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Why Creators Have Stopped Editing Their Content

AI Summary: A new trend is emerging among content creators on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, where they are moving away from heavily edited videos to more raw, unedited content. This shift is driven by audience fatigue with overstimulating, retention-edited videos and a desire for more authentic, relatable content. Creators like Dan Hentschel and Sam Sulek have gained large followings by posting unedited videos, finding that this approach saves time, money, and resonates better with viewers. The trend is seen as a reaction to the oversaturation of highly produced content, with even top creators like MrBeast acknowledging the benefits of a more stripped-down approach. Industry experts and creators alike report that unedited content often outperforms edited videos in terms of views and engagement, as it creates a sense of intimacy and authenticity that audiences crave in the current social media landscape.

See also [[companionship content]]

WHEN DAN HENTSCHEL, a 28-year-old comedic YouTuber, goes to make a video, he props his phone up on the dashboard of his car, talks for up to 40 minutes uninterrupted, and posts it.

social media users are getting fatigued by the overstimulating, brain-rot style of videos, where graphics and sounds appear every 1.5 seconds. No-edit creators, he says, are building deeper relationships with their followers.

“The no-edit format feels more intimate. It’s as if you’re hanging out with your friend at the gym, going for a car ride, or just hanging out at home. These no-edit creators, in particular, replicate face-to-face communication, which creates a sense of intimacy. They speak directly into the camera as if they’re looking at you directly.”

Adam Meskouri, who negotiates content and licensing partnerships with creators and runs the Instagram page @baai, which posts viral content, says that he’s seen no-edit content take off in the past couple of months. “The videos that perform the best are videos that don’t have text overlays, or cuts, or special effects,” he says. “They’re usually just continuous clips.”

#video editing #trends #YouTube #culture #editing

·rollingstone.com·Aug 23, 2024

Why Creators Have Stopped Editing Their Content

One weird trick for fixing Hollywood

A view of the challenges facing Hollywood, acknowledging the profound shifts in consumer behavior and media consumption driven by new technologies. The rise of smartphones and mobile entertainment apps has disrupted the traditional movie-going habits of the public, with people now less inclined to see films simply because they are playing. Free or low-paid labor on social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok is effectively competing with and undercutting the unionized Hollywood workforce.

the smartphone, and a host of software technologies built on it,3 have birthed what is essentially a parallel, non-union, motion-picture industry consisting of YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, Twitter, and their many other social-video rivals, all of which rely on the free or barely compensated labor product of people acting as de facto writers, directors, producers, actors, and crew. Even if they’d never see it this way, YouTubers and TikTokers are effectively competing with Hollywood over the idle hours of consumers everywhere; more to the point, they’re doing what any non-union workforce does in an insufficiently organized industry: driving down labor compensation.

Almost no one I know has work; most people’s agents and managers have more or less told them there won’t be jobs until 2025. An executive recently told a friend that the only things getting made this year are “ultra premium limiteds,” which sounds like a kind of tampon but actually just means “six-episode miniseries that an A-List star wants to do.”

YouTubers’ lack of collective bargaining power isn’t just bad for me and other guild members; it’s bad for the YouTubers themselves. Ask any professional or semi-professional streamer what they think of the platform and you’ll hear a litany of complaints about its opacity and inconsistency

#hollywood #entertainment #filmmaking #social media #storytelling #trends #business #youtube #tiktok #platforms #consumer behavior #jobs/creative-industry

·maxread.substack.com·May 7, 2024

One weird trick for fixing Hollywood

Companionship Content is King - by Anu Atluru

Long-form "companionship content" will outlast short-form video formats like TikTok, as the latter is more mentally draining and has a lower ceiling for user engagement over time.

In contrast, companionship content that feels more human and less algorithmically optimized will continue to thrive, as it better meets people's needs for social connection and low-effort entertainment.
YouTube as the dominant platform among teens, and notes that successful TikTok creators often funnel their audiences to longer-form YouTube content.
Platforms enabling deep, direct creator-fan relationships and higher creator payouts, like YouTube, are expected to be the long-term winners in the content landscape.

Companionship content is long-form content that can be consumed passively — allowing the consumer to be incompletely attentive, and providing a sense of relaxation, comfort, and community.

