Storytelling in a Small Town

(Upbeat Music)

Trent: Welcome to,

Trent: Storytelling in a Small Town.

(Upbeat Music)

Trent: Welcome back to Storytelling in a Small Town.

Trent: It's after the holidays, the studio looks different. What, you're not, what? Not the energy? No, do one more.

(Laughing)

AJ: Let's take that back. No, now that you're in the good chair, I want you to do it again.

(Laughing)

Brian: We have a higher expectation.

Trent: Yep. Oh, welcome back to Storytelling in a Small Town. That's the temper I wanted. No, that's what we're looking for, okay. Yeah, so it's after the holidays, studio looks a little different. They were- It's crazy. They were insisting I got a better chair and better spot, so I'm actually dead center now and have the uplighting behind me, so.

Brian: Trent deserves better light.

AJ: It was actually reading those contracts.

Trent: Anyway, we're back trying something, a new layout. Who knows if it'll stay this way, but I figured, give it a shot, just kind of a fun little setup for us to have this conversation. And we've been doing a lot about different ideas for how to capture these videos, right? We've talked about your story, kind of interviews,

testimonials side of it, and behind the scenes as well. And I think there's this fun part that we've kind of skipped over or haven't really addressed, they're just like, "Oh, cool, we have these ideas, you go and capture this." But does that mean as soon as it's recorded, you can just put it up on socials and it's ready to go everywhere, or do you need to do something? And again, I think we really want to take this more of the DIY side. If you work with us, we do a lot of this for you. But if you're trying to do this yourself, is it just like, "Cool, I recorded this on my phone, it's ready to go immediately?" Or what else needs to happen there? I mean, all of us have very strong opinions about that, I'm sure.

Trent: But for someone that might not be in this all the time, what would you guys recommend or advice you give to people that like, "Okay, you had the idea, you wrote it out, you videoed it and it's on your phone, you have that video content."

Trent: What needs to happen or what would you recommend to do before you just go and publish that anywhere?

AJ: Yeah. I hadn't thought of this until you were talking about it, but my number one thing to launch the conversation, I think is going to be, please cut your end and beginning down to the point where your video stops and starts, at the point where you are initiating or speaking or whatever, and then ends when you are done speaking. I would like to avoid the 10 to 20 seconds of you hitting the record button, adjusting your microphone, figuring out what you're doing. It's totally fun that you're doing all that stuff. That is all 100% acceptable, I do all of those things, but I'm gonna cut them out before I go ahead and post that video live, because none of that is like important. You should be thinking about the narrowness of your message and the importance of which you're trying to stay and just get rid of the fluff. I think that's kind of an important piece. Get rid of the stuff you don't need.

Trent: Well, I wanna touch on another important, or another, I guess, hot topic around that is the millennial pause.

Brian: I was about to say that.

Trent: Have you heard of the millennial pause? No, what is this?

AJ: So basically,

AJ: what it is-- I don't think I should know what this is.

Trent: No, I mean, I do it because I'm a millennial and I can't help it in a lot of my videos, but it's kind of you hit record and then you wait a second and then you start into it. So even if you edit it, are there some people that will leave like a little bit of a pause in the beginning before they go right in and think, I don't know, do you have a better explanation of it?

Brian: So as an example, you were telling a story before we started recording and Trent was like, "Oh wait, hold on, we gotta start recording now, "pause," and then started.

Brian: A Gen Z-er would have just used you halfway through your story, just go. Like you don't need to pause or set up or anything. You're just like basically talking as you're starting to record. So it almost sometimes cuts off the first word. It's a very Gen Z thing. Who knows what Gen Alpha will do with that? But if they do a story or they're doing a reel or whatever, they're just like, as soon as you press record, you're talking versus millennials, we tap, pause, hey, and start talking. And so there is like a very subtle nuance thing, but yeah.

