TechStuff Interviews Preditor Chandler

in some of the videos for How Stuff Works. Yeah, I've been in some videos because you knocked at cotting away from me very brief cameo. So far, there seems to be an undercurrent of cruelty directed at me in the What the Stuff series. It's fun. It's fun. I'm not arguing that it's not fun, and I'm just saying

it's you know, I'm just detecting it. So I wanted Chandler to come onto the show so we could talk a little bit about what what he does here, what it means to be a predator at house Stuff Works. And honestly, I don't know how how do people in the video department feel about the title predator? I loved it actually, first time I heard it because I immediately

think of Predator, the Schwarzenegger movie. But when I started saying to other people and they're like, oh, what do you what do you do a house to works, I'm like, oh, I'm a Predator And then they get this weird look on their face, like, oh, yeah, that can mean that can mean something else too. Yeah, so I have to explain it's a producer slash editor, right, So essentially what you're doing is two jobs. That's really what it boils down to. So so here at How Stuff Works. We've

we've got lots of different shows. What shows do you personally work on? Personally, I work on What the Stuff, which is our list based show where every week we give four or five list items of something. It can be science, e. It can be pop culture, can really anything, um, but yeah, just tibots and information about each list item. And yeah it's a fun show to work on. Yeah, it's a little bit different from some of our other shows.

Like there there's some conventions with What the Stuff that aren't in other uh not all How Stuff Works videos. For example, the idea of the cold open, uh, the idea the shooting something that may or may not have any relation to the content of the video. But it's kind of a fun way to get into the video, and I usually like to start it with a joke. Yeah, just a little laugh. Usually mind tend to be self deprecating once in a while, I'm doing a terrible impression,

like Walter White or something. You got your Shakespeare, Yes, I got the Shakespeare monologue one coming up. So yeah, guys, who if you are big into Shakespeare and you like tech stuff, you should definitely check that episode out when

it comes out, because I wax poetic um. Yeah, so so What the Stuff is a little bit different in that respect, and it also means that, uh, we we've also experimented going beyond the studio, right, because our brain Stuff series that we shoot inside the studio, right, so we're up against the what what's called the what would be called a psych if it were in fact, in fact, in fact, if it were a real psych wall, but it's really a white backdrop. Uh spoiler for anyone who's like, oh,

you're destroying the illusion of lamour. Um. But but what the Stuff? We actually tend to go out at different locations, and not only that, but sometimes depending upon the episode

and the amount of time we have. You will go so far as to set up separate shots for each item in the list, right, Yeah, it just depends on I mean that it's I really feel like I do it more for my my own sake, just because I enjoy you know, different different setups, and I feel like it it adds a nice, nice flow, nice variety to the the episode. But a lot of times I feel like the viewers don't even notice or care. They just

want the information welltimes, which I think is hilarious. I feel like I'm doing it more for myself, I think, I think for a lot of people, they may not pick up on it consciously, but it helps break up the monotony that you might have otherwise, Like if it were just a person standing in front center frame of a camera a green screen. You're right that that even with the benefit of of additional video or of illustrations

or whatever, it can get very monotonous. And you know this is why, Like if you watch lots of very popular YouTube series, you'll see that people experiment with different angles. There are a lot of depending upon the show, there might be a lot of jump cuts, cut of ways to just random be roll. Yeah, we don't tend to

do that as much. Um, we don't like, Like, I don't think I've ever seen any Hell Stuff Works episodes that have had lots of jump cuts in them, where you know, like the little quig joke and then right back into the stuff the content. I know, I know we've experimented with it at times, but yeah, I don't

think that's really the style I enjoy. Yeah, I feel like most of the editors edit edit the videos to to be the way they would like to view them, right, which, there's so many different audiences out there that prefer different types of online videos. Well, well, let's let's walk through. Let's let's talk about what it's like, uh, to to do a full episode of what the Stuff. So let's say, all right, you have it on your schedule, you know

who is going to be shooting on a particular day. Um, what is it like like like from the point where you know, from scheduling all the way through shooting and editing and then publishing. Um, well, so I don't write the episodes. The writers right the episodes and basically once we've decided which episodes we're gonna do, we uh, I

mean everyone's pretty busy around here. I've slee with multiple projects, so we just kind of we've we've decided Friday as our data shoot, but try to figure out time period that works for everyone involved the host UM and Casey is our DP, so he's always got to be there and make sure he can he can help out and as it as it goes with the script, I basically just read over it a few times before we actually shoot, and my injections are usually pop culture references or if

