This is a lesson on editing videos. But if we take it apart, this is also a lesson on empathy that can be applied to so many things in creativity and life.
Casey Neistat is one of first successful Youtubers who really took vlogging to the next level. Some would say that he paved the way for many creators on the app today. In a workshop on making films, he mentions his philosophy when it comes to editing:
I exclusively write in the edit. I don’t ever write ahead of time. I’ll have an idea for a movie and I’ll go shoot it. The movie for me is always written in the Edit. One of my least favorite things to hear is, ‘I shot this great movie I just need to edit it,’ because it’s like, fuck you, man, that’s not how it works. Like, you can take shit and edit it into a great thing. Like, it’s everything. The edit is everything. Editing is the hardest thing.
Casey Neistat
There are two main points here: First, the importance of editing. Second, when the writing should occur — during the edit, after the recording. My biggest takeaway stems from the second. To be more specific, its corollary: no writing, no editing while recording.
Why is this important?
In many ways, even without a camera, we do a lot of recording and editing everyday. Everything we take in everyday, these are inputs. These are sets of data. We “record” all of this data, as a camera would a scene, when we go through experiences, learn new things, or notice our thoughts. Meanwhile, we “edit” all of these, as a filmmaker would a piece of footage, when we synthesize information into output, insights, ideas, plans, responses. In filmmaking, this output would be the film itself.
Now, if we follow Casey’s advice but take it out of the context of filmmaking, it would mean that we shouldn’t be messing around with all this input while we experience them. We should wait until after. Personally, I think there is tremendous value in doing so.
There are exceptions to this, of course. There are many. For one, we can’t possibly stop our brains from subconsciously processing data, because that happens constantly and without our control. Also, there are situations that require instant recognition of a logical next step, such as emergencies, time-bound games, and the like.
However, there are moments where the editing and processing of information is a long process of going back and forth, of strategizing, of getting creative, of practicing empathy. And it’s in these types of moments where our conscious, real-time “editing” during the raw experience can be harmful to the output that grows from it.
Take writing for instance.
When we put anything down on paper, part of our goal is to be able to reveal some perspective of the truth. This was something my non-fiction professor from college ma’am Rica Bolipata-Santos would remind us of often. She also said that — and this one really stuck with me — if you find yourself not being able to write, that means you haven’t read enough. In other words, there is no image from which we can base our thousand words, at least this is how I understood it.
In some cases, ma’am Rica continues, the experience isn’t ready to be written yet. It hasn’t played itself out yet. In fact, some stories take years to fully reveal themselves. And at the current moment, maybe we’re not even close to seeing the ending. We don’t have enough data, at least not enough data to fully process the whole story. The remedy: patience. Just keep shooting, edit after.
In other cases, an experience or an idea is ripe for an essay, or a poem, or whatever it is you want to write. However, we still can’t get ourselves to write because we’re too busy thinking about how it should be written or what words would be best to convey a message. We’re paralyzed and we end up stuck in our heads. Writer’s block, we call it. But it’s really a similar situation to the one above. We’re editing while we write the first draft, which at this point, isn’t ready for judgment. The point of a first draft is it’s supposed to be edited after. It’s an initial laying out of ideas or events on the page. The remedy is the same: record first, edit after.
We see this in business as well.
Customer feedback. The latest trends. Moves by competitors. These are all data points that affect our business decisions. Some would argue that despite all the data that point one way, intuition still matters. And I agree. Intuition does matter. Our biases still matter. Casey says so himself, “The edit is everything. Editing is the hardest thing.” This is true, but I think this implies that you have good material to work with in the first place, material that is in touch with reality.
That gut-feel, yes, very important. Viewing things through the lens of experience, no doubt, irreplaceable. But all of these could come after taking in all the data. When we allow our biases to filter our senses from the get-go, we risk falling into the trap of relying on obsolete or false information.
The same goes for our relationships and conversations. (And this one is personally difficult)
Empathy is about putting yourself in another person’s shoes and seeing from their eyes. You want to get as close as possible to understanding how they feel. We’d also want to accept that we can’t always fully understand, but we try and we listen. However, there is no way we can fit into another person’s shoes when we’re squeezing in our own feet and our own perspective into them.
In conversation, how much of listening to another person is contaminated by the formulation of a reply at the back of our heads? How many times have we edited our own script while rolling the film? It’s so tempting to analyze as we go and zero in on a particular angle, and it’s only the natural move. But often, the counterintuitive option is also worth considering.
Instead of narrowing down what another person is saying, trying to fit it into a box, we can open ourselves to the possibility of what they actually mean. When we’re open, we learn even more. And when we learn more, we think better, we respond better, we create better. Real listening and empathy happens here.
How much of listening to another person is contaminated by the formulation of a reply at the back of our heads? How many times have we edited our own script while rolling the film?
And of course, this works inwards as well.
During moments of uncertainty and confusion and doubt, we crave for clarity. For the things that don’t make sense, we want to force sense into them. We want to analyze everything right away. We want the answers now. But not everything has to make sense all the time, at least not yet.
When we’re right in the middle of this chaos, we have the option to just take it all in before having to respond. It takes humility to keep our assumptions at bay. And it takes courage keep asking questions, to keep gathering data, to keep moving closer to the truth. In these moments, we keep rolling. And when it’s ready, when we’re ready, we get to work and we edit. We turn it into something that’s ours. Something to share with others, maybe — a lesson, a piece of art, a piece of ourselves.
At the heart of Casey’s philosophy is the truth of the experience. And we see this in many of his videos. The raw-ness of reality always shines through, not despite the edit, but because of it. The edit is everything, yes. But it doesn’t replace reality. It merely processes it. The experience is still always at the center and is still the main source.
The story, the conversation, the feedback, the data, we let them come at us in their truest form. We take them slowly, or in waves, or all at once. We take them untouched, no biases, no judgment. There is no rewriting the truth. In the end, reality prevails, as it should. And we keep it rolling.