Trent: And as you're saying that, I'm like, was there a global experience, like shared experience we had around that? Cause I feel like it's ingrained in me of like, you gotta hit record and then wait a second till it catches up. I don't know if it was like our older tech when we were learning how to do this stuff, had more of a transition between when you hit record from when it actually did. Cause I wonder if that might be part of why that happens.

Brian: All the tech we were raised with, yeah.

AJ: I think that we are also from, this is like a recent discovery for me, right? We're from a generation that understands the, like by requirement, by necessity, understand the nuance of the technology involved. We know that like at one point there was like videotape and that you had to go and put that tape into your camera and close the little door and then push the button and then wait for the actual mechanical gears to start spinning tape at said correct speed. And then for all of that stuff to happen, right? We're also from the generation where like you could hit record on your PC and then you had to wait a second for it to generate the literal file that it was going to start writing and work through that process. Much like we also know when you sit down at your NLE, you're gonna go to export and it's going to render and process the audio and it's gonna do all that stuff. That's the fault, takes a second. This didn't become apparent to me until a couple of days ago when I was having a discussion with somebody about wifi and they did not delineate between the fact that wifi and internet are not in fact the same thing. And we're super confused about me trying to explain that you could set up, this was related to lighting control. You could set up lighting control that was wifi based with just a router that had no internet connected to it. And so this realization, I think that there is a whole subset of folks who are detached from that experience of like, well, you have to do a thing, wait for it to catch up with you and then go forward with it or whatever is.

Trent: And it's not a weird rabbit hole, but I feel like it was a good conversation though around like, right, cause we're, how do you get people started about it and we just kind of hit on some of why there's the millennial pause and I think we have honestly kind of root caused why it happens, which.

Brian: Yeah, I mean, I even like, I get really nitpicky and this is a generational thing and I have to like deal with this, but like I was raised editing films, knowing in my head that you have to start with a black frame. You have to like begin with a black frame and then you bring in your scene, whether it's a hard cut or a fade in or whatever, you have to start with a black frame. This goes back to how films are brought to movie theaters and all these things, like it was just ingrained in me like in film school that you start on black. And so when I moved into a digital marketing role and I was doing video for social media and things like that, everything I always started with the black frame and that does not work well on social media. You want to start with your thumbnail, thumbnails weren't a thing though, pre-social media. And so in my mind, I'm like, why would you do that? And then another thing that annoys me is when someone does a fade out at the end, but they don't extend their out point to a frame past that. So it doesn't fully fade out. It's just like almost done fading out and doesn't quite, that really annoys me. But again, these are all just like weird generational quirks about how we consume media, how we give up media.

Trent: This is important to note and talk about, right? Because depending who your audience is, right? Like we've talked so much about who your audience is, who you're trying to reach and all of these things, even though they seem very mediocre, these are all things that you can do in your edit that might again,

Trent: be more respected or be more noticed by a millennial versus a Gen Z versus a Gen Alpha versus a Boomer, right? So it depends who you're trying to market to sometimes too. You need to think about, okay, how do I edit this? What do I do with this raw content that I have? I actually can impact that influence and the emotion you have, whether you could create complete outrage without meaning to do it at all.

Brian: Yeah, and you might make something and you don't know why it's good or why it's not performing or whatever, but understanding how people engage, like media literacy, how people engage with media is important because then you're like, oh, I made this video that was eight minutes long and put it on TikTok and it didn't do well. I wonder why versus, you know, whatever, I use this piece of content in a webinar that I did and everyone really loved it or in a presentation or whatever, that's like context matters.

Trent: Yeah, all right, so going back to get rid of the beginning, the end again, millennial pause, if you want to not seem like a millennial and you do hit record with like even just a little bit of a gap before you start talking, you can get rid of that, right? Like that's all part of that editing post-processing is. What else would you recommend for people that, okay, we're trimming it down to just the info we want. What else would be good things to do before you go either social media or on your website or anything like that?