I think of interesting cutaways to add all write down or interesting references that kind of relate, um, you know, I'll suggest that. And then yeah, it's a matter of finding a location. Um, it's kind of been dictated to have a different location for every single episode, which is challenging. It can be very challenging, especially as of lately because we're working we're working within the still developing which um, I don't know when will be fully complete. Yeah, it's

it's not fully operational. It's kind of like the Second Death Star right in more ways than one. This is an enormous building and you've probably heard us mentioned Pont City Market in previous episodes, but just to give you an an indication, of what we're talking about here, because I don't think I've ever gone into detail about what Pont City Market actually is. So in Atlanta, we have this enormous building. I mean, it's essentially the size of like a city block almost, and it's it used to

be a distribution and retail center for Sears. And it's built right along the old rail lines that used to pass through well, I mean technically they still pass through, but they're they're inactive, that um that passed through Atlanta, downtown Atlanta, and once upon a time, the trains would

pull up next to this enormous building. Cars would be decoupled from the train and rolled directly adjacent to the building, like there was a The third floor of our building is at the level of the train tracks, and so they would unload and load things there from this massive distribution center. And it was also a shop, so people in Atlanta could come here and shop for stuff, but it was you know, it was also distributing goods throughout

the rest of Sears stores. In the Southeast Baseball Diamond. There's a baseball diamond across the street, which is which is where the Whole Foods parking lot is across from there's details you guys don't care about, but no, there there was a there was a baseball park, and there was also an amusement park nearby because there were natural springs that were not far away before they got covered

up tragedy. Um. Atlanta is not known for keeping its history intact, but partially helped by the North as it turns out, But so so. Pont City Market is huge. It is nine stories tall. It is you know, imagine like fitting I don't know, maybe four department stores in to end for each floor and like full department stores and to end. It's huge, like to the point where when we take the elevator to get up to this floor, it's still a heck of a walk to get to

our office. There's getting to your office, and there's the extra ten minutes it takes to to park and take the elevator and walk down the hallway. Yeah, it's it's pretty it's pretty intense. So the good thing is that means potentially there are lots of interesting places to shoot. However, we do we we make sure that we go through the right channels to secure permission so that the management company knows that we are there. So we're not going

to be in the way of anybody. We also have to make sure that there's not gonna be any construction going on because we don't want to get their way, and we also don't want all that noise to bleed into our videos. So the idea is like anything that's being developed, they don't want anyone to see it until it's ready. Right. That also makes so many spots that

are limited. There's did available one day and not the next day, and some and some of them look really awesome, right, Like, there's there's a space and office space to be that is adjacent to ours or right across the hallway from ours that looks like straight out of Highlander. It looks awesome. The Highlander fight should happen in in this space. There's all these stone pillars and giant windows that looks out

in the front of the property. It's pretty amazing. But we can't shoot there, and I mean, I understand why. So when this place is completed, there will be a lot of other interesting spaces, like the rooftop will have some interesting spaces to shoot. But yeah, it's getting to a point now where we may have to start using the same locations and then alter the angle. But it's it's it's amazing how much changing the angle can effect

the visual the visual elements of a shot. I mean, you can you can just pan the camera thirty degrees and you have a completely new background and it looks like you're in a totally differ location. And that's a trick that everybody uses obviously, not just not just people making YouTube videos. Movie makers do this all the time. So all right, so you you've got the point, you've got scheduled, you've you've scouted out your location. It's time

to shoot. Explain to the audience what a shoot is like from your perspective, Well, figure out uh yeah, the angle of the shot itself that we usually do, um we we we kind of have a formula as as of lately where we do a cold open and then the host does the intro and the host host does an outro all within the same shot. And cold open can be anything. It's literally just like a three to