Interestingly, each individual “unit” of music is short-form (e.g. a 3-5 minute song), but how we consume it tends to be long-form and passive (i.e. via curated stations, lengthy playlists, or algorithms that adapt to our taste).

If you’re rewatching a show or movie, it’s likely to be companionship content. (Life-like conversational sitcoms can be consumed this way too.) As streaming matures, platforms are growing their passive-watch library.

content isn’t always prescriptively passive, rather it’s rooted in how consumers engage it.

That said, some content lends better to being companionship content: Long-form over short. Conversational over action. Simple plot versus complex.

Short-form video requires more attention & action in a few ways: Context switching, i.e. wrapping your head around a new piece of context every 30 seconds, especially if they’re on unrelated topics with different styles Judgment & decision-making, i.e. contemplating whether to keep watching or swipe to the next video effectively the entire time you’re watching a video Multi-sensory attention, i.e. default full-screen and requires visual and audio focus, especially since videos are so short that you can easily lose context Interactive components, e.g. liking, saving, bookmarking,

With how performative, edited, and algorithmically over-optimized it is, TikTok feels sub-human. TikTok has quickly become one of the most goal-seeking places on earth. I could easily describe TikTok as a global focus group for commercials. It’s the product personification of a means to an end, and the end is attention.

even TikTok creators are adapting the historically rigid format to appeal to more companionship-esque emotions and improve retention.

When we search for a YouTube video to watch, we often want the best companion for the next hour and not the most entertaining content.

While short-form content edits are meant to be spectacular and attention-grabbing, long-form content tends to be more subtle in its emotional journey Long-form engagement with any single character or narrative or genre lets you develop stronger understanding, affinity, and parasocial bonds Talk-based content (e.g. talk shows, podcasts, comedy, vlogs, life-like sitcoms) especially evokes a feeling of companionship and is less energy-draining The trends around loneliness and the acceleration of remote work has and will continue to make companionship content even more desirable As we move into new technology frontiers, we might unlock novel types of companionship content itself, but I’d expect this to take 5-10 years at least

TikTok is where you connect with an audience, YouTube is where you consolidate it.5 Long-form content also earns creators more, with YouTube a standout in revenue sharing.

YouTube paid out $16 billion to creators in 2022 (which is 55% of its annual $30 billion in revenue) and the other four social networks paid out about $1 billion each from their respective creator funds. In total, that yields $20 billion.”

Mr. Beast, YouTube’s top creator, says YouTube is now the final destination, not “traditional” hollywood stardom which is the dream of generations past. Creators also want to funnel audiences to apps & community platforms where they can own user relationships, rely less on algorithms, engage more directly and deeply with followers, and enable follower-to-follower engagement too

Interestingly of course, an increasing amount of short-form video, including formats like clips and edits, seems to be made from what originally was long-form content.8 And in return, these recycled short-form videos can drive tremendous traffic to long-form formats and platforms.

90% of people use a second screen while watching TV. We generally talk about “second screen” experiences in the context of multiple devices, but you can have complementary apps and content running on the same device — you can have the “second screen” on the same screen.

YouTube itself also cites a trend of people putting YouTube on their real TV screens: “There are more Americans gathering around the living room TV to watch YouTube than any other platform. Why? Put simply, people want choices and variety … It’s a one stop shop for video viewing. Think about something historically associated with linear TV: Sports. Now, with [our NFL partnership], people can not only watch the games, but watch post-game highlights and commentary in one place.”

If I were to build an on-demand streaming product or any kind of content product for that matter, I’d build for the companionship use case — not only because I think it has a higher ceiling of consumer attention, but also because it can support more authentic, natural, human engagement.

All the creators that are ‘made’ on TikTok are looking for a place to go to consolidate the attention they’ve amassed. TikTok is commercials. YouTube is TV. (Though yes, they’re both trying to become each other).

certainly AI and all the new creator tools enabled by it will help people mix and match and remix long and short formats all day, blurring the historically strict distinctions between them. It’ll take some time before we see a new physical product + content combo thrive, and meanwhile the iPhone and its comps will be competing hard to stay the default device.