AJ: If you produce something and you get to like your draft or whatever and you're really excited, but even if it's your like your final draft and you export it and you're like, oh yeah, this is super awesome. I'm going to try to still give myself like another chance to like sleep on it and watch it again a different time where I have not just spent the last like however many hours or minutes or whatever staring at this one video so that I can have the perspective of coming back to it a different time and rewatching it and catching things that I didn't notice before. Like those pauses, that millennial pause and stuff, that might not be obvious to me the very first time like that I watch it, you know? And I come across stuff like this all the time,

AJ: random, you know, I just don't like how that clip fit in there or like their heads were cut off or whatever, whatever. There's all these things that for whatever reason, because I've just been in it, I'm not going to necessarily notice on an immediate watch out of the export. And so I like to try to give myself just enough time to come back to it, watch it again with like a different set of eyes from my previous self and make some adjustments, like little timing things and stuff like that, you know?

Trent: Yeah, I think that's a good one, just those fresh eyes. It's also, we've talked on this one before, but don't feel you can't share it with people before you've shared out in the world, right? Like get someone else to look at it like, does this look good?

AJ: Yes, I have a small group of like early testers that I share stuff with, share stuff with other creatives that I know will like actually like pay attention to it.

Trent: My wife loves to tell me if I'll show her something. She's like, oh, you should change this. She's like the best producer, because she'll just be like this, this, this, this. I'm like, thanks honey. Yep, I'll work on it.

Brian: I really just wanted you to show me that looked good. I wanted affirmation.

Trent: She's always right. It's just always like, okay, yep, you're not wrong. Just I'm tired of looking at this, but I guess we'll go back and fix those.

Brian: And that's why the right person at the right time for the feedback matters. Because there is a time and place, my wife does the exact same thing.

Brian: There is a time and place for that really nitpicky feedback. And how I think about it is like, I want the right person to give that feedback. And sometimes that is Sam, my wife, or sometimes that's the client. And so I kind of want to delineate of like, does this pass the sniff test? Like, is this good? Just bare bones. Is this ready for the next step in the process? Or, hey, this is about to be posted. What are all the nitpicky final draft, everything that needs to happen, notes that we need? And so asking for that as feedback, like what kind of feedback are you looking for is really important when you're showing it to someone.

Trent: I think that's really good. And man, the whole feedback thing, I'm realizing we could probably do a whole podcast. Absolutely. So maybe that'll be the next episode. Cause yeah, I'm thinking so much about that.

AJ: Yeah, we could do a ton on that, I feel like. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah, and I'm trying to figure out like, you're talking about the editing process and you're talking about sleeping on edits and like that's really good stuff, especially when it's stuff that has a long shelf life. How I'm thinking about it though, is like when someone's making a reel or when someone's making something on Canva, or they're doing something that is just DIY, low production, I'm throwing it on my social media page with a hundred other videos that I've made. Like I'm trying to contextualize how to think about the editing process in that framework. And in some cases, I would say, just upload it.

Brian: It's gonna have a half day shelf life and then people are gonna scroll past it and never remember that video ever again. And the engagement on that will teach you more than waiting long periods of time to post things and let that be your feedback loop of like, oh, no one watched this thing. Okay, on this next one, I'm going to try to eliminate the millennial pause or my closing line at the end was my most important thing. So I'm gonna put that at the beginning as like a hook and then go into what I'm actually gonna say. Try that on your next edit, see if that engages more people. So like there's things you can do. And I would like say it, if you're creating content for social media consumption,

Brian: you need to let the audience give you that feedback rather than like, think of it as like film, as like art that's gonna last, you know, five years and be on your website and all this other stuff. And so it's like, there's different types of things I would recommend for people in that sense.

