EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

OUR INTERVIEW WITH Brandon

Nick Lange

Today we have Brandon Fate very popular YouTube Creator, who makes really exciting tutorials about how to create the effects and the techniques that you see in your favorite films and TV shows.

And so Brandon, I’d love to just start off by asking you how you developed your passion for editing and post production. And when you knew that you wanted to make this your career.

Brandon Fate

Yeah, well, thank you for having me. And so yeah, I would say my, my interest in editing started in back in high school when I was, I had a TV production class. And we were tasked with making a short film on any topic that we wanted to. And I was a big Star Wars fan growing up. So of course, I chose to make a lightsaber like dueling video. And it was just me and a friend. And we just got some, like prop lightsabers and made a little short film about us doing a little action scene. And that was the first time that I ever filmed and edited anything. And so I took that footage into iMovie at the time, that’s what we were using in class. And I just edited that together. And I really enjoyed that process and seeing what I was able to do and turn it into a video a final video that I could see at the end. And there weren’t any visual effects or anything like that in it at the time, because I didn’t know how to do any of that yet. But that really piqued my interest and had me start exploring more in the editing world. And so the next step was like, how could I take this lightsaber? And do like how they do it in the movies? How can I add a glowing beam to it? So around that time, I just went on to YouTube, and I looked up for tutorials, and I found one that led me to After Effects. And then I started exploring After Effects, and then learned how to do the lightsaber and different effects. And I started exploring more of the effects from that point. And so that’s where it all kind of began.

Nick Lange

And what were the things that?

Let’s see, let me for what, what, what gave you the indication at that point that this could become a full time career for you? Or actually, let me rephrase that we’ll cut we’ll cut this up.

So you were there learning how to create these amazing effects that you saw in films? How did how did you educate yourself? And then what made you decide that you wanted to pass that teaching on and in turn teach your own subscribers how to recreate these effects?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, so it’s, again, kind of stemmed from Star Wars, like Star Wars had a big influence on me. So yeah, so after learning how to do like the lightsaber effect, then it was around the time that the Force Awakens movie was coming out and I wanted to make it this time with the actual effects and like add some After Effects stuff to it. So it was just me my wife and her brother, just the three of us, we went out and made just a lightsaber video of where I wear a GoPro and it was like a first-person action video where I was fighting Kylo Ren we dressed up for brother as Kylo Ren. And so we shot and I myself and did the painstaking rotoscoping it took me almost two months to do it by myself. And so yeah, I learned a lot from that. And then around that time, like I was saying, The Force Awakens was just coming out. So that video, it got some traction to it. And it ended up getting 2 million views around that time. That’s when I was uploading to a different channel that I had at the time. It’s called fate entertainment. And that channel is still alive, you can find that on YouTube. That was before I was uploading to my brand and fake channel. But that video had a pretty positive reaction to it. And people were asking questions like, How did I do the lightsaber effects? Or how did I do the force push effect that I had in the video? Or even how did I make the lightsaber prop? So since a number of people were asking that, I decided to make a behind-the-scenes force-push channel, which I called Brandon Fate. And the first how-to video that I made was how I created the lightsaber prop for only $30. I uploaded that one and that had another positive response to it. And then from there, I made another tutorial. It was my first editing tutorial and it was how I created the force put effect in that video, and then it kind of just kind of snowballed from there. And I realized that I enjoyed teaching and showing people how I created the things that I was creating.

Nick Lange

Awesome workflow for making these videos. How do you? How do you first of all identify the topic that you think is going to resonate? And then do you like to? Will you write it out first? Will you just start as or just start cutting footage and find the story that way? At what point is music integrated? What’s your process?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, so usually it’s from effects that I curious on how to create, like something that I’ll see in like something on the Disney plus show like a Loki effect or something like that. Or like my most recent one, I did a Thor hammer summon effects and because the Thor movie was coming out, and I was just curious on like, I’ve always loved the obviously the effects that they make in Marvel and Star Wars movies. So just curious on how you could do that at home with just yourself for a couple of people. So yeah, it starts with kind of thinking of that first. And then I usually just, I’ve kind of impatient, I just like to go out and try to start shooting and see what I can do first. And then it’s usually takes me a few states, like the final effect down, I don’t just go out and film it. And then that’s the final effect that people see in my tutorials. I usually have a few different, like rough versions of that effect. So yeah, I’ll go out and shoot it. I do like playing out the video and the effects the shots that I want beforehand. I’ll storyboard that out or do a shot list. And then yeah, then I edit the effect first to make sure that it’s like worthy of sharing, you know, and then then I’ll create the tutorial from that point. And yeah, and then I the music and all that stuff kind of comes after after the creating the effects part.

