YouTube is in an editor skill shortage I need help I'm hiring I'm looking to hire a editor I'm looking for the best editor there has never been a bigger demand for YouTube editors but the jobs go unfilled I mean it's not like there's a lack of editors there's so many of them available but they also have to have that skill and the incentive for them to use that skill for you I feel like if you find someone good at eighty dollars an edit you shouldn't keep it at eighty dollars an edit it is so fun
to be like you're crushing it more money here Sarah dichi is one of the few creators who cracked that code former editor herself she shared how she did The Impossible she an editor from Fiverr and train them up to be exceptional and stick around so what I'm hearing is attitude is literally everything oh my God yeah and the willingness to improve this interview is brought to you by the best video podcasting tool Riverside honestly if you're not using Riverside for all of your virtual meetings you're making a big mistake I've even been using it for
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riverside.fm for free and use code editing podcast for 20 off and you can find that link in the description and we'll see you back in the interview well I've been doing YouTube for seven years and when I was trying to find editors I was like I'm just going to edit every single video I can never find an editor I've been through so many editors who couldn't take feedback and improve I would get to the point where I'd be paying people a lot of money they'd send me an edit that I can't even begin to give
feedback on because there's so many things wrong so I'll sit there and re-edit the entire video it'll take me a longer time to re-edit the video than if I just edited it in the first place yeah I did that for two or three years and I was like this is impossible this is just impossible I can't find anyone but then I just got back to like okay let's just let's just try a lot of people don't stick with one person who's not delivering for six months to a year because that's not helping anyone Kyle started
as a Fiverr editor for like 40 or 80 bucks I forgot what it was the first edit it like obviously wasn't all there but he took feedback really well and he improved really quickly it was fun for me to like see him improve and he was improving and then me to be like oh let's double rate WRA keep doubling it keep doubling it so I think he felt you know the wind at his sails too so we just had a good kind of back and forth it took I would say a solid year to now
get to the point where we are where if I give him a proper YouTube video he can take it from zero to a hundred when the guy before him he started like the fee that he gave me was so high but I was like okay let's try it because it seems like you're legit so we started basically at like my highest pay grade that I would pay an editor video after video he wasn't getting better his attitude wasn't an attitude of like oh I'm so sorry I'll improve upon that in the next video what he's
giving me is worth like a hundred bucks because I can only use basically the a-roll that he cut down I can't use anything else you know you can't really decrease someone's pay he wasn't showing initiative he wasn't changing he just kept giving me the same thing every time so when Kyle came around it was easy to see even though he wasn't delivering exactly what I needed in the beginning he was improving every single time so what I'm hearing is attitude is literally everything oh my God yeah it's absolutely everything and the willingness to improve you
said that as he was improving you were doubling his rate yeah yeah so that's really something that's fascinating that I feel like a lot of creators probably maybe don't do yeah and that's because I want to keep them and I want to keep them stoked you know like I feel like if you find someone good at eighty dollars an edit you shouldn't keep it at eighty dollars an edit yeah oh it's cheap yay no no it's like pay for the value exactly and it's fun as a person on the other side because I've had so
many terrible experiences with Freelancers it is so fun to be like you're crushing it more money here real rewarding Improvement exactly hey you're getting better here's some more money but then part of the process is actually working with someone and working with them over time to get to that sort of similar mindset a creative mindset that you have we call it the editing language yeah because when you guys ask me on the phone call yeah what's your editing language or whatever I was like wait wait yeah oh yeah it's a it's like a modernization of
the word style yeah your style because I'm not organized so I don't have that beautiful is like this is how I edit and do things it also required someone to come in and me be like hey here's my YouTube Channel watch this type of video this type of video and that and just figure it out I don't think that works though no it doesn't yeah but I took the time to really with every edit be like this video is this type of video here's an example and I would like on slack do like five paragraphs
