1:12:14Victor Grubbe · Tutorial
Master Reel Editing in DaVinci Resolve
A 72-minute follow-along course building a polished short-form reel from blank timeline to final render inside free DaVinci Resolve.
November 15th 2025The argument in one line.
High-quality video is not a single skill but a pipeline of discrete decisions — edit, color, motion, music, sound, audio — where 80% of each step's result is determined before post-production even begins.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You are editing your own YouTube videos and want to understand what a professional team's workflow actually looks like, step by step.
- You struggle to decide what footage to cut versus keep and want a principled framework for that judgment call.
- You are self-teaching color grading and want to understand why stock LUTs underperform on specific cameras and what alternatives exist.
- You want to understand motion design easing at a practical level — not theory, but the After Effects workflow a working designer actually uses.
- You record dialogue and want to understand microphone placement beyond the basic 'point it at the speaker' advice.
SKIP IF…
- You already have a professional post-production team and are looking for advanced color science or technical codec deep-dives.
- You are making vertical short-form content — the workflow here is built around long-form horizontal YouTube.
The full version, fast.
MKBHD's team decomposes their post-production into five handoff stages — lead edit, color, motion design, music, and sound design — each governed by a principle: editing is subtraction and problem-solving, not decoration; 80% of color happens on camera before grading starts; motion design requires getting the static design right in Illustrator before animating in After Effects; music choice is about emotional resonance in the viewer's head, not the creator's preference; and sound design is invisible when it works, noticed only when it fails. Running through all of it is one meta-lesson: you cannot edit your way out of poor planning. Every discipline rewards preparation over correction.
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00:00 – 01:20
01 · The 4 Principles
Marques introduces the four guiding principles: good in / good out, focus (what you cut matters as much as what you keep), don't be boring but don't be insulting, and know your audience.
01:20 – 08:00
02 · Lead Edit — Too Much Footage (Robo Taxi)
Lead editor Moriah walks through the robotaxi video: how to color-label and triage hours of dual-camera footage, why the first cut failed (over-following the script, forcing present/past tense intercutting), and how the second cut fixed it. She also explains the decision to cut a funny phone-loss scene that was off-topic.
08:00 – 13:40
03 · Lead Edit — Too Little Footage (How I Pick Videos)
Moriah shows the second video — a non-visual topic about how Marques selects video ideas. The first cut had no momentum; the fix was adding an archive-footage montage with explicit framing as archive, plus transitional music used as a cognitive segue between topics.
13:40 – 22:20
04 · Color Grading — Vin (Art Director)
Vin explains the DaVinci Resolve workflow: why 80% of the image is set on camera before grading, why stock manufacturer LUTs underperform on mixed camera fleets, how a custom YouTuber LUT (Tyler Stallman / Ari color space) outperforms Canon's stock, and how the Dehancer plugin ($400) applies camera-specific halation, bloom, and grain for analog-film character.
22:20 – 32:00
05 · Motion Design — Michael (Head of Motion Design)
Michael covers the workflow: design everything in Adobe Illustrator first with vectorized paths, then port to After Effects via Overlord. The three core animation principles are easing (every single keyframe must have it), timing (visual beats must sync to the exact spoken word), and staging (show one thing at a time, don't let visuals compete with dialogue). He demonstrates Motion Studio plugin for precise ease control and Turbulent Displace with wiggle for a hand-drawn look.
32:00 – 35:00
06 · Music — Ellis (Sound)
Ellis explains music selection as an emotional resonance problem, not a taste problem. MKBHD's signature up-tempo bebop jazz is not arbitrary — it triggers a 'behind-the-scenes' industrious association already in the viewer's brain. He sponsors Epidemic Sound and mentions the stems feature for custom edits.
35:00 – 38:30
07 · Audio Recording — Rufus
Rufus argues that 90% of audio quality is mic placement, not gear. He explains how to 'hear like a microphone' — mapping room sounds (AC, light fan, desk reflections) to avoid pointing the shotgun mic's cone at them. Lightning round covers target levels (-20 dB average, -12 dB peak max), low-cut filters, and gear recommendations: AT875R at the entry level, MKH 416 / Schoeps CMIT 5u / DPA 4017 at flagship.
38:30 – 43:06
08 · Sound Design — Ellis
Ellis presents three rules: (1) things that move make sounds, sized to their on-screen scale — a phone filling the frame is 'ginormous' and needs a big, low-pitched whoosh; (2) silence actually makes a sound in the brain — fill it with reverb tails and ambience; (3) use sounds that mean something to the audience emotionally, even if they're not literally accurate (Disney Channel tracing sound = roadside flare + bell tree).
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Editing is decision-making — every cut is a judgment call about what serves the audience, and what you leave out is as important as what you keep.
- Following the script too literally creates an edit that feels like the host knows something the viewer doesn't — breaking from it is often the fix.
- The question to ask about any piece of footage is not 'is this interesting?' but 'does this serve the value proposition of this video for this audience?'
- 80% of your image should be done on camera — color grading is the last 20%, and you cannot compensate for bad lighting in post.
- Stock LUTs from Canon, Sony, and others are not camera-specific enough — a YouTuber-built LUT calibrated for your exact camera model will outperform the manufacturer's own conversion.
- 10-bit codec matters more than camera brand — it gives you the dynamic range flexibility in post that 8-bit cannot provide.
- In After Effects, easing is the single biggest indicator of professional vs amateur motion design — every keyframe should start slow, move fast, and end slow.
- Motion design timing means the visual beat must land on the exact word being spoken, not half a second later — a half-second delay is nearly impossible to follow.
- Good design is invisible: viewers should absorb information from the animation without consciously processing the keyframes or easing curves behind it.
- Music choice is not about what the creator likes — it is about what is already wired into the viewer's brain as a contextual cue.
- Silence does not exist in real life, and cutting all audio at a moment creates an unnatural feeling — reverb tails and ambient noise fill the perceptual gap.
- The sound that makes an impossible shot believable is often not the primary subject sound but a background ambient element — birds, wind, room tone.
- Sound design works when nobody notices it; the goal is not originality but emotional resonance and believability.
- Microphone placement is 90% of audio quality — directional shotgun mics depend on understanding what sounds are in the room and which direction to exclude them.
- A cheap, well-placed shotgun mic (Audio Technica AT875R) outperforms mid-range alternatives — the upgrade to flagships like the MKH 416 is worthwhile, but the mid-range gap is not.
