I APPLIED TO WORK FOR MY FAVORITE YOUTUBE CHANNEL 🟡🟨🟡

Hey there, long time no chat! Since my last Updates post, I finished my latest independent short film, SLEIGHT DISTURBANCE, and we premiered it at the 2112 Studios (Website now defunct, I guess?) Summer Screening. It was awesome to fill up a screening room with a mix of friends, mentors, industry professionals, cast, and crew. I’ll go into more detail about our event in the next post when S.D. is officially released online.

After that, my goal was to switch back to working on the finale of our animated miniseries, “HOWIE!”, but there was a matter slightly more pressing to take care of first: putting my newly-earned film degree to good use and finding a Hollywood job… Luckily, the stars aligned and some very cool opportunities opened up at the perfect time!

To understand why I found one in particular extremely exciting, I have to explain that I grew up during the early days of YouTube and that truly had a profound impact on me. Unique creators were using their voices to experiment and collaborate, uploading some of the coolest and most original things my impressionable self had ever seen to the platform for FREE. These mind-blowing independent internet videos are what ultimately inspired me to pursue Writing, Directing, Editing, and VFX.

A very early version of the YouTube homepage in 2006.

A channel brimming with creativity that really caught my eye early on was called “Corridor Digital”. They made unique visual-effects-centric short films that took regular YouTube videos a few levels past reality. But- most importantly- it just looked like they were a group of friends having fun making interesting and funny stuff!

Their videos were taking over the internet all the time, (and still are to this day with their popular series, “VFX Artists React” and other experimental projects like “New Robot Makes Soldiers Obsolete”). As they honed their skills and expanded their team along with the scope of their content, I felt more and more like our passions for filmmaking, humor, technology, and storytelling were aligned.

Given all that, I was quite excited to see them announce recently that they were looking for full-time editors to join their crew! The application was relatively straightforward, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. They gave us 200+ GB of raw footage from one of their scrapped YouTube videos, and asked to see it edited into something a viewer would theoretically watch on their channel.

I knew they were probably looking for some up-and-coming voice to revolutionize the editing style of their videos, but I was sort of burnt out at the time from my push on SLEIGHT DISTURBANCE. Therefore, I decided the best thing I could do would be to play it safe, and show them that I understand what it is about a Corridor Crew video that draws people in: fun character moments, educational segments, compelling A & B storylines that sort of intersect at the end, and just showcasing the feel-good vibes of a day in the life at their office.

I watched and organized ALL of the raw footage, and studied multiple videos on their channel to prepare. Then I got to work. The footage had all sorts of problems, I could see why the original idea never really came together. Due to being shot so run-and-gun like most of their vlogs are, there were issues with the video and audio, as well as a narrative problem of no real satisfying conclusion to one of the storylines. To solve this, I created a theme for the video and tried to support it with the footage as best as I could: UPGRADING THE STUDIO.

While establishing their reason for doing this, I wanted to highlight each member’s personal taste and history at the studio with the footage from the Desk Tours segment. I used similar music and graphical style to what they’d normally go with, and just tried to polish and sprinkle as much WLDWLF magic on top as I could before the deadline. Ultimately, my edit is nothing special, but it was a cool experiment to tackle the difficult process that they use to produce their own great stories.

You can find my version of the long-lost Corridor video “WE UPGRADED THE STUDIO” below, I hope it provides some decent entertainment!

I ended up not getting called back to Round 2, but that’s alright. It was a privilege to apply and I hope they liked at least something about my edit! Shortly after submitting this, I actually ended up accepting another job as an Editorial Production Assistant on an upcoming Apple TV+ miniseries called “Masters of the Air”. I’ll talk more about that experience when the show comes out so I don’t spoil anything on accident, but needless to say I succeeded in getting my foot in the door of the industry!

To wrap up, here are some things you can possibly look forward to from me in the future:

-SLEIGHT DISTURBANCE INTERNET RELEASE

-SLEIGHT DISTURBANCE BEHIND THE SCENES DOCUMENTARY INTERNET RELEASE

-HOWIE 5! RELEASE (may potentially edit all Howie episodes into “HOWIE! THE MOVIE!”, we’ll see…)

-CATCH MY LIVESTREAMS ON YOUTUBE @ THE MIDNIGHT RANGOON

That’s all for now, if you do happen to catch a Midnight Rangoon stream, I’m happy to talk about ANYTHING in the chat. Thanks for reading if you got this far, hope your life goes well until my next post in 5 years!

-JC / Mr. WLF / The Midnight Rangoon / Post PA on Masters of the Air / Corridor Digital Editing Competition Participation Trophy Winner