let's see an example if there is some sort of uh a soil react then you just get like a really bad email yeah yeah so it's basically like all the footage is up for the hammer EV video should be pretty explainable in between the notion video page that lays out the first half of the video along with aerial segments so sometimes for videos too that are more scripted out I'll have it all scripted out in notion and with like red text will be my editing notes you can take some creative freedom on what you leave
in and out because I talked about the same thing a few times in the a-roll and GoPro and want you to use the best take and edit that's something that took us a minute to get there but I think that's so powerful for video editors this iPhone has a 40 megapixel sensor you don't need that information in an edit four different times you want the shot that is the most entertaining or powerful or the most informational you're giving him options yes exactly yeah yeah the iPhone footage and GoPro shots were confusing in the project so
I laid them all out chronologically in the timeline and cut the fat in some places so you can just start cutting I don't want to use his time to sit there for four hours trying to find individual things so because I filmed them because I lived it sometimes I'll actually take the front end of the project so he can spend most of his valuable time like with the actual edit that's a great gesture because to an extent you're respecting his time hey I know this is a problem I'm not going to give it to you
I'm going to help you as well yeah yeah I say I said it with trauma so I think it's kind of like a give and take because I know it will take me a shorter amount of time because I filmed it so that's when I'll step in and so he's almost now adding adding to it you know it's no longer just me being like telling him everything I I would never sit there and cut out the background and shoot me over to you know like a Photoshop background for comedic comedic effect so now he's adding
more YouTubey stuff it's kind of fun for me because I get to say like hey I really like what you're doing here I would have never thought to do that but that fits really well as a YouTube video keep doing that you mentioned a notion document as well was that kind of like your script and then you kind of also did pre-edits in that script as well yeah so it changes edit to edit this is what I need to work on is kind of standardizing what my YouTube channel is because every edit I'm almost going
back to the Whiteboard which is very frustrating but if I plan it out more usually that sets up Kyle up for more success that hummer EV video I did use the car car and then I scripted my a-roll right the tech videos that I hate the most and don't get good views they're frustrating I have to re-edit them like a bajillion times or when I make the video as I go I've been so used to that process because if you film and edit everything you can just figure it out and post fix it in post
right that's what we like to say but when you're working with other people you can't do that so I'm trying to get more organized where if I have a talking head you know part I will script A lot of it out in notion and add editing notes and then all of the extra stuff I'll just throw in a slack message so there is a learning process there whereas like if you are the editor it's your own content you can create the problems for yourself but that is kind of irresponsible if you make those problems for
someone exactly and that's the past year has been my life of minimizing those yeah for me I've had to learn how to get better at just giving feedback and because I would be over understanding where I'll be like oh you did this wrong but it's fine I'm just gonna fix it and then I'll go on the computer for six hours and I'm re-editing the entire video and that's not that's not good for me or them because then they're not learning so I have weekly YouTube videos coming out yeah and I'll usually film on Monday and
they'll come out on Friday and it's literally every Thursday night I'm like still giving feedback to my editor it's interesting because she edits on a different editing software than me so I don't even have the ability to finish it so I can't even like I can't touch it so I have to be able to give that feedback to get it exactly how I want and so it's that's been like crazy it's been a great learning process for me though honestly so we have we have a few editors on this team now as well and it
will send they'll send us a version of the podcast from a version of the intro but then part of it is for me of like yeah I couldn't look at this video in like two free days and then you never do it and then I never do and if you just sent the feedback on that same day it would have been done so I suck but I understand that I understand because I'll still to this day do it to Kyle I'll be like okay this is the video can you just cut down the a-roll because
I'm really excited about like the b-roll out that I shot I'm gonna go in there and do all this and you know he'll send it and a week will pass and I'll get busy with shooting another video and I'll be like if I just let Kyle take that entire video it would have been done by now oh this breaks my heart because that is a very good truth a lot of times you know Kyle will get a 80 or 90 there and I know exactly the pieces to tweak to make it more of a Sarah