- Intro montages only work when they set up expectations for the viewer, not just hook attention — a montage that misrepresents the video's register misleads rather than attracts.
- Transitional music cues the viewer's brain that a topic shift is coming — MKBHD caps background music at 20-30 seconds to prevent it feeling like an ad.
- Archive footage used in a video should be explicitly framed as archive — pretending old clips are new undermines viewer trust.
Five disciplines, one pipeline, zero shortcuts.
THE CRAFT STACK
Every stage of post-production compounds upstream decisions — and no amount of skill in a later stage can compensate for negligence in an earlier one.
01The 4 Principles
- Editing is decision-making — every cut is a judgment call about what serves the audience, not a technical action.
- Knowing your audience determines whether A+ craft registers as A+ or feels mismatched and off-putting.
02Lead Edit — Too Much Footage
- Following a script too literally in the edit creates a scene where the host seems to know something the viewer does not — the fix is often to reorder rather than follow the written structure.
- Any footage, no matter how funny or interesting, should be cut if it leads the audience away from the core value proposition of the video.
03Lead Edit — Too Little Footage
- When a topic is non-visual, archive footage can substitute — but it must be explicitly framed as archive so viewers do not feel misled.
- Transitional music acts as a cognitive cue that a topic shift is coming; MKBHD caps it at 20-30 seconds to prevent it reading as an ad.
- A good intro sets expectations for the video's register and tone, not just hooks attention — a mismatch between intro style and video style misleads the viewer.
04Color Grading
- 80% of the final image is determined on camera — grading is the last 20%, and it cannot compensate for bad lighting or wrong exposure.
- 10-bit codec gives significantly more flexibility in post than 8-bit; camera brand matters less than bit depth and log format.
- Stock manufacturer LUTs do not account for the variation between camera units; a third-party LUT calibrated for your exact model will outperform the stock conversion.
05Motion Design
- Design the static layout in Illustrator before animating in After Effects — getting the design right first is more important than animation speed.
- Easing is the single clearest signal of professional motion design — every keyframe should start slow, accelerate, and end slow to feel lifelike.
- Visual beats must sync exactly to the spoken word they illustrate; a half-second delay makes content significantly harder to follow.
- Staging means controlling where the viewer's eye goes at each moment — never show two competing concepts simultaneously.
06Music
- Music choice is about the emotional or contextual association it activates in the viewer's brain, not personal taste.
- Downloading stems from a music library lets you edit and shorten tracks cleanly without artifacts from cutting the full mix.
07Audio Recording
- Microphone placement is 90% of audio quality — map every noise source in the room and position the mic's polar pattern to exclude them.
- Target -20 dB average recording level with a hard cap at -12 dB; 0 dB is clipping and cannot be fixed in post.
- Entry-level shotgun mics placed correctly outperform mid-range mics; the meaningful upgrade is directly to flagship models that will last a career.
08Sound Design
- All moving objects on screen need a corresponding sound, scaled to their apparent size in frame — not their real-world size.
- Complete silence sounds unnatural in video; reverb tails and ambient noise fill the perceptual gap and maintain believability.
- The best sound for an emotional moment is often a sound with cultural resonance for your audience rather than the literal sound the object makes.
Terms worth knowing.
- A-roll
- The primary camera footage of the subject speaking directly to camera — the structural backbone of a talking-head video.
- B-roll
- Supplementary footage cut over the A-roll to visually illustrate what is being said — establishing shots, product close-ups, on-location footage.
- LUT (Lookup Table)
- A color transformation filter applied to log-encoded camera footage to convert it to a viewable, stylized image. Different cameras require different LUTs for accurate results.
- Log footage
- A flat, low-contrast camera recording format that preserves maximum dynamic range for color grading in post — requires a LUT or manual grade before it looks normal.
- 10-bit codec
- A video recording format that stores more color information per pixel than 8-bit, giving colorists more flexibility to push and pull the image in post without visible banding.
- Dehancer
- A ~$400 After Effects and DaVinci Resolve plugin that simulates analog film characteristics (halation, bloom, grain) calibrated per camera model.
- Halation
- In film photography, the red glow around bright highlights caused by light scattering through the film base — Dehancer replicates this digitally to warm and soften the image.
- Easing
- In motion design, the technique of making animated objects accelerate and decelerate gradually rather than moving at constant speed — the primary signal of professional vs amateur animation.
- Turbulent Displace
- An After Effects effect that applies randomly-generated distortion to a shape, used with an expression called wiggle to create a hand-drawn or stop-motion visual quality.
- Motion Studio
- An After Effects plugin by Mount MoGraph that simplifies applying precise easing curves to keyframes, replacing the manual graph editor workflow.
- Overlord
- An After Effects plugin for importing vector graphics directly from Adobe Illustrator, preserving path and layer structure for animation.
- Reverb tail
- The decaying echo of a sound as it bounces around a space — sound designers extend reverb tails during silent moments to preserve the perceptual sense of a real physical environment.
- Ambience / room tone
- The background noise of a recording environment — used in post to fill silent gaps and make edits feel continuous and believable.
- Low cut filter
- A high-pass audio filter that removes low-frequency rumble, wind noise, and handling noise from a microphone signal, common on location recording devices and some microphones.
- Clipping
- Audio distortion that occurs when the input signal exceeds 0 dB — produces a harsh crackling sound and cannot be repaired in post.
- Stems
- Individual separated audio tracks (drums, bass, melody, etc.) exported from a music library track, allowing editors to remix or shorten a song without full-mix artifacts.
- Epidemic Sound
- A music licensing library used by MKBHD and many YouTubers, offering royalty-free tracks and stems with a subscription, plus an 'adapt' feature for fitting songs to video length.
Things they pointed at.
37:00productSennheiser MKH 416 (flagship shotgun)
37:05productSchoeps CMIT 5u (flagship shotgun)
37:10productDPA 4017 (flagship shotgun)
Lines you could clip.
00:10
“Editing isn't just software and plug-ins and presets. It's decision making. It's a bunch of tiny decisions all stacked up on top of each other to create a cohesive project.”
06:20
“As the editor, you know all the footage, you know everything that's happening, but no one else does. And so that's why when you need feedback, sharing it with other people is really great to get a fresh pair of eyes.”
07:20
“When you're trying to figure out whether you should keep something in your edit or if you should get rid of it, it just comes down to the value you're proposing to your audience. Does your audience care about this?”
