What a YouTube editor with 5 BILLION VIEWS can teach you

since 2009 hilia smith has edited videos for some of the biggest youtubers on the planet and helped to generate more than 5 billion views he films with them hangs out with them and yeah even slaps them too he's known for being the youtube editor he's even won awards and his first-hand experience of working with global superstars means his info is on another level and i've been lucky enough to get his time to help teach you what goes on behind the scenes of generating billions and billions of views so hello thank you very much for coming

on i thought we would start off with a quick round of getting to know hilliard he's in english he edits his channel's flipping epic his name is hillary smith basically just want you to answer these questions in one word intro stingers yes or no no absolutely not no get sat in the video straight away should people ask viewers to subscribe in a video debatable logan paul or jake paul logan paul mr beast or eric erac oh i'm gonna get in trouble for that one okay this is a multi-choice one dealing with trolls delete their comment

block them fight back totally ignore or hit the dislike button so the comment goes to the bottom of the comments completely ignore the best place to get music for videos spoilers the best place to get stock story blocks and the best place to learn to edit me that's it you've passed there we go what a great start um your videos that you've produced i believe are read online they've gone past five billion views totally as an expert what do you think it is that separates videos that can get that kind of traction from ones that

can't it's a very old statement but it comes down to authenticity especially in the editing but i think the upgrade of that is charm you know editing is just a completely another art form and it's also another opportunity to express yourself in the way that you think so rather doing what's obvious what can you do that represents your personality and in turn represents your authenticity and charm you know you're watching an edgar wright movie because of the expression he does in editing you know you're watching a guy ritchie movie because he's expressing he does an

editing you know you're watching a quentin tarantino movie because of his expression in editing and that's part of the charm and i think that is a neglected art form that separates your content from everyone else's and that is one of the main reasons why people keep coming back onto logan's videos as to why we got 5 billion views is because i expressed myself through editing which made his videos stand out far more uniquely than from every other vlogger at a time one little tip you could give to someone who's thinking how would i express myself

in that way i would say if you identify something that's cliche challenge it and yes where you'll find your voice what is the best process for making a video that becomes a massive hit the one word i would take is digestible making sure your videos are digestible and consistent entertaining and i think for me personally at the end you as an audience member have changed whether it's an emotional would be uh whether it's a thought process or it's a new idea if you watch a video and at the end of it you have a completely

new perspective on something or a new emotion you've done a good job if your audience has the same emotion that they had at the start of the video and then the same emotion at the end you have a problem your content hasn't done enough for them there isn't a change there's not a new memory that's the biggest difference between making a massive hit video and something that's watched and forgotten about straight away so where do you start i often work my videos of here's what they know now and what would they know at the end

or what emotion are they going to start with and what emotion do i want them to feel at the end and then my challenges and my creative process is how can i take them on that journey this can be supe super simple it could just be they've had a really bad day and they know they can watch a logan paul video at the end they've gotten three to four really good belly laughs out of them they're now happy at the end it can just be something as simple as that so when you think of it

like that it's like don't just make a video with no purpose it needs to actually achieve something on a deeper level that's my goal that's my purpose and i make that decision very early on like before i even come up with like the title and the concept and that's always my priority so what's the biggest mistake a youtuber can make that is going to mean their edits will always stop their content doing better well people make a mistake in not anticipating how audiences will engage in the video they're coming in with zero context and actively

seeking the first reason to stop watching so you need to ensure that you need to cater to both of those problems they're coming in with zero context and actively seeking the first reason to stop watching so you need to ensure that you need to cater to both of those problems on top of that the biggest mistake and this is something that i've learned very much recently people make the mistake of keeping everything that they film the best youtube contents cut out over 70 percent of what they film and show only the best 30 of the

video and honestly you'd be surprised how that's already more than enough the best example would be logan would film about two hours of content for one of his vlogs during 2020 and we turn those vlogs into less than five minutes that means so much is cut and we are to a degree showing a highlight reel of his day but what that then means is you then get the best of the best and that creates such a highly engaging piece of content same thing for me when i film some of my videos i could film for

over two three hours and i brutally cut these things down to 10 minutes or less because i only want to show you the best thing and so that's the biggest mistake especially if you're a new creator you haven't quite got the skills yourself i think one of the things people tend to struggle is knowing what the best part is have you got any like litmus test yes my favorite one is this if let's just say you have a piece of dialogue here or a point here and you've got another point over here and you've got