AJ: Both agree and disagree. I think that my biggest disagreement, right? Is in the thinking about that as like a strategy for success, not as like a strategy for creative work, but in like, if you go with that and you're developing your video content strategy, the actual content itself and doing your editing based around this idea of like the feedback that you're receiving or lack thereof, right? Absolutely makes sense. Where I think you're running into a problem is that the algorithm, it plays such a heavy role in the dissemination of your content that if you are not on the B side of that, right, also hitting the marketing things that you need to do in order to activate the algorithm part, I don't know that you're going to get enough viewership to make that, to make that an interactive process, right? You're totally right. That is probably the place you should be starting from, but if no one's getting to watch what we're producing, are we still not getting there basically? So maybe another piece is just what else are you needing to do to make sure your content is actually being seen once you do get it out there, right? Like I know there used to be what the 14 things you had to do to make sure your Instagram post was going to be seen by everybody or whatever that current thing is, which it like evolves, on like every three to six month basis, depending on who at meta is in charge,

AJ: or who's running TikTok, if it's China or the US today, not quite sure, but either way,

AJ: look at some of those things about what best practices are for your platform or platforms and have that kind of be the thing that goes along with the content creation piece. You have to sort of sell it to the platform to get some of that feedback from other people to know what it is that you want to do differently.

Trent: And I think I want to chime in on this too of, this goes back to some of the, I think we've all talked about before of how are you setting this up and what are you trying to do? Like if you just want to get in the habit of, I just need to get in the habit of making these videos, I'm with Brian, just go and post it. That's what I've been doing for my own social media just because I've not had time. I'm like, I just need people to know that I'm here. I'm not worried about creating cinematic masterpiece, right? If you are trying to be more specific of like, hey, I need to specifically grow. I'm being very intentional about growing my audience, about having the social following and engagement and trying to hit these different buckets within there. Then I agree, like you need to figure out how do I get it out there? It becomes more of that trial and error and test and learning and fighting the algorithm or figuring out the algorithm. And then when you're trying to do that, maybe you are spending more time on edits of like, hey, make sure I'm adding captions. Oh, it's having words that are really small over top of this video that people can't read fast enough as I switch through. So they're gonna have to watch it again or pause it. Little tricks like that that you might want to try too, right like, so those are the things that can go into the edit as well. So I think that's really what you're trying to get at. So I think great discussions. And as always, there's so many caveats of what are you trying to do depends on what you're trying to get at, cause yeah, I think putting it out there, one of my favorite things to do is just like, you know what, we're gonna go put it out there and see what happens. Wow, this did really well. Okay, I'll just keep doing that. Wow, this didn't do well. Let me just try something else. Some of the things that I think other people think are important are like your coloring and captions and sound and audio. And like, what about some of those things when you're talking about even just social posts? How much should you worry about those? How much time should you put in? What should it look like to incorporate that or worry about that?

Trent: Or should you? Sure.

AJ: I think it depends on if you have something you're going for intentionally, like a mood that you want to create, or if you are not entirely aware of what your mood or vibe should be, there's some easy ones.

Trent: And let's do a little example to help with this. I think this will help a little bit. So let's say we're working with ASPCA and we're doing like in the arms of style. Spring that back. I'm sure we just saw a bunch of those over the holidays here recently. So we're trying to do those like, okay, we filmed the video, we worked with the dog, we're talking about the ASPCA. What kind of music coloring, what are the things that we want to include in that edit to get to that feeling? Well, I guess first off, we need to establish what's that feeling we want? My mind, I'm like that sad that like, oh, these poor helpless animals, I need to help them, right? Maybe this isn't as easy as the others I'm thinking. No, no, I mean. But like, what would you add to this video if you had, again, we have the content, we have it all on our phone, we've kind of trimmed it up, so it's where we want it to be. What else would we want to add to that to just help get that emotion and get maybe that interaction of people actually giving us money?