five second joke. It can be related to whatever the the content is, or it can just be completely random that can be inspired by the the backdrop we're in, or just whatever we're currently we've currently been talking about. Yeah, it can just be anything fun like that. And then um, depending on the host, some hosts do um use a telepropter and read off a telepropter because you know, a lot of the stuff is like heavy information that there, right they're giving out. You want to make sure you're

hitting the right facts and figures you're not. You don't want to gues estimate that, oh it's around twenty miles if you've got it's twenty three point seven miles. But that you know, of course, the more of that you have, the harder it is to make sure that you're hitting all the numbers correctly exactly. And yeah, that's we also have a script supervisor there that um just kind of cross checks whatever is being said to make sure we're saying it right and right, yeah, not missing anything or

making any mistakes. And then yeah, we get through the meat of the shoot. Um, well, we usually push in a little bit more for the meat was what we caught the meat the actual list portion of the episode. And by pushing you mean you get a tighter shot, usually get a tighter shot. And from there we go through a few times. If if we want to experiment with the delivery of certain certain sentences or certain parts will do that. If someone mush mouth something, which I do,

I do pretty much at least once per episode. There's at some point where there's a usually a series of soft seas or says and at some point I'm either slurring it or I'm running things together. Yeah, and and I will tell you I love him to death. Okay, I'm proceeding this with I love him to death. But Ben Bolan can write some of the hardest things to say out loud with the human mouth, right, They're brilliant, but they're hard to say. But when you complete it, it

it sounds great. Oh yeah, no, if you can. If it's really putting the responsibility on the presenter, if the presenter is capable of taking the time necessary to make certain they enunciate properly, then it sounds fantastic. Lauren does that to ourself too. She writes most of her own scripts, and she'll start fumbling away through a long sentence very difficult sinists to say, and she's like, who wrote this? Oh yeah, I've done the same thing. Not, I mean

for forward thinking. I have. I have written episodes for forward thinking. And I get to a point where I realized in my head this made perfect sense, but as as a person attempting to actually say it, it is a better way to say, I've got to find a different Uh. Yeah. So, and you usually are actually monitoring sound during these so you you are present at these shoots. Oh yeah, well, I mean yeah, I'm like generally directing, if you will, and running sound too, because we kind

of like to run with a skeleton crew, right. Oh yeah, no, that moves faster that way. That's being generous. So we usually have one person on the camera, one person on sound, and then maybe you have a script supervisor, and then and then there's the host, the host, the talent, the talent. Alright, so I don't want to put you on the spot, Chandler, but who's the best person on camera? Thank you? All right?

Well then, um, you know you heard it here first books, So okay, so now we've got the episode in the can, it's shot. What comes next? Ah, the editing comes next? Um. I generally, actually I don't even know if I have an order of events. I generally just do whatever I feel like doing at the time. But yeah, it always begins with obviously downloading the footage, putting it all in the timeline within um the editing software. Um, I use Premiere.

We all the editors here now use Adobe, Adobe Sweet Creative, Creative Sweets, and I stand by it. It's it's pretty amazing all the Adobe programs under one umbrella kind of software. And UM, yeah, I used to be final cut, um un till till till it's dying breath. I was that was all about final cut. Finally made the switch. I was like an old ramp. I was like, but I know all my shortcuts on fine Okay, Oh no, I I was the same way. This is taking me back.

I was the same way going from word perfect to word like word perfect, I knew all the keyboard shortcuts for everything, and then word I just felt was dumbing everything down these days. If you put me on a computer terminal, that's how old we're talking here, that's running word perfect. I doubt I could accomplish anything, at least not in a timely manner. All right, So you're using Adobe,

you are you're editing. So typically, do you have like maybe an average range of how long, how many hours of editing it takes you to do a single episode. It really varies to how much content was how much content was written, Usually the length of the scriptum directly UM effects how long it takes edit. I'd say average is anywhere from eight hours on the shortest side to sixteen hours on the longer side. Wow, So it could be up to two days of editing for a single episode. Yes, yes,

and that also it depends on the content. How difficult it is to find UM I guess, I guess you call it b roll or like pictures and video to cut away to UM. And also like how kind of into the episode. I am like, sometimes I'll get in the zone and I'll spend like two hours just working on like one kind of transition or section, and I'm like and sometimes it doesn't even work out. I'm like, I don't like this. This is terrible, Like I just wasted two hours. That's tough. So yeah, it also depends