Nick Lange

Cool. And tell me about the software that you prefer and what other software you’ve tried along the years do you think that premiere and After Effects will remain the dominant the tools to know for this kind of work?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, so the first ones I stumbled upon were after effects I knew about After Effects before I ever even knew about premiere and I actually started editing in After Effects first I didn’t even know that there was like an editing software to like cut video together. And I was like this is not very intuitive like this is pretty difficult to edit in and I realized that it was like a VFX compositing software and then when I discovered premiere it made my life a lot easier. So So I started out with those two I also tried Sony Vegas back in the day that’s one of the first ones that I started with. But I really enjoyed the the workflow of Premiere and After Effects together through through dynamic link so so I really those are kind of like my main go to software that I use and I have been starting to learn cinema 4d I would love to get into to like 3d stuff but that’s like something that I’m just learning on the side right now and just see how that goes.

Nick Lange

That’s awesome. What uh What will you do in in cinema 4d When once you have that mastered

Brandon Fate

you know, I would love to first upload just things to probably like Instagram and Tiktok just short little little clips little videos you know just to get more practice in it and then I don’t know if I’ll ever be proficient enough to like Teach cinema 4d I feel like there’s are a lot of people out there that are really good at teaching that but yeah as of right now it’s just something that I’m curious I’m learning and adding that to the knowledge that I have.

Nick Lange

Great, how do you use the other platforms surrounding your your YouTube presence to augment to build that brand?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, so mainly through the tutorials that I create sorry, sir, what can you repeat that question?

Nick Lange

So your if I understand well, how do you how do you what type of content to produce for each of the social platforms and how do they differ

Brandon Fate

Okay, yeah, so right now I pretty much I just upload strictly to YouTube. I do I need to get better at uploading to Instagram I would like to kind of expand my my social media presence to Instagram and Tiktok but yeah, right now it’s purely and tutorial based on the effects and editing content.

Nick Lange

Awesome. And and what have you learned along the way that has helped you grow your YouTube subscriber base? What What tips and tricks can you pass on?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, I would say, you have to be like you have to be passionate and into what you’re making, that’s one of the biggest, biggest points that I always feel like, it’s essential that if you, if you’re trying to create content that you’re just like, kind of interested in a trend or trying to build up a view, you’ll be, you’ll get burned out. And you won’t be able to make it to a point where you feel like you’ve grown and learned a lot over the years. So definitely, because YouTube is a very, like, consistency is key for YouTube. And you really want to make it a point to where you upload pretty often. And you just want to keep going at that. And you want to really just focus on being consistent. And I would say that’s the main part with YouTube is focusing on something you’re passionate about creating.

Nick Lange

How do you choose good thumbnails?

Brandon Fate

You know, my wife, she actually helps me a lot with that, because she’s so she’s an art director and graphic designer. So I’ve been pretty lucky to have my wife helped me a lot with getting me on the right track with the with the thumbnails and the fonts and everything. So I’m pretty fortunate with that. And then also beforehand, planning it out is good as well, kind of having an idea of the shot that you’re going to be having in your effect, it’s good to plan out ahead of time, so that it can match to your thumbnail in the video, you actually have that shot in your video so that it’s not like clickbait or anything like that.