all of this in between if you cut out all of that in between and these two points come together and it still makes sense that means everything in between could have been cut genius length of video on youtube is a big topic people seem to think that longer videos are what youtube wants logan paul's videos are always short why why are you guys doing that i've been a youtube veteran uh i have watched this platform grow and i've watched the phases and traditions and trends of youtube content my favorite time period was when the golden

rule was a youtube video was 3 minutes and 30 seconds however youtube wanted to compete with netflix and so therefore encourage the algorithm on watch time and longer videos and then therefore you can get more ads and so therefore everyone started doing 10 15 20 minute videos however the audiences still wanted three minute 30 videos or less vine came along and proved that unfortunately vine didn't hang around but then a couple years later tick tocks come along and prove that so at the end of the day youtube wants to compete with netflix and keep us

on the platform for longer but audiences to a degree don't actually want that they still want digestible content and so that's why we kind of want the the best of both worlds in the same sense that you watch one logan paul vlog and it's four or five minutes and it was too short and you then go oh that wasn't enough until you watch another and then you watch another and then you watch it and then suddenly without realizing you're binging logan paul vlogs rather than watching one ten minute vlog and moving on and forgetting about

it because the experience wasn't that good except now it's highlight reel so much better you keep watching in turn actually fought against the youtube algorithm because that that meant actually users were staying on the platform longer because they were binging and therefore were actually fed more ads and so youtube's algorithm was so confused and it pushed the videos everywhere because so many people watching so many more ads and so we actually challenged to beat the system because of it now don't get me wrong i will openly admit david dobrik is the one who gave that

put that seed in our head he was years ahead of us on that realization i think the best example is tick tock right there's the average session time and tick tock's going up so much and people are just watching 15 second videos so it completely makes sense i'd love to be able to get mine down below five i think that's going to be a goal for me and just focus on session times rather than individual views like you know long session journeys that's the phrase i've been looking for session times rather than watch time session

times i love that it makes sense right you don't want someone to get to the end and go i've had enough you want to go how do i get more and i think what you said about uh emotion and feeling that is the key you know a lot about youtube just through editing right and you've got your own youtube channel and i've just always been so impressed with how it grows as well as the content one of the things i really love about your youtube channel is that you're not letting youtube dictate your life you

just seem to release a video when you release a video and people click on it it doesn't feel like i don't feel like you're getting hurt by youtube by not uploading talk me through your upload process like what's going through your head are you scared if you don't upload it's going to hurt you or do you just not care or no it doesn't matter the narrative is post every week post as much as you can dedicate your entire life to it and to a degree i do agree with it however though i've had both ends

of the spectrum where me and logan used to do a vlog every single day for a year and a half and these were 12-hour days every single day and so we were in the thick of it and then we chose to take it easy we chose to slow down and we then saw the benefit of what that work-life balance and keeping it healthy what the meant is posting a video when you can but ensuring it's the best video that it can be at that time and it still created lots of engagement people still wanted to

watch that video because the quality of the video was so good that actually created more conversation and so that's why for me if i want to take my time on an edit i will if i think the video is not ready i'll give it another week and give it another draft and see how i feel about it if i don't feel like i want to film that afternoon okay i won't film that afternoon instead i would ensure that i am comfy i'm happy i am mentally stable my philosophy is this it depends on what type

of content you want to create and how good of lasting memory that you want to create and i like to see it like a memory is like a wave and your mind is a beach and you kind of need to ask yourself how long can your wave cover that beach and you can be consistent and have a set of small waves and over time alongside with the tide cover that whole beach but the moment you settle the tide will pull you back and you'll no longer cover the beach the memory of you fades or you

could be one big massive tidal wave where you don't just cover the beach you cover the land you pass the beach for miles to come you affect the landscape and leave a significantly lasting memory however even then that overtime can fade and you have to have the capability to make another tidal wave and that's incredibly tough and that's kind of the choice you need to make that was amazing and for those of you who got what hilliar was saying there it's going to make such a big difference to your videos almost as much as a

difference as watching this video here from hilly's channel will do and thank you very much to hilia for giving us his time