on how and also how much time I have. Sometimes it's like, well, I've got six hours left before I need to publish. It's like I work until I guess

it's finished and I just throw publish it. Well, Uh so with that in mind, you know this this these hours of of putting in for editing, Uh, are there any particular episodes that you've done where you feel and we talked about this offline a bit, where you feel like, wow that that came together better than I had anticipated, or you know, this this flows, this ends up flowing so well. I'm really proud of this particular piece. Yeah. Yeah,

there's quite a few. I I really liked. Um. I really liked the one with the Star Trek gadgets, the five Star Trek gadgets. That's the one where Ben Bowlan sat stone face next right, here was your co pilot. You were at a bowling alley and we sat down at a table that looked vaguely spaceship ish, like it could have fit aboard the original Enterprise, and then I would deliver stuff into the camera and just stared straight

ahead with no expression on his face. I also glad that we made it work because you know, that day we just had a bowling alley to shooting and were like, these are the episodes were shooting. What does Star Trek have to do with the bowling alley? Absolutely nothing, right, So yeah, the co pilot idea was great. A lot of people didn't get it there, like, what what does that dude just staring into the camera for Yeah, it was. It was one of those things where I was like,

you know, I'm fine with it. And my favorite was that that Ben was wearing a sweat for that particular shoot that was reminiscent of Wesley Crusher's sweater from Star Trek the next generation had like little color stripes on it, so it made me think of Wesley. I was like, this is perfect. He's He's like Wesley Crusher and of course I'm not going to acknowledge him, and he's just gonna sit here unhappy the whole time. But I thought I had a really good flow to it. I really

like the song I chose. It's That's another actually big challenge as finding um Creative Commons music to use for these YouTube videos, because you know, like when you're putting out as many videos a week as we do, we can't afford to just buy a song for every single YouTube video. Yeah, how many? How many? What the stuffs are published? Each week? There's as as and now there's two each week. It used to be one, but around I think like August or October last year, we started

going to a week. So yeah, I mean you're you're talking about a lot of groundwork to get the just the basic components. It's not like we have We don't own a data base of music that we know, so we we we look for the free music and uh I found I found a couple of artists that are amazing and they put all their music out under what's the free music archive dot com or dot org. That's

where I go. But I'm just gonna say big, big shout out to Jizar j h z z a R. If you need good, like quality UM creative commons music for your video, check him out. He's he's amazing, awesome. So all right, so we got to the point where you've done all the edits, it's been eight to sixteen hours. You've got the transitions lined up, you have the supporting material that is augmenting whatever the script and the host

are trying to get across. You also, uh, at the at the end of the YouTube video when they're on YouTube, you have the the various call to actions where they've got the annotations or or rather the extra videos to point, do you pick those out? UM? I can sometimes if I if there's like other videos, even if it's like a different UM not channel, a different show, if there's like a similar video that would relate to whatever the content was in that particular What the Stuff, yeah, I'll

pick that. But in general, if I'm just kind of throwing out annotations for whatever other other what the Stuff videos there, I'll just do the most recent stuff videos there that came out, so all that happens, you publish it and sounds. Can't forget about sounds. Yes, please, let's

talk about sound. I didn't know anything about sounds going into this job, and I gotta say, like that was That's been the biggest learning curve for me, is realizing, like how I mean, if you think about it, like a video is one half the audio and one half visual. I was always on the visual side of things and don't really think too much about sound. And now now they've been doing it for a year, I realized I knew nothing, and I'm still learning to this day. Like

you gotta gotta make sure the levels are right. You can't can't let the audio peak too much, can't let the music peak too much. It's been a big learning curve. You'll actually if you go back and see some old What the Stuff videos, you'll see some comments they were like the music was way too loud in that one. Yeah, And I'm just like I've seen some sometimes it sounds good to me in my earphones, but other people don't, you know. Well sure, and sometimes sometimes there might be

like different pitches that hit certain people extra hard. Um. I can think of one show's opening theme that has a high pitch repeated sound that sometimes, depending upon the volume, might have my heading. So that can be a little a little much sometimes. So we're talking about talking about tech stuff. Um, but alright, so yeah, the sound is really important. And also I should point out, like like you would see in a lot of a frit professional shoots,