Nick Lange

Yeah, that makes sense. How do you? What are your revenue streams? So tell me about the business of branded VT, how have you made this channel? Are these channels into something that can support you full time?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, so it definitely just started out as a hobby at first. And AdSense is usually the first thing that happens with with, like YouTube success when you start building up an audience because then you can get your videos monetized. And, and that’s a pretty small area of it, though. And then, you know, once you start getting AdSense, and then you can get a few sponsorships, and you can partner with brands and collaborate with them, you’re able to focus more of your time on creating content for your channel, rather than like because I know a lot of people, it can take some time until you can, like, obviously, you have to pay the bills, and you have to be working. So like freelancing on the side was a big part for me to keep doing that at the same time while I was creating YouTube content. And as my channel is growing, I’m able to focus a little bit more on just YouTube as I’ve been able to partner with some brands. So that’s been great. And then it helps me create more content for my audience, you know, and so

Nick Lange

how have those brand partnerships come to be and what does that looked like?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, so the first one I was ever I was Nvidia and HP reached out to me in 2020 That was the first one that when that happened, and at that point, my my channel just got monetized a few months ago, I hadn’t had any brand offers or deals or anything like that. And so yeah, it was a pretty pretty big thing. When I saw the email come in, I thought it might have been like a spam email or something, because I wasn’t expecting anything like that to happen anytime soon. And then yeah, I talked with them and partnered up with them for some of their hardware and integrating that with Premiere Pro, and then it kind of built from that and then once you get a certain sponsorship and deal brand deal on your channel, it really helps show that you can create brand deals and be partnered up with with brands and that really helps it develop from that point.

Nick Lange

That’s great. We’ll What do you think is the best way for someone? Well, you know, let’s let me rephrase that. Tell me about the the freelance jobs you were doing how were you getting those jobs and how did you use that to sustain this effort that went into building the channel before it was profitable?

Brandon Fate

Yes, so So me personally, I would do a combination of shooting like being a camera operator and then also editing as well. Kind of kind of already now doing multiple different variety of things, kind of just exploring what I was interested in. So a few years where I was doing this, you know, that was early on to where I would shoot and edit my own for my own clients. And that really got me a lot experience of experience in, in editing and just like getting a video out and just learning that whole process. So that kind of led to meeting a certain connection to then where I could, where I started doing freelance wedding shoots for this company and local to my area. And then they needed some corporate video stuff. And they knew that I did YouTube on the side. And they saw some of my work some of my YouTube videos, and saw that I did after effects. And they had some of their clients that were interested in After Effects work. So he asked me if I’d be interested in doing some, some After Effects editing work for his clients. And then I kind of partnered with them in that kind of STEM to where I could do a side thing also in an editing, and do an After Effects work. So I was able to do that for a few years at the same time, while I could keep focusing on building up my youtube channel at the same time.

Nick Lange

Awesome, I shot wedding videos, too. I did that all through college and a little bit after. And it was great because I could justify buying some equipment, like a camera and editing computer. And having to slog through four or five hours of my own terrible footage that they would find halfway acceptable. Taught me taught me a lot about editing.

Brandon Fate

Yeah, that was the thing with weddings, like, like you’re saying, as you’re you’re going through the edit. You really learn a lot about shooting while you’re editing because you’re like, What was I thinking here? Why did I get this shot, and you can just like scrap it. And then when you go to your next one, you’re like, oh, yeah, I saw how awful this looked when I was editing. And I’m not going to do that again. So it’s definitely a good starting point, for sure.

Nick Lange

Did you have any nightmare scenarios?

Brandon Fate

Um, you know, probably the worst one that ever happened was a small church. And we were very cramped in there. And our two side angle cameras didn’t have a clean shot for the kiss for the couple. And then we only have one back main camera. And right when the couple was about to go in for the kiss, the photographer stepped right in front of our camera and blocked the shot. So that was probably the worst thing that ever happened. But the couple were fine. They were they were okay with it.