14:20
“80% of your image should be done on camera, and then your last 20% is color grading. You can't fix bad lighting in post.”
25:10
“Easing is one of the biggest telltale signs between an amateur motion design project and a more professional motion design project.”
31:40
“People shouldn't be thinking about all the stuff that I'm doing in the background. It should just feel like information that's easy to understand. Good design is invisible.”
32:50
“When you're picking music for your video, you're not just picking a song that you like. You're picking a song that your viewers will personally resonate with.”
35:50
“The key to recording great sound is 90% putting the microphone where it needs to go.”
42:50
“You'll know you did your job well when no one notices your job at all.”
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
00:00So if you've been editing videos for years or if you've never edited a video before, you'll still get something out of this video. Editing isn't just, uh, software and plug ins and presets.
00:12It's decision making. It's it's a bunch of tiny decisions all stacked up on top of each other to create a cohesive project. So I asked my editing team to show you how they make creative choices.
00:23I gave them a video of me giving some advice to creators, and then we passed that file from lead editor to color to graphics to audio. And so you can see how they make decisions that stack up into the final result. So while watching this video, look for these four principles that we use to create high quality videos here at MKBHD.
00:43So first, good in, good out. You just can't edit your way around poor planning and execution.
00:49Two, focus. What you cut is as important as what you keep.
00:54Three, don't be boring, but don't be insulting. There's more to editing than just cutting really fast. And four, know your audience.
01:03You know, an a plus quality work designed for a six year old won't feel like a plus work to a college student. So know who you're talking to. So with these in mind, let's start the process.
01:13Let's get right into it beginning with our lead editor, Moriah. Take it away.
01:19I'm Moriah, the lead editor at MKBHD. And today, we're gonna be talking about two scenarios that every editor has encountered. One where you have too much footage and one where you don't have enough footage.
01:32So let's look at some recent videos and break it down. So first, we're gonna start with the robo taxi video, which had way too much footage. So we're gonna talk about the creative decisions I made to subtract.
01:43Truly autonomous driving
01:45is one of the hardest technological problems to solve on planet Earth today. We have kind of the baseline of structure. The structure is the a roll.
01:52Right? So him talking, explaining what's happening, and then the chaos is everything from on-site.
01:58So the first thing to do was to go through all of the hours of footage from the two cameras we had, sync them up for all the rides, and then see what happened, what we wanna keep, and what we wanna throw away. I keep drafts of everything.
02:13So ideally, you wanna have everything so you can always go back and pull something out later if you change your mind. I like to color and label everything. That way when I'm looking at my timeline, I can tell if I'm overusing too much stuff or underutilizing footage that I really should be using.
02:28So the second problem I had was actually following the script too much, which is a weird problem to have. So let's take a look at the difference between the first cut and the second cut with this. So this first robotaxi ride was
02:40fascinating.
02:43Okay. Yeah. This is great.
02:46Everything's normal. Robotaxi. Okay.
02:52Hello. Hello. Fundamentally,
02:54it went totally fine. The car showed up. We got in.
02:58It drove like a normal person would and now It's probably hard to put your finger on why this edit just doesn't feel right, and that's just part of the puzzle. And it kinda feels like to me that Marques knows something that we don't. A lot of the times, I'm my own worst enemy.
03:13I'll be honest. But sometimes Marques is my own worst enemy. And so there's a part in the script where he just has a section that says intercut commentary with the Tesla ride and Waymo ride.
03:23The problem with the first couple cuts on this is I was really trying to force having him talking in the a roll with the b roll from the on-site shoot, trying to do present tense and past tense.
03:38There's all these different times of things happening and knowing when is the right time for something is really hard sometimes. So as the editor, you know all the footage, you know everything that's happening, but no one else does.
03:50And so that's why when you need feedback, sharing it with other people is really great to get a fresh pair of eyes, see it from a different perspective, and understand why stuff isn't working. With the feedback in mind, now let's take a look at the second version.
04:04Okay.
04:08Start ride.
04:10So we arrive in nine minutes. This is our We've got our feedback. We've moved stuff around.
04:14We've done a little fixing. But what happens when we actually need to fully remove a scene from the timeline? My iPhone
04:22is, I'm pretty sure, still in that robotaxi that just drove away. How do I get it back? I'm not really sure how to get it back.
04:29I need to figure this out.
04:31Mark has straight up lost his phone in one of the taxis while he was there, and I could have included all of it, and it would have been dramatic and really funny. And in fact, one of the cars kind of poked fun at him saying, like, don't forget your valuables after the fact. That would have been really funny.
04:46But does it make sense to put in a video that's supposed to be, like, more informational, like, something that's, like, very to the point.
04:53It was part of the experience, but does it kind of lead you astray from what we're really trying to hone in on? So when you're trying to figure out whether you should keep something in your edit or if you should get rid of it, really, it just comes down to the value you're proposing to your audience. Does your audience care about this, or is it not important to what you're trying to say?
05:13So now let's transition to a scenario where you have too little footage. So the number one or there's, I guess, two main ways I can decide if a subject is worth my audience's time. One is if And so the second video I'm gonna show you is a little bit more structured, a little more typical for the main channel, and this is the video that is gonna be passed through all the stages of post production.
05:33You're gonna hear from Ellis. You're gonna hear from Vin. You're gonna hear from, like, everybody that touched it.
05:37For this video, we wanted to do something a little bit different, and so we asked Marques, what is something you wanna talk about that you don't think would be a good video or wouldn't perform well? And so he wanted to talk about how he picks what videos he makes, which I don't think I've ever heard him talk about either.
05:54What no one tells you is when you're the editor, you are at the end of the pipeline. If there's a problem, you are gonna be the one to have to deal with it. For this one, my fear when we were talking about it is it not being visual.
06:08And the worst thing you can do is probably tell and not show. For this video, we chose to use a lot of archive footage, and so you'll see the problem with that immediately.
06:19I'm Marques, and this is how I pick what videos I'm gonna make. There's two main ways I can decide if a subject is worth my audience's time. One is if they have shown interest in it in the past.
06:31Originally,
06:32I had jumped straight from the intro of how we pick what videos to make straight into the questions, and it just felt really slow. It kind of had no momentum or excitement.
06:42If I'm not excited, I'm editing it. You're not gonna be excited if you're watching it. So now let's watch the second version of this intro.
