beauty of video editing in the written form. I have lots of plans for the RNDR newsletter, but I won’t bore you with the details just yet!

Enjoy today’s edition!

- Rickie

RNDR Queue

• Beautiful visuals, as usual, with Peter McKinnon

• Cool concept for a video, comparing the history of filmmaking and the role the newest iPhone plays in it

• Interesting editing decisions made throughout this video (that I personally wouldn’t have made)

  • A first 30 seconds that I personally think people would click away from

  • Interesting storytelling leading up to the ending

• The characters in this video bring it all together!

• Love the intro of this video! Outlines the premise and lays down the challenge all within 15 seconds

• Quick, fast, punchy editing. Wouldn’t say this style is for everyone but for this channel, it works

Titles That Intrigued Me

• If I Wanted to Become a Millionaire In 2024, This is What I'd Do [FULL BLUEPRINT]//Alex Hormozi

• America’s Underground City//Peter Santonello

• I Became a Venture Capitalist With Only $1,000//Starter Story

• The World’s Worst Gaydar//Cody & Ko

• Taking a Free Truck on a 1,500 mi. Road Trip//Mav

X to Inspire

RNDR Feature

Cleo Abram is a video journalist who left her job at Vox to start her own independent show on YouTube called Huge If True where she takes an optimistic angle on technological advancement topics. She’s made videos on Formula 1 racing, quantum computing, and artificial wombs.

Since her time at Vox, she’s always used creative visual storytelling and passionate narration to cover really complex topics. She’s a talented filmmaker, editor, and motion designer, although she has since outsourced her post-production to members on her team.

Vox is a really interesting channel from an editing perspective because they don’t really have a look. When you think of MKBHD or Ali Abdaal, each of their videos have a very similar design language to their previous videos. Vox, and its former creators, however, seem to tailor each video’s design to the topic on hand. As a result, this allows the editor to be really creative with how they choose to illustrate certain concepts. This is clear with Johnny Harris, Cleo Abram, and Sam Ellis, who have all gone independent over the last few years.

This week, I break down Cleo’s latest video from 2 weeks ago on the music industry and the role AI could play in the coming future. I’ve selected 5 visuals from this video that I believe best showcase her ability to pair her narration with motion design to push the story forward.

1. Dynamic Waveform Graphics

Audio-only formats (music, podcasts) in a YouTube video can be tricky for editors/animators looking to keep viewers engaged. These kinds of waveform graphics are a really good way to keep movement on the screen while not taking away from the message.

Some small details that tie this whole graphic together:

• The blue and orange textured shading behind the two artists

• The way the lyrics are highlighted lining up with the audio

• The slight stop-motion effect of the lyrics and the photos of the artists

2. Creative and Relevant Use of Shapes

This graphic is incredibly creative. Instead of just listing the points in text form, the animator chose to illustrate the text along the strings of a guitar. Details like this take a video’s visuals to the next level.

The caveat with these kinds of graphics is that they can be very time-intensive to make and are rarely templatized to use in another video. There are tradeoffs to be made when editing, but in the case of shorter turnaround times, I would likely forego making a graphic this detailed. However, if you have the time, the creativity does not go unnoticed.

3. Illustrating Abstract Concepts Using Motion Design (I)

When watching YouTube videos, I often wonder if I would have portrayed the information in the same way. Sometimes, I disagree with the editing choice, whereas other times, I find that I’m very impressed by the decisions the editor made to communicate a complex idea. In the case of illustrating something intangible like the gap between two pieces are art, I have no idea how I could have done this any better.

As a side note: animators that come from a Vox background love adding bottom third accessory graphics to set the stage for the main graphic. I imagine that this main graphic would look pretty bland without the shapes at the bottom and they do a pretty good job of not getting in the way.

4. Creative Integration of Title Cards

At this point in the video, we go from talking about inspiration to talking about copying and this graphic was the transition point between the two concepts. What I like about this graphic is that it shows that the two are closely related, allowing a smooth transition from one topic to the next.

5. Illustrating Abstract Concepts Using Motion Design (II)

This might be my favorite graphic from the entire video. To give you context from the video, Cleo Abram is talking about how AI makes music. The first part of the graphic is what AI doesn’t do, which is take pieces of songs and mash them up together. Instead, the AI analyzes patterns to make a completely new song, which is what you see in the second graphic.

This is another case of using animation to illustrate an intangible concept and the editor does an amazing job at showcasing this concept in a clear, non-distracting way. I especially love the way in which the components of the songs (the puzzle pieces) move; they move like magnets. Instead of moving from point A to point B in a linear fashion, the editor moves them more naturally (varying the speeds, bobbling past the final location). Movement, and making it as realistic as possible, is a design choice that, when done well, gives life to the animation.

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