I mean, ours is a professional shoot. We're not recording sound directly into the camera. We're not using a camera mounted microphone. You're recording sounds separately. We're wearing lab mics that are have a wireless transmitter that transmit to a different recorder. And so therefore there's a moment where we

have to have the audio synced with the video. But we don't slate, which is the what you would see with your typical television or movie where you know you have the clapboard out, it's got the scene number on there, clap is where you line up the audio with the yea. You look for the spike in the audio and then you line the spike in the audio with the motion of the clap, and then that lets you have the synchronization. So how do you sync the sound to the audio.

We actually just use a software called Pluralize, where you just give them the audio and the video and it'll find the on the onboard camera audio and line that up with the lava audio that you recorded. So what it's doing is it's taking we are recording audio with the camera, but that's not the audio that you're hearing when you watch one of these episodes. It's being used as a reference track, and then the software does it all for you, which it doesn't always work out. Yeah,

a lot of times. And when we're filming outside, if the wind is blowing pretty heavily, the onboard audio, all you hear is just the blowing of the wind, and it's just like so in those cases you have and then you have to do it manually, which can be pretty tough. Pretty tough, Yeah, I can't. It's not it's not difficult to just it's a little time consuming sometimes right to find that one moment where you thinking, oh, this is where he made that noise. No, that was

a different noise, Jonathan. Sometimes you'll line up yeah, like an intro, and you realize you're lining up a completely different take and you're like, why is that? Why is the audio off? Now? Yeah? Yeah, that's and see that. That to me is one of those fascinating things because I take it for granted all the time, you know, because people have consistently done really good jobs in television

and movies. You know, you just assume, oh, everything is picked up at the same time, and you're fine, and you don't really think necessarily, oh, this was recorded in two on two separate media simultaneously and then had to be married together to become the thing you're actually experiencing.

So I always find that fascinating. Well, you know, I had also asked you about the possibility of talking about things that you find particularly interesting or inspirational as a creator, Like when you when you watch things, are there any examples of things that you've seen, whether their movies, television, or other YouTube videos? Uh that you're you you see it and you think, now that is really an interesting approach. That's something I would love to give a shot at man.

I mean, yeah, see things all the time every day, like YouTube videos, movies, anything like that. I mean as an editor, I've only been a quote unquote professional editor here at How Stuff Works for a year now, a little bit over a year, and I've never i mean, I've been editing since I was in high school, but I've never edited at such a such a clip with so so much content per week that I feel like I've learned a whole lot um, mainly in terms of

like flow and pacing and how much power the editor has. Yeah, and an editor has the power to take something that's good and turn it into something that's amazing, and like you're talking like yeah, just like the difference in like one frame of time can make a complete difference of like how how how a scene feels or how an episode can feel. Like you take I'm gonna say, like a shot of a of a man who's looking at a woman, kind of a flat affect um and facial tone.

You hold it for a certain period of time, you get the sense that he's in love with this person. You hold it for a second longer, he's in love but unsure of whether this love means something, hold it a second longer. He feels sorry for holding a second longer. He does, trust you know, it's just like completely Yeah, just the timing of and I mean within within you know, movies or sort of like dramatic narratives or even just in um a YouTube video or like a an interview.

Even I did an interview with Christian and Annalie knew It's from IO nine, and just that was that was a big learning experience for me, just realizing like there's a lot that goes into editing an interview, especially when you're limited in how much like how many how many pieces of equipment you have, like if you're lucky you here at holstaff Works, because this was an interview that was done on location, right Dragon, Yeah, So like like it's not like we could set up you know, a

multi camera approach with three cameras, right yeah, I think you're camera. You only had one, Yeah, which I mean obviously that means that you have to make that critical choice right up front of where's the camera, what's the how are we framing this? Because like a four K camera, but we were going to put the video out as a shoot it wide digitally push in yeah, yeah, fake multiple camera. We've done the same thing with forward thinking,