Nick Lange

I had a camera recording the ceremony, similar situation. And another guy was shooting with me, who was much better with camera than I was my footage was always, you know, mostly unusable, but he was doing pretty good. And so then, but somehow he was in charge of, of the microphone. And so at the end of the ceremony, he comes up to me and it’s faces ashen, just all white. And he’s like, Nick, I just realized that, that the microphone wasn’t recording. The whole the whole and this is, you know, all of the Vows and everything that the the priest said, and I said we’d made the whole time or just at the end he’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know, but it just wasn’t recording it when I guys went with the NSA. Oh, boy. So of course I normally I would wait, you know, a few weeks before editing this footage because I just needed you know, I was never looking forward to cutting these wedding videos. But I raced home from that wedding, fired up the the audio and listened and there was nothing from that whole ceremony. I put it into this, like extremely artistic montage with every editing everything I could, you know, come up every filter I could find went on it. The music you know, beautifully edited little you know, wordless montage. So then I would always play you know, I would I don’t know if you did this, I would review that I would present the wedding video to the couple and we would watch it and that was sort of like the final handoff and then I would get the check approved of it. We’re sitting there and and like lead up to that ceremony was fine. We have the groomsmen like getting ready and making jokes and the bridesmaids are having a great time and it’s all good. And the whole time I’m looking at the couple thinking, Oh no, here it comes. And we get to the my little montage of their search ceremony. It’s like it’s like a music video basically. And then suddenly we’re in the reception and they had really loved sort of montage thing, but then when the reception starts, they look at me and they say, is, is the ceremony later? When When does that have footage happen? And I said, Oh, no, that was the ceremony. And they said, Oh, but we didn’t, we didn’t hear anything. You hear the vows. And I said, there was a microphone issue. So I made this. Just, it was like the longest, most quiet minute of my wedding video career, we just sat there. And they’re just looking at me and said, no audio. There was there was no sound at all from that. I said, there was nothing. And I just sat there. And I just looked at looked at the ground and said, Oh, okay. And then we watched the rest of it. And we just didn’t really talk about it again. And that was it. And then And then, and then I left. Oh, man. Did Did you ever think you might? You might go like, a professional wedding. Video. Producer?

Brandon Fate

Oh, yeah, there is. There was a, I guess a point probably for like two to three years where I guess I considered myself like a full time wedding videographer. Yeah, but, you know, it was just, I always found myself. Anytime I wasn’t doing weddings, I was just like scratching and itching to like, make a YouTube video or do something involving VFX. And that kind of stuff. So like, the problem is, it can be tough in the beginning to obviously turn that into revenue and income. So like you, you can stay doing something for a little longer because obviously, you’re making money in it. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t it wasn’t as satisfying and fulfilling as it’s been for me to do VFX and YouTube and editing.

Nick Lange

Totally. Where will you go with? From here? Will you create feature films, will you create a series.

Brandon Fate

So yeah, I’ve been something I am planning on getting to and I’ve been planning it out is doing kind of a course and editing course separate from YouTube, that could be on a website to where I get more in depth to the basics, because sometimes I’ll see in the comments on my videos, there’s you can tell that there’s like different there’s varying levels of like, some people are just starting out, and they some of the videos might be a little too fast paced for them. And they want to kind of slow it down and learn a little bit more. So and then others are there, they’ve been using it for a few years. And they kind of just want to know, the general idea of how you created something and they don’t really necessarily need to know the click by click every press of the button tutorial. So So that’s definitely something that I would like to do is more of a in depth class, outside of YouTube. And then at the same time, I would love to focus on short film content to where it’s centered around the effects of short films, so that I can create like a five to seven minute short film. And then from that short, I can show the behind the scenes on my channel about what like what went into making that short film and also create the tutorials on like, how I made the the effects for those short films. So then those short films kind of like, satisfy like, what I want to make as like on an artistic level. And then I can also share that content with my audience on how they can create the certain things that I made for that.

Nick Lange

Oh, that’s excellent. Have you written any of these shorts yet?

Brandon Fate

Um, I have a few. So yeah, I have a few scripts right now that I’m finishing up that I’m planning on doing this year, and I’m gonna start introducing that to see how that goes over on my channel.