06:52I'm Marques, and this is how I pick what videos I'm gonna make. This is the front glass from the iPhone six. And so here, I'm gonna show you everything I learned about what spot actually is, but I'll leave you with this.
07:06I've got my upsides
07:08and downsides to Vision Pro. So the lesson from this reedit is not to make montages. They're great.
07:14They work sometimes. But ultimately, being an editor is about focusing on clear communication and problem solving.
07:23And a lot of times, you'll be given stuff that just isn't very good. It's gonna happen. Focusing on your experience and the tools you have will really just be the best thing you can do.
07:32But ultimately, there was actually a really good reason to add the montage to this video. Something I will never do to you is I will never lie to you. I will not pretend this video is something it's not.
07:43And if I was to do a mister beast crazy montage opener with text and stuff flying around, I've said it before, and I said it again. I don't like it, and I don't think it makes sense for what we do personally.
07:56Setting up from the get go that this is a clip from eleven years ago. It's not new. It's not fresh, but it is a memory.
08:03A good intro doesn't just hook the audience, but it also sets up the expectation for the viewer, and that's so so important. Something else I did in this video was a really simple thing and it can really uplift the video is just adding transitional music. It helps move things along and provide context.
08:19There are some video opportunities that have come across my inbox or my social feeds that are
08:27totally disconnected from, like, purchase If I'm treating this like a main channel video, Marquez does not like having music typically running for more than, like, twenty, thirty seconds. Like, he says it makes things feel like an ad, but in this case, there's no product.
08:44So, really, like, what are we advertising? Usually, I use it as a transitional period to kind of, like, segue to your brain that we're about to switch to something else. So you'll hear later from Ellis, but he told me something really important that stuck with me and that when you're picking music, it needs to convey something that isn't already being told through video.
09:03Something subliminal,
09:04something to set the tone, the vibe, or set up expectations for later. I also think YouTube is a treadmill. And if you try to chase past success over and over and over, you end up kinda burning out a little bit.
09:15And I think you should look at what you enjoy making just as much as what worked in the past on your channel.
09:20So all of that. Just kind of a nice wrap up. Clearly, this video is not completely done, and we still have sound to pass off to Ellis.
09:28We still have a bunch of stuff to do, and we also still need to do the color as I'm sure you can tell. So you'll be hearing soon from Vin who's actually gonna take over from here, and he's gonna fix the ugly color. Thanks, Vin.
09:42We sit this close normally.
09:45Marques, what are you editing right now?
09:48I'm editing a video where I ask everyone to subscribe to the studio channel. It's gonna be a banger. Super short.
09:57Hey. Vin here, art director for MKVHD channel.
10:01Essentially, color grading is putting emphasis and de emphasis on parts of your image to tell the story. So for this section, let's talk about prep, LUTs, and plugins.
10:11For this tutorial, I'm just using DaVinci Resolve. That's what I prefer, but you can use any editor. Premiere, Final Cut, Sony Vegas, they're all good.
10:20Based off of this clip, you can tell that already before the LUT is applied, there is a big blue cast on the whole background, and that's because we have two sky panels blasting at the ceiling, and then we fine tuned the hue number. We took a couple minutes to do that, and we would do camera tests to see if the hue was correct for the background.
10:4380% of your image should be done on camera, and then your last 20% is color grading. You can't fix bad lighting in post. It doesn't matter what camera you're using as long as you're shooting in log, and if it happens to have 10 bit codec, that's what really matters because eight bit is a little too small.
11:00You don't get as much dynamic range in post. More data basically means more flexibility in post. You've probably seen this acronym a couple times now on the Internet, l u t, LUT.
11:10It stands for lookup table. What does that mean? No one really knows, but it's essentially a filter that goes on top of your footage.
11:18On the main channel, we seem to gravitate towards just using the regular red Rec seven zero nine conversion LUT just because that's what we're used to. For Marques' a roll, we shot on a Canon c 70. If we apply the LUT, this is the default conversion.
11:34This is what we saw on camera. So right now, this is just the default LUT. I generally don't like using this because it's not catered to the camera from the r five, r five mark two, c 70, and the c 300 mark two.
11:48Literally, all of them shoot c log two differently. So Canon is not just guilty of this. Sony is very guilty of this.
11:55They have too many cameras, and so that s log three LUT is gonna look different on all of their cameras based off of the stock Sony LUT. Personally, I don't like using the stock LUTs unless they're from RED or ARRI. Most of the time, I would prefer even a YouTuber LUT as an alternative because they're catered to the camera.
12:15So here we have a custom LUT from our YouTube friend, Tyler Stallman. Shout out to Tyler.
12:21His is actually based off Ari's color space. So you can tell it's a little bit more saturated. His is more stylized, so I can't push and pull as much, but it's already so good that I don't really wanna do much to this.
12:36Based off of this image, he seems a little bit underexposed, so you should have a three wheel editor, and there's an offset tab, which is like a general exposure. All your editors should have that. Plug ins can vary in price point.
12:50Some of them are 100. Some of them are 1,000. This one I'm using is Dehancer.
12:54It's about $400 for two seats. So in this situation, I have the c 70 camera selected and c log two cinema gamut.
13:03The company that made this plugin tests all their cameras specifically. So anytime that you see that conversion done, it's made for that camera because they all shoot a little bit differently. I already like the starting point a lot better than the stock LUT.
13:18So for me, I would just bump up exposure a little bit, and I already had this done, but I turned down saturation a little bit. A big reason as to why this cost $400 is because of these stylistic effects that you get along with it. So you have things like halation that adds red to the edges on the chromatic aberration.
13:36So any highlight you see has, like, a little red flare to it, and it can warm up the image a little bit, makes it look a little retro and older. Bloom is basically your diffusion filter, but you can dial it in post.
13:50It lets you pick how intense you have it. You can even pick what kind of camera, like, film stock it's replicating.
13:58Older cameras usually bloom harder, so that's why if you pick eight millimeter, he looks really soft. And if you pick 70 millimeter, that's a more modern camera.
14:08All of these you can fine tune with the sliders and you basically just pick through a bunch of boxes. It's pretty easy to use. If you're trying to achieve a more stylized look, well, you're gonna have to do that during production because you can't stylize what's not stylized.
14:23Ultimately, color grading should serve the project itself. If you don't push yourself in production, you can't push your image.
14:32So go ahead and take a risk. As of right now, this looks pretty good, but that's only half of the story. Now we need to spruce it up with some graphics.