peachy video and you know sometimes it's way quicker for me to just go in there and move those Lego blocks yeah and other times if it's easy I'll just kind of you know explain it to him uh I was working on the Mr BEAST's blind video I was still learning the Mr Beast editing language and so my version was 12 minutes and then Jimmy was like okay watch this here's how you can get it down to eight minutes interesting yeah because a lot of so when I was like why wasn't I a 15 minute video
but that's that's the whole point of I guess I missed a priest video Yeah is oh I want more right and you feel excited at the end of the video big lesson for me on top of that was I was still struggling to try to get it down to eight minutes but then also I have a direct communication with the Mr Beast editing team and I kind of I started asking the question hey what is the Mr Beast editing language and so it then became a collaboration experience where actually they started helping me on that
edit and so yeah I had my 12-minute version and then like they weren't able to get that down to eight minutes to a far more like optimize like efficient version and in terms of Kyle's case it was okay I've done as much as I think I can I've got to 70 80 there you then did that final pass he then watches that new version and go and he knows exactly that's what I missed exactly I had that exact experience like yeah you're right I missed that what and then it's kind of like a oh that's
so obvious why didn't I think of that yeah I know exactly and then now I understand the Mr Beast editing language so much more because I got 70 there and then they got it to that last 30 but very on in the process I asked Jimmy what do you want to feel and he says I want to be mind blown and then that was the words that stuck with me the most and so every car I started working towards is will this blow everyone's Minds will this will this blow Jimmy's mind will display audiences minds
and then just kept on and then like that informed my edits a lot simply because I asked that question I understood what he wanted straight away so well let me ask that question what it what is it like coming from Jimmy does he send a paragraph or do you just get on a phone and he's like I want this this and that do it like what is that like I'm a slight exception to the rule because I've managed to develop a good amount of trust with Jimmy where in in the same sense when I trust
uh Daniel are introverted to more than I trust myself Jimmy trusted me more in that sense like hey I know you could probably do this better so off you go but I still ask those questions they had a story producer they had like hundreds of pages of documents that kind of detailed everything that that was shot and so I was able to find things hundreds of so what would you you just do control F and like find if you needed someone crying yeah then you could find that through those documents or how does that work
the header writing process where they I had assistant editors who went through all of the selects and they then they did describe here's what happened on the selects as a text box and then I was able to search okay I needed so I didn't I needed someone crying crying so in my case it was like okay this is an emotional beat I think I need a reaction of someone crying I searched that word and I had that subx right there awesome oh that's cool living on top of it it is I was front loaded with
information that helped inform me to know what to do sooner rather than that there she is if there's any peachy fam here they know this is like my dream to have a podcasting cat this is this is our podcast yeah big jump there we go well done parkour but like I said it was because I asked a question straight away like what do you want to feel mind blown and I just really really helped inform me of my choices I still sometimes do uh the final pass of these podcast edits like just trimming it down
a little bit more but if I could communicate better with our editor Tyson on here's how you can spot these little trims you have to decide what is the non-negotiable and let everything else fall to the side like with my YouTube channel there are certain videos that are very personal to me and so those are the videos that I will just edit from start to finish and I'll give myself that but everything else I'm like Sarah you do not need to edit this like Hummer EV review this is not your what's it called your magnum
opus or whatever you know you have almost a decade of work on your YouTube channel that is one 100 you like don't let your pride get in the way of like moving forward in life and in your career because yeah well because you know then that frees up time for me to get a cooler shot you know I have the new uh rivian SUV and I'm like okay I'm not gonna edit this but it frees me up to be like what are some cooler shots that I can get that makes the video better in a
different way so you just have to pick and choose you can't have it all yeah I really really enjoy some of the aspects of this editing production and especially in in the post-production and there's some things I'm struggling to let go but you're right but if you enjoy it yes then then do it yes and don't feel guilty about it if you enjoy it then why delegate it yeah like for example uh our Euphoria intro on our podcast like that was something I was really excited about with The Last of Us coming in I really