AJ: I think using the ASPCA is a fun example, right? I mean, you nailed it with the music piece, right? And I'm sure I've talked about this before on the show, but like I frequently start with music. Music is a big driver in the video process for me, but why? So for me, it starts the tone immediately. Like, even if my music is like a slow fade in the beginning, it's always a supporting artifact that is going to shape your, the emotional outcome I want for you to have. And it's going to also set the pace for the video. And that part to me is super important. The pacing becomes an incredibly relevant piece. If you're doing any kind of fancier editing where your speed ramping or like where the speed of your video changes at all or anything like that, these become these really like powerful elements.

Trent: Well, and I was going to say, like for those that might not be familiar, when you say pace, what exactly are you talking about with a video?

AJ: For me, when I talk about the pace of it, I mean the,

AJ: when you look at, okay, a 30 second commercial, the pace has to do with how quickly the imagery and the messaging comes at you.

AJ: And that might be in like the social media world. I frequently talk about, well, you've got like these eight seconds at the beginning to try to get as much information to these people as you possibly can. And so the pacing in a 30 second social media ad is like a lot heavier hitting. I like to think of the kind of like the stomp, stomp, clap sports hype style, where it's very, very like hard hitting like drums and it's super fast. You have a lot of kinetic text or motion text or motion graphics where things are coming and flying and going this way and that way. And they're going every which direction. And the whole idea is supposed to be, is supposed to be high energy. You want to walk away from that, ready to go to the game or commit to the action. I think really your drive is to get them to try to commit to an action, right? Whether it's buying a ticket or whatever. The music helps set that BPM rate that you can then sort of match the pacing of the video to. And you can do that. This maybe this is too advanced. I don't, I almost never think of it while I'm editing it this way. But if you go with a really, really high BPM song and then work the video more slowly, like the actual content more slowly, you sort of get one type of effect. And if you do it, the reverse version where the music is slower, but the action is faster, there are all these kinds of different impressions you can create by working the pacing of the video against or with the music.

Trent: So for the ASPCA example, what kind of pace or what kind of song would you be wanting or going for for that?

AJ: Yeah, so in that example, I'm going to go for something that's slower, that has a very emotional component to it. A lot of people I think relate to soft piano, again, maybe too advanced, but music that tends to linger on the minor notes and play less into the major notes. If you're a music person, that might speak to you, but you want something that's going to kind of create the resonance and emotional space for a person to listen and absorb the information.

AJ: And there are some psychological effects that go along with this too. Faster music tends to cause this result in your brain where you start processing information faster and you're looking for things ahead of time. Your brain has this incredible capacity for predictive learning and for predictive algorithms. And so when we hear really fast paced music, your brain starts trying to guess what's going to happen next. It's like a lot of people can guess the words to songs ahead of time, things like that. So if you kind of think about this as an action point, if you slow the music down, we can give people a little bit more time to evaluate a single issue or a single thought or a single emotion by just giving them a little bit slower BPM rate.

AJ: Wow, that's super cool. Yeah, there's a lot of really cool information about this, a bunch of studies that were done. A lot of it has started with dubstep music and looking at how that affected people's brains and stuff. And there's a study about how it affects bats and stuff. And anyway, learn more about that part on your own time. Yeah, weird dubstep is one of the only types of music that bats are attracted to. So on the music side, right? So if you're going to pick something that's appropriate that kind of gives you the space or lack thereof to express the thoughts that you would like for a person to have, the part I always think of trying to match with that is the color components that lends itself to that emotion. So if I want for people to feel as a baseline for,

AJ: like, I'm not really sure what I want. I don't know, we'll say like a neutral vibe. I'm probably gonna go with a sort of like daylight color type vibe, what, 5500 or 5600K or whatever. If that speaks to you, this is where I'm not gonna adjust my color settings at all, really. I'm not going to try to like make it feel warmer or colder or anything like that. I'm just gonna kind of leave it at a standard daylight if you have ability to adjust that's in the 5600K range.

Trent: Well, and I think maybe something I'll wording that people are maybe more familiar with.