14:39So let's hand it off to Michael.
14:42Hello. I'm Michael. I'm the head of motion design, and I'm excited to walk you through my process.
14:47Let's go ahead and break down the overlay animation that I made for this video. So a mistake I see a lot of newer creators making,
14:54specifically, is to look at what works on other channels and then just try to copy it one for one.
15:02I think that's the worst thing you can do because they don't have a reason to watch the thing you're making over the thing that already exists.
15:08So as it turns out, we lost all of the footage of me talking directly to camera. So from here on out, you will be seeing a little cartoon version of me that Olivia, our other animator, so kindly created. Enjoy that.
15:21Probably for something like this, I probably actually spent more time developing the flat static graphics in Adobe Illustrator than I did actually animating them in After Effects. The most important part of motion design is getting the design part right first. So for me, what that looks like, yeah, just building everything in Illustrator first.
15:39Um, everything that you see is made up of, uh, vectorized paths, which means I can move things independently and not be worried about losing information or things being stuck together without using words, um, or at least very many words.
15:56Uh, I wanted to show the abstract concept of something being viewed on the Internet and then something being viewed on your computer as a, like, project creative thing that you're making. And I felt like the best way to do that was YouTube and Final Cut Pro.
16:12Um, so what I did was I took a screenshot of both of those things, and I oversimplified the heck out of it.
16:19I mean, this is what Final Cut Pro looks like. I mean, maybe that's not a surprise to most people watching this video. But, um, I was like, what parts of this make it look like Final Cut Pro?
16:29And I was like, oh, there's a little play button with information, like or the the time code. Once again, it's like, I could have included all of this, and it would have still read as Final Cut.
16:40But he might have been distracted with, like, is he talking about color grading? Is he talking about the audio levels? Is he talking about the effects?
16:46Is he talking about I was like, no. He was talking about generally making a project.
16:52Everything I need for this animation has been built here. So at this point, we're we're done with with Illustrator for the most part, and we're ready to transfer to After Effects. I use a sneaky little plug in called Overlord just for those who care.
17:05It's really great at porting things over. But to move on. So one of the first things we learned in motion design school was the 12 principles of animation, animation, which is originally developed by Walt Disney.
17:16And a lot of that actually really applies to simple graphic animation here as well. The main three principles that I wanna talk about are easing, timing, and staging.
17:26Easing is, I would say, one of the biggest telltale signs between an amateur motion design project and a more professional motion design project. And really what that means is making movement feel lifelike and real.
17:39So this is an example of an object moving with no easing. It gets the job done. The object moves, but there's no life to it.
17:48It's very robotic. Here is an example of an object that has the easing applied.
17:53What it shows is the object starting really slow and ending really slow. And in between, it has this sort of fluid movement. The object on the bottom just doesn't feel real.
18:03Every single key frame in this video, anytime I move something, there's easing to it. Meaning that it starts slow, moves fast, and ends slow. Ordinarily, if you're getting started with After Effects, I would not recommend jumping straight into plug ins because I think it's really easy to get distracted and excited about flashy plug ins that seem to, like, solve all of your your motion design problems.
18:25But this is one plug in that I do think is actually really helpful for all motion designers even if you're just getting started. It's called Motion Studio. It's designed by someone named Matt who has a YouTube channel called Mount MoGraph.
18:35A lot of times, if you wanna change the ease of an object, you can go into the graph editor and you can move adjust these handles. And it works, but it's a little finicky, and it's hard to be precise with it. So this tool allows you to dial in exactly what easing quantity you want.
18:51So let's say we want 50% on the out and 20% on the in, and it just sets it for you. Literally, every single object that I drop in After Effects, I highlight the key frames, and I hit this little preset slow at the beginning and then really slow at the end. It's like a nice easy movement that I figured works.
19:08There's a whole grid of different functions that this thing does, and some of them are very elaborate. But the basics are really great. I recommend check checking out Mount MoGraph on YouTube and also checking out Motion Studio online.
19:20They have a whole breakdown of everything it does, but this is sort of the basics. So another really important principle that applies really well to our YouTube videos is timing. Really what that translates to is making sure that the beats that happen with what Marques is saying line up well with the movement that is on screen.
19:36I think that's the worst thing you can do because they don't have a reason to watch the thing you're making over the thing that already exists. So in this case, I wanna make sure that the spotlight and the eyeballs are shifting focus from one side to the other at the exact time that Marquez is saying other person's content.
19:54I see so many things online where what is being talked about and what is being shown has a half a second delay or even a second delay, and you really miss it. Like, it's actually really hard to follow. One of the most important things in design in general is being intentional about where the viewer's eye goes.
20:10With motion design, it's a lot to expect viewers to focus on the words that someone is saying and the visuals on top of that. It's really easy to have those fight each other and to make it actually harder to understand the concept if you're distracted by what's on screen.
20:24It's like, step one, show the shapes. Step two, introduce the YouTube video.
20:29Step three, introduce the timeline. Step four, re put the movement back just on the video screen to drive home that this is a copy of the original. So now you're focused back on the shapes again.
20:41If we were to just have the shapes move right away with the timeline, then you'd sort of be like taking that in and the shapes and all that, but we're we're doing one thing at a time. The next thing I want people to do is focus on the differences between these two. So we get rid of everything that's on YouTube, on on the timeline, and everything, and we're just showing the shapes.
21:00The little eyeballs in the middle are sort of just like a fun element to keep this frame interesting because otherwise, it'd be like a pretty boring frame. But we're going even further. We're saying, I want the viewer's eyes to be on this one.
21:10And then as Marques is talking about the original, I want the eyes to be on the original. So I'm literally putting a spotlight on them. It's like, want it to be as easy as possible for the viewer to, like, have zero strain when they're looking at this.
21:22Okay. Effects slash plugins that I use almost every day in After Effects. Uh, for main channel, uh, number one effect that I will slap onto something to make it feel on brand, uh, and give it a little bit more energy is the glow effect.
21:38So we're going stylized glow, and we're adding it. I think with every effect, there's a right and wrong way to use it. And I think with this one, it can look horrible if you just, like, slap it on there.
21:50But a lot of times, I'll, like, duplicate it and make it a little bit more intentional. And that looks like way too much, but we're gonna dial it back.