wanted to do that intro because those things I'm really really passionate about burning on top of this and this was a really heartbreaking moment we had also interviewed Colin and Samir and we wrote a really really great intro for them but I'm so excited we have those intro editors who's like Daniel he also goes by dodford he's better than me he's better than me at doing this I'm like I would love to do this but I actually trust him more than I do myself and so it broke my heart but I gave it to him
but that's so exciting yeah and I'm sure he crushed it right oh he's still listening it right now but I I I 100 know he's gonna cry yeah turns out yep he did crush it that is such a great joy for me when I find someone who specializes in something and they can just take that and crush it because I've been through so much like heartbreak with trying to hire someone and they just miserably fail and so now if someone just comes along and one does their job I'm like amazing let me pay you more
but then if you like over deliver that's like a whole nother story I'm like oh my gosh she has to do more do more yeah so I'm actually pretty good with that where if someone delivers I'm okay I'm like how can you stay yeah how can how can we work more and do more and I have this project over here how about you do this right yeah I think that is probably the secret of it it is to an extent trial and era with multiple people until over time you stumble upon the person that has
that organic natural fit you just have to like hire more and fire more essentially we need to have a serious conversation I need you to stop spending your entire day looking for music that actually isn't even that good but Track Club is actually full of bloody great music their entire library is banger and mash we also know that audio is essential for creating an emotional world for your audience this is why beyond having great music track club has mix lab which allows you to use stems to customize it to your situation for example it has
a documentary song that I really liked that sounded hopeful but if I soloed the vocals that sounded scary or I just use the Mallet to create a build and Track Club makes it super simple to avoid copyright strikes paste your Channel's URL into track club and Bob's your uncle your videos will be cleared automatically my uncle's name's Dave guess what they're offering your first month for free so go to the link in the description and get your free month of track club today you said that you're uh you started out editing without any shooting without
any camera where'd you get your footage how did you start with the whole story so my dad was kind photos and things you know I have a lot of fun Clips as a kid just with his you know VX camera so he's always into that but he never used it a ton so he had a Canon T3i that I would use with a kit lens and I would get to the point where I had enough to edit a little bit or I would use other people's footage I mean school projects I would do music rap
videos every single history project economics project I somehow coached my teachers into like doing a music rap video so the project instead of a report so still to this day on my channel you can go and watch a music video called the law of supply and demands supply to the sky just to the right the amount so high and it's me and my friends making a wrap to a Nicki Minaj music video and I filmed it and edited so I just for some reason I had the editing bug early just video editing was always my
expression towards the world so I play basketball and there was a teacher versus students basketball game and and the teachers were physically like running us over it was a crazy game and my mom was filming the whole thing so my way to get that anger out like what is up with these 40 year olds like plowing us over on the basketball court were seventh grader and eighth graders I sat up all night editing a video that showed every single time they like fouled us or like did something wrong everything I did was I should make
a video about this sounds like it was almost like your way of journaling yeah almost yeah any project anything I wanted to like get out in the world and you know I didn't film that footage I would just take it and like put text over and zoom in and you know so yeah that was your personal expression that's one of the things I think we enjoy the most about editing there is emotional catharsis I've had like emotional breakthroughs just because I've made a cut yeah well and because it puts order to your world that's what
I love is you take all of this footage that is so chaotic and so everywhere and a light bulb goes off and you're like oh this is the beginning middle and end and you sort it out and you see it come together and there's no there's like nothing better than just having an edit come together you know like sometimes I'll I'll be in you know Premiere resolve and I'll just be like I'm a genius you know like oh my God when people watch it they're like oh yeah that's a good video but you're like you
don't understand what I did this angle didn't work out so I took this clip from this other time and put it over here you know I just edited my own wedding video yeah and I'm like people don't even understand what I had to do for this cut to make it you know seem like it it was nothing and also in the beginning days I was really into music so my band needed a music video so I would do that everyone needed videos and yeah I'll edit it I always do love those stories so what was