where which I love, By the way, I love. It was terrifying when I found out that I was going to be shooting on four K, because this in four K detail, that is yeah, no, gosh, I don't want to I don't want to see that. But then finding out that four K means half the number of takes, I was totally on board because I don't use it. I don't use a teleprompter for um, for forward thinking, but I do use one. I use one for what the stuff, um yeah, no, yeah, there's no teleprompter for

forward thinking. There's no It's just me and the crew, uh and so. And in the early days it was a full crew. These days we've we've got the skeleton crew approach because we've really figured out how to streamline the whole process. It took more than a year of hard work to figure that out. And that's the thing is that it's just like any other job, right, the more you do it, the more you start realizing, oh, I can do this thing, and it'll save me all

this time. I think of all the time I would have saved if I had known this before it's so daunting to think about, like how much you don't know, and like how much time you could save, Like once you learn what it is you need to notice, save that time. Like, yeah, I thought I was a good editor. I really did, like going into going into this job, and then a year later, I'm like, man, I knew

nothing exactly is coming. Uh yeah, no, it's it's I know exactly what you're what you're saying, because it's kind

of like doing the video hosting stuff. I had done plenty of stage performances, I had done presentations, and I had done some video work, but I had not really done video host work, right, And that's a different set of skills than other types of prefermance, same sort of thing, though you know, you you do it enough times, and if you, I mean, if people like you enough for you to stick around, you learn people don't like you,

you find out pretty quickly. So uh But at any rate, I wanted to talk also about one of my favorite videos that we've worked on together. It was an incredibly daunting task. It was a huge amount of material we gathered. We're talking specifically about how the w w E experience works. Now I've talked about this on the show in the past. I am UH, I am a Rasslin fan, like back in the day when it was Rasslin. Uh here in Georgia.

We're talking Georgia Championship Wrestling, World Class Championship Wrestling, World w c W, eventually UH all that kind of stuff, and then eventually w WF and then w w E. So we got the opportunity to go to UH the the nearby arena to shoot behind this footage of the crew setting up for a taping, so a SmackDown which

is taped and then and then broadcast later. And we got access to the arena early on when the crew was really you know, setting up, and they had already been working for a couple of hours by the time we got there. Um, but we got to shoot a whole bunch of material. And how many cameras do we have there? We had the go pro, the go pro, we had a five D No, we had to five d s and in a seven S, so we had we had we had four cameras there, so four cameras,

one of which was just sitting there gathering footage. That was the time that was the most fun because we were setting that up. And that's when security came by and said, hey, guys, how are you doing, Hey, what's up? When are you doing? And they jumped on us pretty fast. But but but they were they were super cool. I mean everyone at w W was super cool. And we we told them like, oh, we're here with how stuff works, and uh down there's our our ba us. You can

talk with them and everything they were. They talked with him. Everything was awesome and like all right, guys, you're good to go. And that was it. They've never gotten our way. They helped us out, they talked to us whenever we needed to talk to them. I don't think anyone, like, considering how much orchestration was going on with them putting together this massive show, I don't think anyone got yelled at for like being in the way or anything. And

I'm sure we were in the way they were. Yeah, it's probably a case of they're just their masters in their domain. They knew exactly what they were doing, and yeah, they were very friendly and eager to help us out with anything, or you know, like a couple of times, like if I was we were getting a shot of like you know, somebody setting up a certain light, and I didn't really get it in time. Sometimes a crewman would notice me, like you want me to do that again?

You know, Yeah, he'd do it for us and we get a second take. Yeah, we get a second take. Yeah. The crew was amazing. Everyone everyone that was really awesome. And the referees were phenomenal. They were super nice and very informative and would would stop and talk with us about anything, you know, if we were interested in something, and it was crazy like they were just picking the veil away to explain exactly what goes into and why things are the way they are, which was great. That's

exactly what we were there to capture. And the superstars were awesome too. We interviewed a few superstars yeah, how many four? It was right Back Ziggler seth rawlins Italia and they were all fantastic. Yeah, they were great interviews. Yeah. My favorite was were you doing sound for those two?

