The ride is already bumpy...

To all of our new subscribers, hello! We have yet to truly promote this newsletter so YOU ARE EARLY. 🤟🏾

Again, this newsletter is to give you three nuggets of insight from each one of your creator-explorers. Comms check, ignition, and lift off.

I’m intimidated by the two other guys on this wagon. For real. Tejas and Daniel, if you’re reading this, I’m scared of you guys. Lemme explain.

I met Tejas at the beginning of 2021 when I was just three weeks into my TikTok-A-Day project. It didn’t take long to find out that we had a lot of similarities with one another. Soon after, he had his first HUGE TikTok, taking him from a mere 2,000 followers to over 100k in a matter of a day. Since then, we’ve always used one another as a measuring stick - constantly one-upping one another, in view counts, followers, and other ostensibly meaningless metrics.

I caught wind of Daniel (or “Dodford,” colloquially) in the summer of 2021 - his eye-candy visuals and seamless edits breaking down important films were something that caught my eye, something I knew that I simply couldn’t pull off. I circled back with Tejas and he concurred - Dodford is a beast.

To be working alongside them both on an almost daily basis is still mind-boggling to me. The best part is that we’re all jealous and driven by each other’s talents. I possess skills that Tejas and Daniel don’t have, Tejas knows things that Daniel and I don’t, and Daniel has a better accent than both Tejas and I (plus he’s an insane editor and storyteller). The point is, we all push each other to be better creators without even realizing it.

Falling into a crew like the one you see before you in this newsletter is rare, albeit not impossible. In order to find a similar group, it’s a combination of being at the right place at the right time, with the right kind of content. And, while it may seem difficult, creating something is the first step that gets you closer

So what are you waiting for? Start creating - you never know who might see it.

Last week I mentioned that hundreds of ‘pandemic-creators’ on TikTok are no more; accounts with millions of followers suddenly dead in under a year. Although accounts burn out on other platforms, the rate at which it happens on TikTok is unprecedented.

So as someone who has all my eggs in TikTok (trying to expand on other platforms now too!), this is scary. I’ve put a lot of thought into why these accounts die and have come up with this equation:

Passion + Consistency + Perseverance + Innovation = 100% Success on Social Media

Sure these sound like buzzwords, but take any struggling creator and the reason will come down to one of these four variables. On TikTok specifically, creators fail to innovate. They go viral off a specific trend/niche and hammer it until their audience gets bored. I saw this happening with my account too…

I used to be strictly a finance/crypto creator on TikTok and it worked extremely well. But I noticed if I don’t expand and add my personality to what I create, I will die off as a creator. Today, my views are down but more people connect with me personally and are willing to listen regardless of what content I put out – that’s a win.

Next week, I’ll talk about my year plan – where I hope to be by the end of 2022. See you at the next stop.

A computer-generated demon baby. In the deepest depths of the uncanny valley. Being held by - you guessed it - Robert Pattinson in full vampire get-up. It shocked me, even five films deep into Twilight, where I thought I’d already seen it all. But why - on earth - did they CGI a human baby?

OK, not a totally human baby. The crew knew this - and hoped a reliance on CGI could achieve the exact look they wanted. Did it work? You decide. There’s a lesson here somewhere…

Even as an editor, I often catch myself leaving the thinking to afterwards. “I’ll just fix this shitty lighting in the colour grade” or “I’ll think of an opening hook in the edit” or even “I’ll find the music later”. (Yes, think of music before shooting).

Back when I was making colour grading TikToks, sometimes I’d assemble footage, record narration and publicly announce a video before even working out how to actually achieve the colour. It was pure complacency, as well as arrogance. These videos I completed back-to-front always sucked ass.

Divine blessings of genius are never guaranteed. It sure didn’t come in Twilight’s VFX department. Think about how you’re going to do that thing later, now.