22:00I think a nice subtle glow goes a long way. So a lot of times on the studio channel, we will use an effect called turbulence displays paired with an expression called wiggle, which allows us to have clean vector shapes but look a little bit like hand drawn sort of stop motion y.
22:17So the circle on the left has a bit more of like a hand drawn look to it, and the circle on the right is is just the plain shape. Basically, what turbulent displace is doing is it's giving this shape a randomly generated slight wobbly variation to it.
22:32So with one effect, you get sort of a smooth wobbly egg. And then as we add more effects, you get more grunge and more texture to it.
22:41And then we've we've set the random seed to have a wiggle effect that basically posterize time says every three seconds, change this value, and wiggle says, every three seconds, change it by a 150 points.
22:55If we multiply that by three at different sizes, you get, uh, this hand drawn look. People shouldn't be thinking about all the stuff that I'm doing in the background.
23:05People shouldn't be thinking about all these freaking keyframes and all this, like, easing that takes place to make everything feel natural. It's like, it should just feel like information that's easy to understand.
23:20People always say this and it's really cheesy, but good design is invisible. So this animation looks great, and I'm really happy with where it's at. But in order for this to feel super polished, I think we need to get some sound design on here.
23:30So I'm a let Ellis do his magic.
23:33Thanks, Michael. Now, time to get into our three part series on doing sound and videos. And this part one is possibly the most important.
23:42It's music. Remember that speaker video I did on this channel like about a year ago? Well, the key to making that video work was using bebop rhythm sections under all that stuff I was saying.
23:51You've probably noticed a lot of videos on this channel use up tempo jazz rhythm sections as their underscore and it's not an accident. You have seen tons of media that uses those same bebop drums and bass to get a a frenetic sound, a behind the scenes sound, an industrious sound. And that sounds already in your viewers head.
24:10So when you're picking music for your video, you're not just picking a song that you like, you're picking a song that your viewers will personally resonate with. So where do you find that track? Well, the answer is pretty obvious.
24:23It's epidemicsound.com. I don't know you. I don't know what kind of content you're trying to make, but I do know whatever you need, it's on there.
24:30You need something with some epic cinema builds, it's on there. What about some nineties grunge stuff?
24:35Chat, you betcha. Japanese classical music? It's on there.
24:39I've seen it. They even have whatever this is.
24:44Once you have your song, you can download the stems and easily start editing it. And if you're not comfortable editing stems or you're just getting started, Epidemic Sound has an adapt feature that helps you easily make a song fit your video. So much of the music and sound effects we use here at MKBHD come from Epidemic Sound.
25:01And now you can get access to that great library with the link in the description which will give you a thirty day free trial and access to the MKBHD playlist we made for you.
25:11And now that you know where to get your sound and music for your next video, we're gonna throw it over to the newest member of our team, Rufus, who will hopefully save you hours of time on your next production.
25:25Hey, I'm Rufus. I record most of our videos, and I make sure the foundation that Ellis gets when he goes in to do that sound design is really strong.
25:34So why am I talking to you in the editing video? You spend a lot of time in the edit fixing bad audio. Real like, everybody has this problem.
25:41This is I've had this problem. Eric has had this problem. Rich has had this problem.
25:44When you get bad audio on your desk, you have to spend a lot of time fixing it. And if you had just placed your microphone, which is free and not that hard, you can save all of that time, all of that strife.
25:55So if you give me five minutes, I'll show you how to do it. The key to recording great sound is 90% putting the microphone where it needs to go. The rest of it is I'll cover it at the end of the lightning round, but it you can forget about it for now.
26:07Your brain, when you walk into a room, is telling you kind of automatically what to focus on, and it's doing so subconsciously. Microphone does not hear like that.
26:15So I'm gonna teach you how to hear like a microphone in order to think like a microphone, to point like a microphone. So what do you want to hear? Well, our case, we wanna hear the sound of Marques Brownlee who sat in this very chair moments ago.
26:27Here at MKBHD, we typically use for almost everything shotgun microphones. These microphones, if you watched our last video, you know this, have a polar pattern which is very directional.
26:36It hears a lot like a cone. But the thing is the cone has a limit. It has an end point and a microphone that's pointed the complete wrong direction but is really close to me is gonna do a much better job of hearing me than a microphone that's across the room pointed straight at me.
26:54But we're assuming that your microphone is basically close enough. And for us, that's kind of that's right on the edge of frame. Like, this one's literally right here.
27:01That narrows it down to a 180 degrees. The microphone's gonna be in front of Marques somewhere because his voice is going forward, and that's what we want to hear.
27:10So why is the microphone not directly above him or directly below him where you often see shotgun microphones? Why is it right here? Well, it's because we're in a room with sounds like our air conditioner.
27:21That air conditioner makes a noise. So if we were below Marquez, we'd be pointed up at that. So that knocks out this bottom position.
27:29We also have a light right here. The light makes a noise. It has a fan in it and you can hear that.
27:35So we don't really want the microphone to be right by the light, so that knocks out this chunk. And lastly, it's been in front of you the whole time, the desk, which you're right.
27:46It it doesn't make any sound by itself, but when Marques speaks, his voice can come out, bounce off of the desk, and then into the microphone. We don't wanna record that. It's like shooting Marques through a mirror.
27:58So this position where the mic ended up means the cone is pointed at what we want to hear and isn't pointed at what we don't want to hear. Quick lightning round of some questions people have asked is how loud should you be recording?
28:12If you have a machine that's recording sound, which we're assuming that you do, it should have levels on it that will tell you in decibels how loud you are. You wanna be around minus 20 ish on average, and the absolute loudest someone's gonna talk should be around minus 12. If you're there, you're pretty safe and then they can go even a little bit louder and you'll still not be clipping.
28:30If you hit zero, that's clipping and it sounds like this. So you don't want it. Two, generally speaking, if you're recording dialogue, which we're assuming you are, you wanna turn on a low cut.
28:40It might be on your microphone, it might be on your recording device, but that basically means that wind noise like sort of bumping, rumbling, things like that doesn't completely get rid of them, but it makes sure that you don't get so much that it overwhelms the dialogue that you're trying to record.
28:57Third, if you're buying your first shotgun microphone, stick to the bottom end.
29:01The Audio Technica a t eight seventy five r is a great microphone. It's pretty cheap, and it has no reason to sound as good as it does. It beats basically all of the microphones in the mid range in my opinion, which means if you have that microphone and you're using it well, upgrading to a mid range mic is not gonna make things sound much better.