AJ: Okay, so let's think about-- I was gonna say like blue and orange. That's kind of what you're kind of saying. IG filters now, right? Yeah. But if you think about it in the Instagram and like the TikTok filter world, a neutral standard or something that basically isn't gonna add or change anything. We're not gonna like try to correct for anything. The only one for people to feel the like warmth of what you're trying to expose them to or what you're trying to say to them. You want them to feel welcome, happy,

AJ: brought, you know, like this is a safe environment. Your warmer tones are gonna be, it's like an easy win. You can think about the-- Sepia. Yeah, the sepia, the vintage, the warmer feels that some of the older film looks tend to have, right?

Trent: And for folks that aren't as familiar, don't know exactly what that means. It's gonna be more of that like orange or like think old incandescent light bulb look. Like that's the color that it's gonna kind of more give on the picture.

AJ: Like golden hour in photography. The closer you get to, you know, mid sunset, the warmer and the more appealing that tone tends to be. And then on the kind of like the flip side of that, if I was going for something,

AJ: and I think we can actually, the ASPC commercial is a really good example of this because I think it features both. Well, on the flip side of that, if you're looking for something more, I'll say clinical, sterile, something that's colder, something that's more process oriented, where you're looking at, how does this get made? How is this done? How do we do this thing? I think going for a cooler tone. So when I say cool, a more blue tone, this is your, I can't remember what the ID filters to fit into that one are.

Trent: Any of those are the ones that no one usually uses.

AJ: Probably because not a lot of people wanna have like that sort of like sterile look. That's one way that you can go also is to go with like a more blue like type tone. Cause it tends to feel a little bit more clinical, a little bit more sterile. You think of it like a hospital room type like lighting. And that, I mean, that's like literally true. The lighting that they use in the hospital has a much, much bluer tone than it does, like our studio lights. Yeah.

Brian: Yeah. There's a couple of really cool books. If you really wanna dive deep on like editing and color science and color psychology and all that sort of stuff. The one book that I would say is like a really interesting editing book to think about pacing and to think about like how these things psychologically affect people. It's called "In the Blink of an Eye". I think, have you guys read that book?

AJ: No.

Brian: Okay. Really cool editing textbook written by,

Brian: I forget his name, but really good book. I highly recommend that for learning about the like theory of editing basically.

Brian: And then there was another book that I read, ah man, I have to find it and maybe we put it in the show notes or something.

AJ: "Walter Murch".

Brian: Yeah, I think that's the one. Nice. But that goes more into like color theory. And it's like, okay, when we see these blue tones or these orange tones or these whatever tones, this is the feeling that it evokes. And I think of those like, those commercials of like, you're wanting to get a lot of empathy for this poor thing that you want to support. Black and white is a really interesting choice of like removing color because when you remove color, it does something to our brains, whether it's like thinking of old timey stuff or just thinking of something that lacks feeling or emotion or has a more, you know, depressive quality to it. Sometimes, or a more dramatic quality to it with black and white. So choosing the color that matches the emotion and the more you understand how color influences emotion, we instinctively can think of color, but then like reading theories about it can put language to it.

Trent: And I just want to emphasize again, color makes such a big deal. And again, this is all why we're touching it on this point and this episode is because this is all stuff you can kind of change afterwards now with where we are with stuff. Back in when everything was filmed, not as easy, but to really emphasize this on commercial aircraft, they actually have interior lighting. So on a long haul flights, they will change the lighting to make the food more appetizing when it's time to eat. They can actually change the colors to help wake you up, put you to sleep, make you want to eat like all of these things. Like there is so much science behind what they do and the colors and how they actually make you feel.

Brian: Isn't red supposed to make people feel hungry or something like that? There's like restaurants use this too, to try to evoke more yeah, hunger or a bigger appetite or whatever.

Trent: Yeah, so that's something else we can do too is next time you go into a restaurant, if you're like, wow, I'm really, really hungry, look at the colors around you. If you ever go in a restaurant and you're like, I suddenly lost my appetite, look at the colors around you, right? You'd be surprised how all that can really impact it. And I think we've had so many great things to between colors. Was there anything else Brian, that you were thinking of?

