Today at VidSummit, I attended a masterclass from Sticks, a YouTube creator team with a traditional film background. They’re on a mission to bring a cinematic approach to YouTube, creating mini-movies for creators like Ryan Trahan and Mark Rober. Their journey to 500,000+ subscribers in a year is impressive, and I took away three key lessons that I think every content creator can benefit from: 1. Show, Don’t Tell Sticks emphasized making your audience feel something rather than just understand it. This is achieved through the use of tools like: • Composition • Shot size • Camera movement • Color • Body language • Sound effects • Music • Pacing One great tip they shared: try editing your footage before adding any voiceover—let the cuts and music drive the story first. 2. Intention & Obstacle A compelling story always has a character with a goal, and obstacles that stand in the way. Sticks highlighted that before you even start filming, you should ask yourself: • Is my intention compelling enough? • Will real obstacles arise on this journey? The harder it is to reach the goal, the more engaging the story becomes. They recommended introducing small, incremental obstacles that lead to the final objective. 3. Cause & Effect Every beat in your story should cause the next one. The best stories make the audience feel like they can’t miss a moment because each scene drives the next. Even if you’ve vlogged hours of footage, you can find your story by following the formula: • Because this happened, then this happened. Sticks suggested storyboarding out your narrative to identify the moments you want to highlight during editing. In short, the session was a fantastic reminder that, while YouTube and Hollywood are different, Hollywood has already mastered the art of capturing attention and telling emotional, gripping stories. If we can bring that same energy to our YouTube content, there’s no reason we can’t engage viewers just as effectively. Would love to know your thoughts—how are you telling your stories?

Big announcement! The new Editor Accelerator Mini Course will be coming very very soon. The course is designed to get video editors to understand what makes great editing and landing clients as soon as possible 💰 It’s 115 slides of PURE GOLD that I’ve personally written and can GUARANTEE will get you results if you implement it 💯 (not such a “mini” course lol) For the creators in here, don’t worry, it’s not just about landing clients… Inside the course you’ll also learn all the most important editing theories, fundamentals, and all of my top tips for editing long form & short form content 💻 The course is focused more on understanding editing as a whole, what makes good vs bad editing, and less on the technical tips like how to do keyframes for example. The information about editing will take you much further than focusing on the technical tips like keyframes or animations. If you don’t know why you should have an animation, knowing how to create one doesn’t matter. I’m super excited to almost be done with this, I’ve been wanting to release a course for so long now and I’m finally on the home stretch of just putting the pieces together in the edit. If you’re excited comment your favorite GIF below 👇🔥

Just wanted to update you guys! The scripts are coming along very nicely and I’m two videos away from finishing the scripts for the first course (essentially the first module in the original plan). There’s already so much information I have written out in my notion pages that I can’t wait to share with y’all. Literally hours worth of information already written just need to finish the rest so that I can bulk record and then bulk edit it all and get it out as soon as possible. For those of you struggling with time management, editing faster, your workflow, and even understanding Premiere, the program itself… y’all will benefit so much from this first course coming soon. Super excited and can’t wait to get it out to y’all. Just wanted to share that and in the meantime, let me know what you’re most excited to learn about, and I’ll make sure to make that as best as possible for you. Love y’all! - Norman

Welcome YouTube Editing Mastery! This is THE place where YouTubers and Video Editors get ongoing help from me & my team to edit better videos, grow their channels faster, and make more money. 💥 3 Easy Actions For You RIGHT Now 💥 - ✍️ COMMENT on THIS post to 'Complete action' Who you are, what you do, why you joined, what you're struggling with, and your 2024 goals. - 🤝 REPLY to someone else's introduction! Be kind, give advice, be relatable, be friendly, use GIFs. - 👁️ CHECK out the classroom section to get a quick introduction to me & the group: link to intro module (WATCH FULL VIDEO)! Group Rules: 1) No Self Promotion 2) No Selling in the DM's 3) No Spamming the Community Feed 4) Be the Member You Want to See

Just a little W to share with y’all, sent over the trailer for IBP’s massive 5 Days in McDonalds series coming up, and they loved it, no changes needed. Here’s a SNEAK PEAK of the 5 Days trailer here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sDMLMZ9SwF-ywFFW8hdvwZdgEcWTFDQQ/view?usp=drivesdk My biggest thing I focused on was 1. Telling a story with the footage & clips I picked 2. Creating an emotion of intensity, tension, curiosity, and seriousness throughout the entire video 3. Creating a rhythm of quick cuts contrasted with slowed down moments of voiceover that emphasizes that feeling of serious intensity. And if you remember the 3 rules of editing… Emotion, Story & Rhythm, those were the Big 3 things I focused on and because of that, the decisions I made in the edit were all to support those 3 rules. Let me know if you have any questions about my thought process, any decisions I made that you notice, any edits I pulled off you’re curious about, literally anything! Comment below and let me know your questions & thoughts! Love y’all! - Norman