29:19Upgrading to a flagship like the MKH four sixteen, the Shep's CMIT five u, the DPA forty seventeen, you're gonna hear a difference, and that's worth it. Those are microphones that are gonna last you a lifetime.
29:29Only buy those if you're ready to really take things seriously. Everyone else, the mid range isn't really worth it. If you're looking at sound recording and this stuff looks big and scary and things, it's as simple as pointing the microphone at what you want to record and not pointing it at what you don't want to record.
29:43Every part of sound when you get down to it is like that. They're not that complicated. Do not let anyone tell you it is more complicated than that.
29:50So now your video sounds good, but your video could sound better.
29:58What is up, gamers? Ellis here, your boy. And today, we're gonna talk about sound design.
30:03That's the part of the production process where you take sounds that you didn't record on set and you put them in your video. And now, I have a feeling you're probably wondering one big question. Rule number one, things that move probably make a sound.
30:16To show this, let's crack open the OnePlus 13 s intro we did on the main channel a little while back.
30:41So this intro is full of motion. There's just so much of it in here, but let's focus on the four main moves that the phone actually does.
30:50First, it turns 90 degrees to the left. Then it turns 90 degrees to the left again.
30:57And then it turns 90 degrees to the left a third time, and then the phone falls off screen. Seems pretty simple. Right?
31:03But how do we actually know what those moves are supposed to sound like? First off, how big is the phone? The phone's huge.
31:10It's the biggest thing on screen. For a lot of it, it takes up pretty much the entire frame, which means even though the phone in real life is phone sized, in video life, the phone is ginormous. And what do ginormous things sound like?
31:23They're big. They're low pitched. You could hear they have mass.
31:27So let's make the phone's motion big and low pitched. Easy.
31:33But why is it moving? There's no actuator. There's no hand, there's no machine turning the phone in the video.
31:40So that means the only thing it's touching is air, which is lucky for us because air actually makes a lot of sounds. It sounds like the right call is probably a whoosh, But what kind of whoosh?
31:53A big low pitched whoosh where you can hear the mask. Alright. So remember that thing that Michael said about easing and how it can make stuff feel like natural and lifelike?
32:06That's really important for us as sound designers. Let's take a look at how these phones actually move. Right?
32:11They're not constant. They start slow and then they sort of accelerate in their turns. And lucky for us, those big whoosh sounds are perfect for that.
32:19They go whoosh. Fantastic, easy, breezy, beautiful cover girl. But if you noticed, the last move, that last 90 degree turn in this intro does not have any easing on it.
32:30Michael's computer glitched out. He couldn't get the easing to work, and he just said, let it ride. And so for the last sound in this intro, I needed to pick something that still sounded big and massive, but in real life would have no easing, just start and stop.
32:44And so what better sound than a boulder?
32:51That's just a stupid hole. Play this.
32:54It lodges the boulder.
32:57Didn't you add a slide whistle in here too?
33:02Oh, yeah. I did do that. I don't know.
33:07I just kind of freestyle that one. Was just sort of like intuition. So I guess we should just move on to the next rule.
33:19Yes. You read that right. Silence actually does make a sound.
33:24Don't believe me? Look at how painful this is.
33:31I told you, silence actually does make a sound in our brains because in real life, I promise you, you have never actually heard real silence before. Even the quietest places on earth still have a little bit of sound to them. So if you suck all the sound out of your video at any given moment, it's gonna feel weird and awkward and painful and most importantly, not believable.
33:53So what do sound designers use in those sound holes that sounds like silence? Well, there are two tricks we like to use. The first one is called reverb.
34:05Sound gets everywhere. It's kinda like sand after the beach. And as sound bounces off all the objects around you, it's all gonna make it back to your ear and we as humans perceive that as this thing we call reverb.
34:18Our brains actually get a lot of subconscious information about the kind of space something is happening in from the reverb. I use this trick on the one plus 13 s video. When we suck all the music out and things get silent, I carry through a lot of that silence with a long reverb tail that lets you know, hey, this big empty limitless space we're in, that exists and it sounds like this.
34:49The other trick we use is called ambience, which is just like big fancy speak for background noise. Background noise is a super clutch way to inject some believability into your sequence.
35:01Check out this shot from our video about the fastest car in the world from a little bit ago.
35:06That's crazy.
35:17This shot looks fake. It looks like a video game, but I promise it is 100% real.
35:24There's no CGI. There's no compositing. It's just kinda nutso.
35:28And so we needed to add a few sound effects to kinda make people believe that we actually got the shot. And I'll tell you this, it wasn't the sound of the Porsche that we added in post that made it believable. It wasn't the sound of the Rimatz that we added in post that made it feel believable.
35:51It was the sound of the birds that weren't even there in real life. There were not even birds that day when we were shooting. But it's a big up high shot.
36:00You see all this green tree grass around you. No one even noticed I did that, which means it worked.
36:12Alright. Rule number three is use sounds that actually mean stuff to your audience.
36:19There are some sounds that get stuck in your head in a cool emotional way. There's a great example of that in this OnePlus intro. Take a look at the very first thing that happens in this intro.
36:30Right? We watch the phone get traced. It's very simple.
36:33It's just this writing floating on screen that traces the outline of the phone. What sound does tracing sound like? There's a bunch of obvious answers.
36:41There's pencil on paper. There is pencil on cardboard.
36:46There is marker on dry erase board. There is chalk stick on chalkboard. There's a million different writing sounds that we all agree like, yep, that's what writing sounds like.
36:56Heard that before. Makes sense. But those sounds won't make you feel something.
37:03I think it's safe to assume that a lot of you at home are around my age or around Marques' age. You grew up in North America or Europe, and you probably watched something get traced on TV as a kid about 10,000,000 times.
37:21And whether or not you knew that about yourself, that's probably what mid air tracing sounds like in your heart. So what is actually in that famous Disney Channel sound?
37:31It's mostly a roadside flare and a bell tree, and that is exactly what I did in this video. You are watching Disney Channel. No one batted an eye, no one questioned it, no one even noticed.
37:44And that is the goal of sound design. So unless your name is Erica Dahl or Mark Bantgini, don't try to be a hero.
37:52Don't go too hard. You'll know you did your job well when no one notices your job at all.
37:59So I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is and actually use these techniques in the, uh, video you're watching right now. So here's the final cut.