Was when when we were interviewing right Back and you said, I thought at first all the low levels were going crazy, and then I realized it's just his voice has so much base to it, Like that was I was shaking while listening to his audio. Yeah, I guess it was good that we didn't have the big show Mike at the time, because he came and chatted for a while.

Yeah that was hilarious. Yeah, but yeah, I remember putting the laws on right back's shirt right like Ray and the collar around his neck and realizing his neck was larger than the thickest part of my thigh. Oh my god, he's guys. Yeah he has called the big guys. Yeah, yeah, we uh So anyway, that was a full day of shooting. How how much footage? And I realized the term footage is kind of outdated since that dates back to the film days, but how much how much footage did you

guys have? Do you do you think? Um? Not including the interviews, we probably had about six hours of fote. That video, by the way, is around ten minutes long, so it was like six hours maybe a little bit more, um because yeah, we were unn multiple cameras at the same time and we were there most of the day. Um so yeah, about six hours of footage and in interviews on top of it, and that was that was

a lot of fun. That's like my favorite kind of video to edit and also my least favorite in terms of like how much brain power it takes because how do you pick. I mean it was after making videos like that that I had a lot more respect for documentary editors anyone that's ever edited a documentary. If you think about it, it's like, most of the time when you make a documentary, you have like just a wealth of footage and you're like, how do I craft a

narrative out of all this footage? You literally have to create a narrative. You don't really have a script. Well you do have a script eventually, but but kind of make it based on what you what you got, what you got? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I didn't. I didn't write, Like the voiceover was something I recorded well after we

had shot everything. I had specific questions that I wanted to ask the ring crew and the superstars, But apart from that, I didn't have, you know, the narrative written out because it didn't know what we were going to get and it would depend entirely upon what we were able to to see and record while we were there. And as it turns out, we were able to record. I mean, we were the first video crew allowed to go under the ring at w w E. Yeah, it

was pretty sweet. Yeah, that was pretty awesome. I was. I remember being under there and thinking, I can't imagine being one of the guys who hides under the ring while the match is going on to pop out and sabotage like that. That's one of those story elements that you see pop up occasionally in storylines. Man, I can't imagine the sound of that compressing. Yeah, just be nearby and hearing it. I was like, yeah, I don't even want to know what that's happening. Yeah, we got to.

We got to hear some of it because we were there while they were doing some rehearsals and stuff and uh, you know, just just warm ups things like that, and uh, you know, we didn't shoot any of that, but but it was really exciting to kind of just be present for it. It was, you know, like it was getting a chance to peek behind the scenes and it was really neat. So you had a huge amount of information

to sort through. You you really in in many ways, you've got to really shape the way that story played out. And I wrote some voiceover, but you and I worked together on that too, where you even came back with some notes so I could come back in and record some other things. A little differently, so it worked matched up better with the footage that we had exactly. So

it's a really collaborative process. There's a lot of fun. Yeah, and then you know, um, but yeah, it's it's always a daunting task at first because you just go, how how the hell am I going to take six hours and put it down into ten minutes and and like it's it's a blessing and occurs to have cameraman as good as we have. Casey and Paul were like their footage was spectacular, So we had a lot of once

again it's a good problem. We had a lot of issues where it's like we have five different ways to show this one thing happening the fun and they're all good, Um, yeah, which way is the best? Yeah? So maybe maybe one day we'll do we'll do the outtakes where it will just be two hours over random b roll. There's like, there's probably a hundred different ways this video because it turned out and all of them would have been good.

And of course we got to work with w W and they sent us some footage which was fantastic then, but that of course means that you had even more tough choices, like where do you put these things? How how how do we use the footage to emphasize points in the in the arc of the w w E experience? And are there elements where even if you really like a shot, you're like, man, I hate losing this, but you gotta you gotta be ready to to to cut the best of the best if it isn't serving the

purpose of whatever the video is. Um. So yeah, that was one where uh uh we were all really proud of the work we did. I mean, it was a huge amount of work, but it was also, like I said, a really collaborative experience and everybody really pulled their weight on that one. So that was a great kind of uh deep dive into a mega episode, which that's not a what the stuff that was its own how Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah. There are several episodes that that I've been part of or that I watched

