Editing Billions Club featuring Jung Kook episode #TimelineTuesday

As you may know, I edited the latest episode of Billions Club: The Series, featuring Jung Kook for Spotify recently. This was a fun editing experience that posed interesting challenges because it’s a 9x16, vertical video. (I haven’t worked on this format for awhile, despite its popularity on Instagram, TikTok, Youtube Shorts, etc.)

So it’s my pleasure to share my first #TimelineTuesday of 2024, below.

The final Premiere Pro timeline of Spotify | Billions Club: The Series featuring Jung Kook

I figured this timeline setup requires some context because it’s not just cuts of videos & audio.

  • V1: A solid red background to check if a video covered 9x16 frame. If not, blaring red will be obvious in a simple glance.

  • V4: An adjustment layer for the temp Alexa LUT. All the graphic elements sit above this track.

  • Top Track: English subtitle track. The entire dialogue is in Korean, so I translated & subtitled them. There were four tracks of Instagram & TikTok UI guides underneath the subtitle track to position subtitles as well as graphic elements. The guides were removed before the turnover to a colorist.

I knew that this will be the most popular video that I edited by far, and yet the numbers surprised me.

44.2 million views on Instagram in 2 weeks! (14.2 millions views on TikTok as of today, 01/02/2024)

Fun Fact: As I was working on the first cut of this episode, Lisa’s episode dropped and saw that it starts with the similar shot that I had at the moment; the star pops out from left side of the frame. Because Jung Kook was the next episode in the series, I couldn’t start the episode with that shot. Haha…

So the first shot is his thumbs up as you see now, and his entrance shots start later in the episode after establishing NYC shots. I used more of his thumbs up shots to indicate an end of segment-like a period to a sentence, but they were removed as it felt repetitive and redundant.

All in all, I look forward to more shots at editing 9x16, vertical videos, as well as more projects with K-Pop stars in 2024. Fighting!

My List of Favorites Things in 2023

As the tumultuous 2023 coming to an end, I looked back at the things that I’ve saw, read, played and compiled this list. I hope this list gives you an idea of what my preferences are, as well as an opportunity to check them out in year 2024.

Favorite Films of 2023

  • Athena - The unrivaled visual energy captured by a camera.

  • Ferrari - The best Penelope Cruz outside of the Almodóvar films.

  • May December - Charles was in charge, against two amazing actresses.

  • Past Lives - I saw myself in this movie.

  • Killers of the Flower Moon - Marty should make TV series.

  • Barbie - She stuck the landing so hard that the whole cultural landscape shifted.

  • Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - Dungeon Masters killed it in 2023.

  • Asteroid City - You do you, Wes.

  • Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV - My bro LOVES this doc, and so do I.

  • RRR - The crowdpleaser of the year.

  • All That Breathes - This movie sprouts wings.

  • Tár - Cate Blanchett was here.

  • Avatar: the Way of Water - 3D is back, baby!

My Favorite Animations of 2023

  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Every frame of this film is art, period.

  • Elemental - There’s fire in my heart, and water in my eyes.

  • The Super Mario Bros Movie - Mario recognized.

  • Suzume すずめの戸締まり - Director Shinkai can’t do no wrong.

  • TMNT: Mutant Mayhem - The most fun I had in the theater.

  • Puss in Boots: the Last Wish - The most laughs I had in the theater.

Favorite Games of 2023

  • Baldur’s Gate 3 - Although I’ve played CRPG for many years, I never got D&D. Finally this game made me understand why D&D is so engrossing and popular. I only needed superb writing, excellent voice acting, and unrivaled freedom in game mechanics to get it.

  • Hi-Fi Rush - Make rhythm games great again!

  • Pentiment - Umberto Eco would’ve love this game.

  • Disco Elysium - Crime novels, eat your heart out.

  • Metroid Dread - I hope Samus gets her own feature animation soon.

  • Spider-Man 2 - Only the animations can rival this game.

  • Resident Evil 4 - A perfect game doesn’t exist…

  • Dead Space Remake - It’s so crunchy that I love every stump of it.

  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom - Nintendo toy box at its finest.

My Favorite TV Shows of 2023

  • The Bear

  • The Last of Us

  • Severance

  • Beef

  • Succession

  • Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

  • D.P.

  • Only Murders in the Building

  • Yellowjacket

My Favorite Books of 2023

  • Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

  • The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness

  • Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination

  • It’s Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO

  • Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers - The future of Netflix is the past of HBO

  • Doom Guy: Life in First Person

  • 남의나라 흑역사

  • 鋼の錬金術師 (Fullmetal Alchemist)

  • 이해찬 회고록

An Apple Event Shot on iPhone

As you probably have heard/seen already, Apple held the first evening keynote/event to announce M3 Macs on October 30th.

I’m already asking: M3 Ultra, when?

But the real surprise, or One More Thing in Apple parlance, was the last card at the end of the event stream.

It almost overshadowed the new M3 chips & Macs and proceeded to generate discourses on what Apple really meant by “shot on iPhone.”

Apple-the master marketers of technology, released the following video as if they were expecting the discourses. And the video revealed the production & the post-production workflows of their events for the first time, because it highlights their biggest product, even if it steals spotlights away from new Macs. And the accompanying article details more with the behind-the-scenes photos.

The biggest takeaway for the people, most notably the post production professionals using Final Cut Pro X, was that Apple didn’t use its own NLE software to make their biggest videos. Haha…

Its post production workflow appears to be (and remains to be, I might add) Premiere Pro + After Effects (not shown in the video), and color + finish in DaVinci Resolve.

However, I wasn’t a least bit surprise because I worked at RadicalMedia, the production company behind the Apple virtual keynotes & presentations since its inception (due to the pandemic). It may haven’t been a public knowledge until Apple acknowledged & credited the production company in the video. No, unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to work on it but I’ve talked to coworker(s) about their experience (without knowing that I will be working on an Apple TV+ project later).

I know that the production chose Premiere Pro to edit, neither FCP X or Avid, because it offered faster turnarounds of GFX & VFX with After Effects integration.

A real surprise to me was the new BlackMagic Camera app, because the first Shot on iPhone 15 commercial was the Olivia Rodrigo music video, which used the default iPhone camera app.

Either the Blackmagic camera app wasn’t available at the time of filming, or Apple doesn’t want to show another company app in its commercial for average consumers.

All in all, this has been interesting turn of events for video professionals as Apple embraces and incorporates more professional features, gears, and apps to highlight its growing platforms, rather than pushing/forcing their own solutions.

Because at the end of the day, Not Invented Here is a dangerous path for a big tech company like Apple.

p.s.

Stu Maschwitz wrote more in-depth article about what does and doesn’t matter about Apple shooting the event with iPhone 15 Pro Max.

“Apple wants to sell iPhones, and to accomplish this, they spared no expense to put the very highest image quality on the screen.”

Yes.