Nick Lange

Can you give me a preview of one of them or the premise or something?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, so just one of the general ideas for for one of the one of the shorts that I have in mind. It’s called after these messages and it’s based in like a kind of a futuristic sci fi world where all of our emergency services are you have to have like a subscription plan to access them and if you don’t you have to watch ads for it. I love the idea stemmed from because I live in Florida and it was in 2017 when Hurricane Irma was coming through. And I remember I was on the the Weather Channel app trying to get like updates on like, what the path where this hurricane was going to end up. And I had to watch like 32nd ads for every single video I was trying to get is your turn or you’re trying to get crucial information about like, do I need to evacuate? What’s the strength of the storm now? And it just it just sparked this idea of like, what if all, what if emergency services were that way to where you had to like watch ads beforehand? So yeah, I just had this like, I have this idea of a guy getting like injured and then needing to contact an ambulance. But maybe he doesn’t have like the premium subscription, he has to watch ads and stuff before he gets any help.

Nick Lange

That’s so fun. Oh, I can’t wait to see that. And then the more in depth courses that you mentioned before that, what could that look like? How so how would you structure your perfect? The perfect course? What would the experience for that editor be? And what can you do outside of YouTube? That’s different from your, from your great tutorials? on YouTube?

Brandon Fate

Yes, so I don’t know if you heard that. But we have a thunderstorm going on right now. Yeah, so I was living in Plant City for a long time. And I just moved to St. P last month. So it’s pretty rainy and stormy this time of the year. But bear so with, with the course I would I would love to teach very basic starting out. So I would love to teach an effect to where you can learn multiple techniques that you can apply to, to just learning the program and apply it to other effects. So one of the first effects that I remember a lot of people have learned is like how to clone yourself, because that’s a pretty basic effect to where you could stack footage, you can learn rotoscoping and compositing. And it really teaches you like keyframes, and different things like that. And you can do that in a lot, a lot of different editing software. And so I would love to do the basic effects to kind of what I learned from the beginning and what I feel like helped me learn these programs, to where how I know them now. And outside of YouTube, I don’t know where it would live possibly on on a website, and then or maybe like a Skillshare type of class.

Nick Lange

Okay. What do you think is the ideal way for editors to learn? So a lot of people are watching tutorials like yours, they’re at home trying to make their own music video or trailer or whatever that that project is? What What can people do to accelerate their learning and develop those skills as fast as as possible?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, I would definitely say that. YouTube is such a great resource for starting out in learning that and then you also have to put in the work to where you, you don’t want to turn it into where you just watch a tutorial and then just recreate that tutorial, click for click to where, because then you’re not really learning how to use the program, you’re kind of just recreating somebody’s tutorial that they showed you. So it’s a great starting point to to do that. But at the same time, then you want to take that knowledge that you’ve learned and apply it towards a different effect. So like, if you learn, like I said, the cloning effects something simple like that, then take that method of rotoscoping something out and apply it to something that possibly you haven’t watched through a tutorial and then just practice those effects at home. And over time with with doing that, I definitely think that you can, you can learn these programs that might feel a little bit overwhelming in the beginning. But over time with with doing it that I feel like that’s a great way to learn them.

Nick Lange

Yeah, that makes sense. What do you think are the most interesting career paths for editors these days? What do you see at the forefront of you know, being a very popular YouTube creator? What careers exist now that maybe people don’t know about or that didn’t exist in the past?

Brandon Fate

Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Because growing up, YouTube just became a thing when I was in high school. And before that, it almost felt like you had to be a part of the big Hollywood machine to where you kind of became an assistant editor and had to do like an apprenticeship and then kind of learn under somebody. And that was kind of the only way that you possibly felt like you could break in to the editing world or filmmaking industry. But then with YouTube coming along, that has progressed to a certain point and now what if Instagram and Tiktok becoming such a big part of it, it’s used by the largest companies now I see listings for, they need social media video. Some of them are like 20 years old, like right out of high school, and they already have five years of experience making videos on Tiktok or Instagram so, it’s just it’s so it’s so it’s exciting seeing the difference and to where it’s gonna go from here with how much how normal it is for, for people now growing up being having that capability of creating videos, like you can shoot a 4k video and edit it all on your on your phone now, which is just incredible. And really, it gets you started at such an early age, and you can get to a point to where you just feel very comfortable. So like, the career path, I feel like the whole game has changed now to where, like I said, you can just come right out of high school, you have years of experience editing, and then your portfolio speaks for itself on your Instagram page. And then a company can see that and want to work with you directly. They just contact you, and then you can create a video for them. And then it just takes off from there.