The new default seems to be that we’re not lonely as long as we’re streaming. We can view this entirely in a negative light and talk about how much the internet and media is contributing to the loneliness epidemic. Or we could think about how to create media for good. Companionship content can be less the quick dopamine-hit-delivering clips and more of this, and perhaps even truly social.

Long-form wants to become the conversational third space for consumers too. The “comments” sections of TikTok, YouTube and all broadcast platforms are improving, but they still have a long way to go before they become even more community-oriented.

I’m not an “AI-head” but I am more curious about what it’s going to enable in long-form content than all the short-form clips it’s going to help generate and illustrate, etc.

The foreground tends to be utilities or low-cognitive / audio effort (text or silent video). Tiktok is a foreground app for now, YouTube is both (and I’d say trending towards being background).

·archive.is·Apr 30, 2024

Companionship Content is King - by Anu Atluru

The Beastification of YouTube may be coming to an end - WSJ

Known as “retention editing” because of its unique ability to keep a user glued to their screen, this style features loud sound effects, fast cuts, flashing lights and zero pauses.

“It’s the Beastification of YouTube,” said Noah Kettle, co-founder of Moke Media Co., a video editing and social media monetization consultancy. MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, built his reputation by creating hyper-engaging, fast-paced videos with frequent action on screen. That led smaller YouTubers and content creators to mimic his style.

Donaldson tweeted a plea to his fellow YouTubers to “get rid of the ultra fast paced/overstim era of content.” He said that in the past year, he has slowed his videos, focused more on storytelling, “let scenes breathe, yelled less” and focused on longer videos, all of which has resulted in even more views.

if content creators require fewer editing resources, it could alter the outside editing services that many content creators use.

Creating a retention edited video requires a lot of work. “Every clip in the video should be under two seconds,” said Dara Pesheva, a 17-year-old who works as a freelance video editor for social media content creators. “Every 1.3 to 1.5 seconds you have to have a new graphic or something moving, you have to [use] a lot of effects. For every image and every transition, you have to add a sound effect. You need flashing graphics, and you have to have subtitles in every video.”

TikTok has trained users to scroll away if they aren’t hooked within the first half-second, social media video editors said. This is why so many retention edited videos start with a loud bang or whoosh sound.

“People around my age can’t focus,” Pesheva said. “They have very short attention spans. They’re used to TikTok, and so editors have to adjust for Gen Z. They have to adjust to the fact that people can’t keep their attention on something for more than a second if it’s not entertaining.”

CapCut, the video editing platform owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance, allows users to add catchy sounds and special effects to their videos with just a few taps. This has allowed anyone, even children, to create videos with tons of explosions, laser effects and animated text. Replicating those same effects on older video editing tools such as Adobe Premiere or After Effects could take hours and is far more complicated.

Connor Bibow, a freelance videographer in Georgia, said that it’s no surprise retention editing works so well on channels like MrBeast’s that cater to children, because the editing format is very similar to children’s cartoons. “It’s a lot of noises and bright colors,” he said.

Like CoComelon

Thavaseelen said he began leveraging retention editing after seeing MrBeast speak about it. “MrBeast is very open and transparent with his content, and he tells people what he said,” Thavaseelen said. “He tells people you have to optimize for retention. A lot of clips he puts on short form are retention edited.”

as MrBeast has cooled on the style, experts say that other creators are already beginning to follow. “There’s been a wave of creators who have now transitioned to just making hour-and-a-half videos with just them and a whiteboard,” Kettle said, “and they’re outperforming every single video that they’ve done that was optimized for attention.”

Cicero, the Syracuse University instructor, said that YouTube, like many art forms, has different styles that define different periods. Retention editing, he said, has defined the 2020 to 2024 era, but fatigue eventually sets in.“Early on, it was very easy to blow up and become a viral hit with [this type of editing], but now it’s a lot harder,” he said. “There are these waves of different trends in editing, or in fine art, or in music, where you have these different styles. Maybe retention editing is like the impressionist period for YouTube.”

#trends #youtube #video editing #influencers #rich people

·archive.is·Apr 4, 2024

The Beastification of YouTube may be coming to an end - WSJ

Welcome to the video bloat era

A Pivot To Video tends to arrive in stages, with each stage being more expensive and producing less interesting content as things progress. Usually it goes like this: The experimentation phase, the factory phase, and the bloat phase. A great editor I worked for during the second Pivot To Video, roughly 2013-2017, who, herself worked through the first, roughly 2003-2007, described it as a massive waste of resources that wastes more resources as it becomes clearer to everyone not directly involved how much of a waste of resources it is.