probably that most challenging video ever that is invisible for everyone else yes yes because good design is invisible right so good video edits are invisible well my most recent one I'd have to say is my wedding edit because we only planned it in a month and we did it in France and we did it very last minute the money that we spent was more on travel and stuff so I only hired one videographer who actually helps me edit shout out to Kyle we hired a really good photographer but video surprisingly was like in the back
of my mind I did because I was like if I have good photos that's all that matters it was only one person and I just threw three or four cameras at it I was like I'm sorry Kyle but figure it out and he did a great job but only having one person shoot it you know I definitely had to do some finagling and edit and it turned out really good so that was probably the recent one but my first one would probably be honestly some of my school projects just the music videos I would I
would make you know discovering things like I don't know if you guys used a ton of film Burns back in the day yeah but just like fun stuff like that like okay telling the story but aesthetically how can I make this cooler every new edit you discover something new and so I don't think it's harder for me to probably pinpoint one video in the beginning but I think just all the music videos I had the most growth I resonated with the film Burns moment because I had that phase yeah I mean there was like a
2012 to 2015 phase but we're all doing film Burns because it was a really good crutch to make it aesthetically pleasing like if you want to do Transition to the next scene I put in a film burn and things like that I think I added a channel called what's good London it was just film Burns every single car it was like we should to put epilepsy warnings I know exactly are you start off being as an editor and just like slowly and organically you found yourself also now being a Creator as well as a person
being in front of the camera person probably doing uh like producing some maybe a bit of directing uh I think is it is it your partner or husband uh John yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean John's also helping out with the production as well you're doing all of the operation but what that could then end up doing is minimizing the time for you to be potentially editing that's been the biggest challenge and what's funny is so John my husband he's a YouTuber as well so our worlds have actually stayed very separate for a very long
time um and you know if we're like out vlogging we'll help each other but usually since he does skateboarding and I do kind of tech and creativity our stuff is usually pretty separate but this past month we actually did an experiment where I'm like hey I'll give you a cut of brandels if you just help me it actually was really great it helped me a ton but for him he's like I got I'm sorry all right like I still have that itch to do my own thing this is great but we work completely opposite let's
just go back to hobby and why I can't call it a day um so that was a fun recent experiment when you YouTube you do have to have all these different talents but video editing um that was the biggest thing that I had to let go of because you know it'll take me 10 to 14 hours for a solid YouTube edit if it's a simple talking video you know I can get that done quicker but now I'm focusing a little bit more on quality less quantity so those edits take easily 10 hours you know now
also that I'm kind of tired after video editing for 15 years yeah those edits now become longer because I'll sit there and procrastinate yeah and so what I've learned is just having a video editor help me now will get me so much quicker to the final product because even if they do the first cut it's so much more less intimidating now for me to go in just with the a-roll cut and then just like figure out the story I'm proud of stuff that still stands on its own today yeah because a lot of my edits
you can see the it's dated whether it's film Burns or color grade a certain way I remember back in the day it was so cool to do everything faded so you just you would do an S curve and you take the blacks and shoot it up yeah and then everything was just ugly and Faded that that aged terribly you know but I bet it looks great at the time now at the time it wasn't the thing it was the aesthetic it was the aesthetic right what are we doing now that we're gonna look back on
I can't believe I did that aggressive subtitles yeah yeah yeah it's like the subtitles like motion blurring in coming out your face and it's like like sometimes like one word at a time so you know to get that retention I don't do that but yes yes I feel like I'm calling it now that's gonna be in three four years so I'm gonna look back at that and go oh why did we think that was good yeah yeah at least on long form yeah I'm comfortable with my like uh a good video being hundreds of thousands