Brian: Yeah, I mean, the thing is, is that editing is such an art form and it is such a,

Brian: it is such a complex thing that to like, even go anywhere down that rabbit hole will take.

Brian: There's a reason why there's professionals who do this kind of stuff. And so it's like, I would say to someone who's like, I want a DIY commercial that's gonna show on TV. It's like, maybe don't. Like maybe you do wanna work with a professional because you're gonna be driving yourself crazy, trying to make something and invest a ton of your time and energy into something that may not actually be good at the end of the day. So it's like understanding when it's good to try it yourself. There's a ton of learning, a ton of free resources. Like I don't wanna gate keep at all, but it's like, if you want to be very intentional with something, work or collaborate, or at least talk to someone who does it professionally because there is a ton of nuance and technique and skill and art that goes into filmmaking.

Trent: For sure. No, and again, we had on some of the high level topics, things you can think about and things you can do with just your phone and if you're putting it on Instagram, using those filters or any socials like that. I also wanna say like when you put text can be really helpful, right? like captions are becoming almost like a standard now. Like you have to have them and again, Instagram and a lot of these social platforms make it so easy. They'll automatically do it for you. Maybe just look over it real quick if it's a short video to make sure things are spelled right.

Brian: Or don't because it's clickbait. They're like, wait, they didn't spell that right.

Trent: That too, yeah. So again, that's why we're in like, I think it's important that we kind of talk about that as an address, right? Because we talk so many different ways of how we can tell the story, how you capture that story.

Trent: And that's almost like three quarters of the problem. Like you still have that big quarter chunk there of, am I just gonna put it up there and be okay with it? Do I wanna have some text on there to help people going? Do I want something to spell it so I get the clickbait? Do I want, right? There's so many of these other things that you can do to still influence that audience that you're trying to reach after you have this all recorded and in one thing, so.

AJ: Have a good time. Yeah. Color is fun. Color gives you all kinds of power, right? You can use it to delineate stuff. You can use it to break things into like different pieces. You can tell one side of the story in black and white and the other side in color. You know what I mean? There's all kinds of stuff that you can do color wise to make things varied and interesting. And there's like no real right or wrong exactly, right? Like, I mean, you can have like an end goal in mind and be like, well, that's the right result that I want. But how you get there is, there's a lot of different ways to get there. So I'm glad to say, have some fun with it. You know what I mean? Like even like my rigid sounding thing about what these colors do or whatever. It's like, do whatever man.

AJ: Have a good time.

Trent: No, I think that's one of the best pieces of advice. And I'm glad we're kind of ending on that is just, you've got to try it. Just do what you do and like listen to your instinct, right? There's so much you can learn and read and all of this and be like, this is right. I need to do this, yada, yada, yada. But at the end of the day, it's like, okay, if I'm watching this, is this what I want? And that's the right answer then. It doesn't have to be all of this other stuff. So yeah, go out, have fun with it. And it's going to be a process. Don't expect it to be perfect the first time.

AJ: Creativity is not like a monolith. It's not like a big spire and there's one single way that it works. And there's, we're constantly on the edge of someone who is just like us doing something that one of us has never thought of before that is going to completely change the norm or the methodology or the meta or whatever you want to call it for how we're doing stuff. So, go break the mold, man.

Trent: Go break the mold. And yeah, and I think next time we'll talk more about feedback, how to take what people are saying about it and just, yeah, what that feedback looks like and just that whole process too because that's a whole other thing.

AJ: Someday we should give folks a studio tour of like the space that we work in. Oh, yeah. I know you should show off your studio sometime. Like, you know, I think getting to show people how we do it in here would also be fun.

Trent: Okay. That would be cool. All right, well, until next time, go out, have some fun with your edits and we'll meet you back here next time. Peace.

(Upbeat Music)