38:11I'm Marques, and this is how I pick what videos I'm gonna make. This is the front glass from the iPhone six. And so here, I'm gonna show you everything I learned about what spot actually is, but I'll leave you with this.
38:26I've got my upsides and downsides to Vision Pro. I've never regretted making a video just for the views.
38:34I think most of the videos we make, there's a bunch of different reasons why I made it. But if you wanna go all the way to the far end of the spectrum of this one we know is going to get views, it's the iPhone unboxing video. It's just one of those things where people like seeing shiny new things come out of boxes, and that's fine.
38:49Actually, the audience is smart. They can tell when the creator especially is not incredibly excited about a video. So I think a lot of the comments were like, yeah.
38:58This isn't important or interesting. Why is this a video? And it's cool to see that because they're picking up on exactly how I'm feeling about the video, which means I communicated it well.
39:08But, also, I didn't regret it because it still performed the way we thought it would, and it still got people to subscribe and to see the channel and see the videos. Even if they weren't having the most in-depth thoughts after watching a video about a new purple colored iPhone, they could still subscribe. Two main ways I can decide if a subject is worth my audience's time.
39:29One is if they have shown interest in it in the past, or two is if I'm interested in it and I've been able to connect it to things that my audience is interested in the past. Usually, look forward by looking backwards.
39:42So I'll give an example. A video we did recently, which was reviewing the robotic hand. I thought it was awesome, and I was super interested in it when I got to test it.
39:50So that was a pretty good indicator for me right off the bat. I have also done a video in the past, uh, talking about, uh, prosthetics, three d printed prosthetics for pets.
40:00And while the video didn't get a ton of views or attention necessarily, it was still really well received and people were interested in it. And I I thought it was really fun video to make.
40:09So when we looked at this new thing, which is this robotic hand k. It's new. It's different, but clearly it's tech, which the audience is interested in.
40:17And the last time we talked about potentially awesome prosthetics that people can use, It also went really well. So just finding those connections to the past made it pretty obvious that this would be a fun video that would be good to make.
40:32And there's also the excitement of tying it to a certain other video another channel made. So it was gonna be fun no matter what.
40:40There are some video opportunities that have come across my inbox or my social feeds that are totally disconnected from, like, purchase decisions.
40:51Usually, when I make a video, even if it seems like kinda disconnected or a little bit out there, you can in some way connect it to this is the tech that's going to affect me as a regular person in the future. So the stuff that's like, this is the super cool tech behind, like, how skyscraper elevators work.
41:09There's just no way for me to connect it to you, the viewer. Those are the ones I just pass on.
41:16So mistake I see a lot of newer creators making specifically is to look at what works on other channels and then just try to copy it one for one.
41:29I think that's the worst thing you can do because they don't have a reason to watch the thing you're making over the thing that already exists. So the more you can make it your own interpretation or the more you can bring in various sources of inspiration, the better.
41:41But so I used to do a lot more list type of videos, like top five this, top 10 that. And they were great. So, like, format wise, you could optimize for attention.
41:52You count down from five to one. People stay for the whole video. You could pick lots of different types of topics.
41:57It was just kind of a free content spin wheel generator, just top five, insert whatever you want here. But I stopped doing a lot of those because I just felt like they didn't, uh, provide as much value as I was hoping.
42:09I was hoping to help people learn stuff, uh, experience stuff, feel like they know what it's like to own a gadget before actually buying it.
42:18And the top fives are more on the pure entertainment value side of the spectrum. And other channels just started doing way more of them, and that kinda became their thing. And I just stopped doing top fives.
42:28I also think YouTube is a treadmill. And if you try to chase past success over and over and over, you end up kinda burning out a little bit. And I think you should look at what you enjoy making just as much as what worked in the past on your channel.
42:40So all of that.
42:51Hey, Olivia. You you did most of the graphics on this video. Right?
42:56Yeah. I did. So so you should have a segment in this video.
43:02Right?
43:04No.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Before a single cut is made, Marques Brownlee establishes the frame for everything that follows: editing is not a technical skill you acquire once and apply — it is a continuous chain of judgment calls. The video then hands the timeline to five different specialists, each demonstrating what their discipline actually looks like from the inside.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:10list
The 4 Principles of High-Quality Editing
- Good in, good out — you can't edit your way around poor planning and execution
- Focus — what you cut is as important as what you keep
- Don't be boring, but don't be insulting — there's more to editing than cutting fast
- Know your audience — A+ work designed for the wrong audience won't feel like A+
The four meta-principles Marques uses to evaluate all editing decisions at MKBHD.
Steal forOpening frame for any content about craft or quality — applies equally to writing, design, coding
14:20concept
The 80/20 Camera Rule
80% of the image is finalized on camera (lighting, exposure, color temp, lens). The last 20% is color grading. The corollary: you cannot stylize what is not already stylized in production.
Steal forAny 'good in, good out' argument about upstream quality gates in any production pipeline
25:00list
3 Core Motion Design Principles
- Easing — every keyframe starts slow, moves fast, and ends slow to feel lifelike
- Timing — visual beats must sync to the exact spoken word, not half a second after
- Staging — show one thing at a time; never let graphics compete with dialogue for attention
The Walt Disney 12 principles of animation distilled to the three that apply to YouTube motion design.
Steal forMotion graphics brief, junior animator onboarding, quality checklist for any animated explainer
38:30list
Ellis's 3 Sound Design Rules
- Things that move probably make a sound — scale the sound to the on-screen size, not the real-world size
- Silence actually makes a sound — fill perceived silence with reverb tails and ambient background noise
- Use sounds that actually mean something to your audience — emotional resonance beats literal accuracy
The three rules Ellis uses to approach any sound design session.
Steal forSound design brief, video editor's checklist, any explanation of why 'invisible' craft matters
35:30model
Microphone Placement Logic
Map every noise source in the room (AC, light fans, desk reflections) to directional zones. The correct mic position is where the cone points at the voice and AWAY from all mapped noise sources simultaneously. Close placement always beats distance — a close mic pointed the wrong direction still beats a far mic pointed correctly.
Steal forQuick reference guide for any creator setting up their first recording space
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
34:10link
“You can get access to that great library with the link in the description which will give you a thirty day free trial and access to the MKBHD playlist we made for you.”
Epidemic Sound sponsor read embedded mid-video by Ellis, framed as the natural answer to the music question he just raised — low friction because it answers the listener's implied question.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
Visual structure at a glance.
