And create the vocabulary for an absurd, ingenious art form.
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
They say good editing goes unnoticed.
Online, it goes viral.
Like any art form, this one has been shaped in part by the technology available at the time.
Online video is an inherently communal form; its defined by thousands of people iterating on the same idea.
Every once in a while, though, theres a leap forward.
But this particular one, a shot-for-shot recreation of Beyonces Countdown video, was made before all that.
The Countdown Snuggie would have worked perfectly, nearly a decade later.
Except you dont really see the sign fall off the wall.
You see the handspring and the initial crash of body and neon and then black.
Thats all you get.
Its impossible not to watch it again.
MMK
TheZoom
Who Is She
Vine, 2015
Sometimes you just need a little emphasis.
The extreme zoom is one of the easiest and most effective editing tricks and a fixture across content platforms.
It can be used to subvert expectations and emphasize a reaction.
In 2016, Snapchat made the editing effect ubiquitous by adding aone-finger digital zoom.
The kid, mishearing Uber driver, responded, I never went to Oovoo Javer.
The vibe is public accessstyle irony, vaporwave without trying too hard.
Oovoo Javer could be considered the original Oh no moment.
Two shots of vodka is the ultimate insert-your-reaction video.
But the original footage of Lees knockout serving alone is enough to indicate whats going to happen next.
It involved hand choreography accompanying jerky camera movements that emphasized the beats of the song.
It gave the whole thing an energetic feel and allowed users to create clean, smooth transitions.
Ariel Martin, whose username is Baby Ariel, was an expert in the form.
ZH
TheStuntEdit
Kitty Cat Car Jump!
MMK
Distortion
Thats my opinion!
How do you know whats good for me?
(Bonus: the stunned expressions of castmate Shannon Beador and host Andy Cohen.)
The concept is simple: Every time somebody says bee, the clip speeds up by 15 percent.
(Call it beestiality.)
you might now find sped-up versions of everything fromStar WarstoAriana Grandesongs.
They mouth, Oh, well.
The devices change but the general concept remains the same: a seamless transformation from one look to another.
The best edits render this task fruitless.
Some are done with clever camerawork, like Howards, while others are edited using desktop tools likePremiere Pro.
RJ
TheGreenScreen
Shooting Stars
YouTube, 2017
Shooting Stars emerged during a transitory period.
There was no default platform for super-shortform videos.
And yet, life found a way.
The structure is easy to grasp.
Take a clip of someone falling or spinning or generally goofing it.
Thats the real legacy of Shooting Stars.
We hear an audience member shift in their chair.
We hear a cell phone go off.
(In this video, she explains her recent bout of diarrhea.)
Its a tactic Chamberlain says she honed in on because it was what made her friends laugh.
(YouTube search vlogging like Emma Chamberlain.)
You dont get Charli DAmelio filming TikTok dances wearing sweats in a messy bedroom without Chamberlain laying the groundwork.
Frey perfects it here with his quick shifts in perspective, timed to his palpitating chest.
Eduardo Carmelo Danobeytia
Texton-Screen
You made it through to a new day!!
Each video has its own inspirational messages, like You got this!
or sometimes Get out cho feelings.
Digital creators have been experimenting with it since the earliest days of internet virality (remember eBaums World?
), with notable trailblazers likeBill Wurtzadding psychedelic graphics, text, and music to his frantic video essays.
But on TikTok, the POV is collaborative, inventive, and weird as hell.
No meme better exemplified the comedy of the form than Danielle Cohn dancing to Ushers I Dont Mind.
The real boom came after the dance had become an enormous meme.
A clip of a YouTuber biting into a burger is used to represent Lorde eating.
Her face is chroma-keyed green to indicate shes getting sick.
A variation of the form is made by TikToker@kevinatwater, who inserts himself into hispop divaaudio-visual collages.
They bring us back to that boundlessness.
But this video by TikToker Bomanizer Martinez-Reid is a classic in the realm of amateur creators.
Drawing on reality-TV cliches has become a superpopular TikToktrend.
To their followers, creators like xxd222 and Bass are heroes in their own right.
One of the earliest wasSongify the News, a web series responsible for the viral Bed Intruder Song.
More recently, TikToker Charles Cornell is known for hispiano accompanimentsto Cardi Bs viral rants.
The musician Lubalincreates songsout of absurd conversations he finds posted online.
This is editing to create a vibe, the way a DJ would at a club.
Can we stop dueting videos when we have absolutely nothing to add to them?
Much like the actual Tom Cruise, they did end up freaking out a lot of people.
The term wascoined by a Redditorknown for posting AI-generated celebrity porn in 2017.
Deepfakes have, of course, been used for nefarious purposes, mostly asrevenge porn.
But Umes shows how they can also be a playful genre of internet art.
So many of the internets most internet-y videos have revolved around exposing how the editing sausage gets made.
It features some of the most intriguing editing moves on the internet in 2021.
Trying to unpack each layer of reference could fill the Library of Congress.
Through their dizzying rhythms, these videos approach the abstract and artistic.
Watching them is like getting an IV hookup of pure internet chaos.
E. Alex Jung
Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