It’s a fundamental issue with video as a medium that online platforms haven’t fixed and, I suspect, never will because it makes user-generated content platforms feel more professional and consistent. Like TV. The cost to produce video content always balloons as you add more people, more tools, more structure to the workflow, pushing out smaller creators and teams. And even with the pandemic lowering the barrier of entry for making video online considerably, it’s still happening again. We’re in the bloat phase now.

MrBeast, the platform’s biggest star, is spending between $3-$5 million per video right now, up from around $200,000 a video just a few years ago. To put that absolutely outrageous number in perspective, a MrBeast video is roughly the same cost per video as any episode from the first five seasons of Game Of Thrones.

Guides last year were saying you had to capture viewers in the first three seconds. I’ve read a few guides from this year that are now saying hooking a TikTok user has to happen in the first 1.5 seconds. There’s an oft-quoted “shoeshine boy” theory of markets, usually attributed to Joe Kennedy in the late 1920s, who said that when the boy shining his shoes had stock tips, he knew the market was about to collapse. Well, here’s a similar rule for digital video: If you’re trying to optimize your video in microseconds, the video pivot is probably already over.

YouTube is laser-focused on capturing the world’s televisions. In fact, the platform’s CEO, Neal Mohan announced yesterday that the platform is adding even more features for YouTube’s TV app. And TikTok, if it’s not banned or whatever, is trying to use its massive inventory of short-form video content to prop up both a search engine and an e-commerce operation. And we haven’t even talked about Meta’s video products here. There is simply no incentive for these platforms to regress even though users seem to want them to.

Tastes are clearly changing. The Washington Post article pointed to Sam Sulek, a giant muscleman on YouTube who posts 30-minute workout vlogs with barely any editing as a possible direction this is all headed in. I tried watching one of his recent videos and I’m not even sure it has any cuts in it? It’s possible that’s what’s coming next, but it’s less certain if platforms will, or rather can, allow it. Time to find out if they know how to pivot.

#influencers #YouTube #trends #tv #culture #video #tiktok #business/strategy #video editing

·garbageday.email·Apr 4, 2024

Welcome to the video bloat era

Netflix, Shein and MrBeast — Benedict Evans

both Netflix and Shein realised that you can make far more SKUs if you’re not constrained by physical inventory - the time slots on linear TV and the store rooms of physical retail.

If you don’t need thousands of physical stores, then you can turn over the product range much faster and reach new customers much more quickly - and so Shein is now bigger than H&M and on track to pass Inditex.

Of course, the fundamental TV question is ‘what’s your budget?’ There’s a circular relationship: a given budget means a given quality and quantity of content, which, combined with your CAC, means a given audience, which means a given level of revenue and a given budget. There is no network effect in TV, and going to Hollywood with the world’s best software and $5 will get you a latte.

While it is true that a popular TV show can attract more viewers and potentially drive subscriptions, there is no guarantee of this happening

YouTube doesn’t buy LA stuff from LA people - it runs a network, and the questions are Silicon Valley questions. YouTube, in both the network and the kinds of content, is a much bigger change to ‘TV’ than Netflix. It’s ‘video’, but it’s also ‘time spent’ and it competes with Netflix and TV but also with Instagram and TikTok (it does puzzle me that people focus on competition between Instagram and TikTok when the form overlaps at least as much with YouTube). And YouTube doesn’t really buy shows or buy users - it pays a revenue share.

Business model comparison between Netflix and YouTube

Netflix can indeed make TV shows as well as any legacy TV company, but did Disney make software that’s as good as Netflix? It didn’t have to. It just had to make software that’s good enough, because ‘software’ questions are not the point of leverage. But I don’t see any media companies competing with YouTube or TikTok, where software is the point of leverage - at least, not recently.

#streaming #business #trends #YouTube #business/models #companies/netflix #companies/disney

·ben-evans.com·Jun 16, 2023

Netflix, Shein and MrBeast — Benedict Evans