of views instead of millions of views to still be a little bit authentic to like what I want to make if that makes sense but those people of the world they are doing YouTube editing at its best and congrats keep going guys epic views you're doing great yeah so I think in the same way that you have a lot of creators right now copying Mr B's for us it was Casey neistat right and so it's like you can't be a Casey neistat copycat and Thrive because you're always going to be second best to Casey you're
always going to be second best to Mr Beast you could be the best Mr Beast copycat ever but you're still second so you have to incorporate your own style your own way of Storytelling your own vibe in some way because you're only going to be the best you and so you have to take the time to to figure that out what I was copying in the video beginning was like really cool uh like Bonnaroo event Recaps yeah you know I was obsessed with the recap so whether it was a travel film or a wedding film
I'm like how can I make a emotionally intensive Montage slash you know uh working in different a-rolls and emotional things to make you feel something and that's what I was kind of copying and that that went into more docu style things and naturally YouTube so I think for people who are coming YouTube first it's fine to start there yeah but like you said you have to figure it out on your own you have to tweak things you have to figure out what it is for you it's a reference point here's what's working now let me
try to recreate that but then use that as a foundation for you to start finding your own unique voice uh I think in my case it was uh Edgar Rice and Guy Richie like that I absolutely love those filmmakers there was there was a point in my life where the Scott Pilgrim Vs the World was my personality yeah [Laughter] but then over time we're using that from Foundation start finding out what it is that I like to do as a creative as well but that's a scary part I think the choice to try to find
what works for me is scary but then that kind of gives you that extra longevity and towards that yeah and so yeah we do see a lot of the Mr Beast copycat I think that the fundamental difference in attitude is you you can still like an artist but you need to ensure that you don't steal like a rip-off 100 yeah I think formats are a good thing to to start as a starting point at least as far as a Creator or even as an editor so like for you as wedding travel like that's a format
essentially like a genre of filmmaking yeah and for me I was actually copying just an odisha yeah he was the first person to do video editor reacts to a music video and I was like that's amazing I can talk about that so let's let's try it I also think it's kind of uh getting two creative Inspirations and creating a hybrid I think it's very transparent that we've taken inspiration from Colin and Samir but and also on top of that I think inspiration from Corridor Cruise VFX breakdowns and so we before okay what happens we put
those two together we let's have editing breakdowns and then talk about the editing economy I mean that's exactly what being a creative is like there is nothing original Under the Sun I remember when this is how naive I am with like actual narrative content because I've been so obsessed with YouTube documentaries and things when I watch La La Land for the first time I think it was like 2016 or whatever I literally was like singing in a movie I was like what is you know I didn't have the context that that was every single movie
in the 50s you know Sound of Music exists right but when I watched that I was like oh my this is the best movie I've ever seen in my life this is life-changing and then when my mom watched it she was she was like oh yeah this is really good this is like all the old school movies you know back in the day so it's like everything is a new Twist on something that has been done before if you want an example of like a culmination of all of my Inspirations for the past decade it's
my my wedding video I edited my own personal wedding video and what was so fun about that is I took all of the songs from all of my favorite movies that it like uh TV show talk Secret Life of Walter Mitty lava land and I use all of the music from all of those shows and I kind of like it was a culmination of you know all the wedding films I've done and it was so fun and I think that's what makes it fun is you can take media that you're obsessed with that you love
and put your own spent on it I agree in all of that yeah I think it's it's one of the things I find the most interesting is that yeah there are Trends and like they come they come on the popular then they fade and then 20 years later it's already maybe five years later like that trend is popular again I mean it seemed to be this interesting Loop but we're kind of like coming back and forth and it reminds me of like the phrase the more things change the more they stay the same it's like
fashion you know like I'm wearing freaking like look like almost bell bottoms you know I I wear tight skinny jeans for the last decade of my life and now I'm like the things I was wearing in sixth grade that this is the thing now but it's cool again new um but like for an example I use freaking film burns on my wedding video on mine you know and I was like let's bring these back yes all right I'm calling it film burns are gonna make a big comeback this year foreign [Music]