that I've really enjoyed. Are there any others that you are particularly fond of or Yeah, there's one with Chuck Um where he does five false history facts. I really enjoyed that one mainly just because you can really see Um Chuck's personality kind of shows through really well on that one. He's just a fun guy to be around. So Chuck's just, yeah, he's just one of those genuinely affable,

fun guys. And he's I felt like in that episode. Yeah, he's he's He's definitely got a wicked sense of humor too, which is fantastic. Uh. And that's the other neat thing about what the stuff is that there's so many different houses. Yeah, it's kind of like each each episode has its own flavor depending on who's hosting. Lauren. Lauren's great. She brings the kind of dark and twisted side to science a lot um. She did one on waves Space is Trying to Kill You. I really like how that one turned out.

We have coming out today called um Bizarre Medical Treatments, and we did an interesting cold open. It doesn't really have anything to do with medical treatments, but we did a Blair Witch Project intro. We kind of recreated the ending to the Blair Witch Project. And she's standing in the corner. She was standing in the corner. Yeah, that's great. I've been forbidden doing that by my wife. By the way,

what standing in the corner affected her so much too? Man, I was just I was going back and looking at it after we shot it, just just kind of see it again because it's been years and yeah, my skin

was crawling immediately again. Again, It's one of those things where you know, using the right image at the for the right amount of time can evoke a very strong emotional response in the audience exactly, and and you know, it's it's it's really kind of remarkable how a lot of the job is maybe not manipulating your audience, but but encouraging the right kind of response so that you're the stuff you are creating has the greatest possible impact.

Whatever that impact might be, you know, will be dependent upon the content itself. Um. Yeah, I mean I love the fact that we have all these different hosts and that in general, I would say that what the stuff voice is a little tongue in cheek, a little a little snarky, maybe not snarky, but definitely tongue in cheek, definitely a playful uh. And then depending upon the host,

that playfulness comes out in different ways. So, for example, all the Jonathan Strickland hosted ones tend to be a little dorky and goofy because that's who I am, which I embrace, that's I mean, I realized I am never going to be the cool dude who is like like super laid back and is funny, and everyone's like like, I'm not going to be the cocktail guy. That's not gonna be me. You're cool in your own right, thank you. I appreciate that. Alright, alright, alright, so yeah it's uh,

you know, but but that is awesome. Now, it's a it's a great opportunity. Do you. Kristen actually made me think of different personalities. Kristen has one on phobias, and you know, she clearly comes from some sort of drama improv background because she has like so many different characters and styles and voices, and it just it blows my mind. Sometimes I'll just like let the camera run with her, and even when she's done with like the section that

she was recording, I won't say cuts. Then she'll just start riffing because she doesn't know how to stop until I say cut, and I get some great stuff from her, fantastic Maybe I'll maybe I'll try and give you some stuff, because you know, that's one of the reasons why I love working with Ben um. Ben and I both have

an improv background. Christ Is great at that. So, yeah, all the three of us have improvisational comedy backgrounds, and so like, whenever I get into a video where Ben and I are both in that video, it's always fun to play off of him, definitely, because we know we'll support one another in our various bizarre choices. And sometimes that works out too to video gold. Sometimes that's in a blooper reel. Sometimes yeah, just will forever remain on the editing floor, I say, I always say go for it,

and people like, should we try this? I'm like, yeah, let's try it, and if it doesn't work, it won't so much easier to pull it back than it is to tell people to give me more, right, because give me more makes a person feel like they are somehow, like they're underperforming. That's not necessarily what you mean. You might just mean I just need like this needs to be intense, I need more intensity or whatever. Um, And these episodes are so easy to set up, like why

not just kind of play around, you know? And I mean it's as as an actor, it's definitely one of those things where I had to teach myself it's much better to make a big choice and be told to pull it back than to do a small choice and

have a director think that's all you're capable of doing. Yeah, and I and I yeah, and I hope everyone like trust me enough to know that, like if you know, you should be brave enough to try something even if it seems a little outside of your comfort zone, and just know that, like if it didn't work out, it won't make the final part, like I'll be able to tell. So do we have any blooper reels in planning stages? Um,

I've constantly um any any good bloopers. I'll kind of make my own seat as I make my own timeline. I can go back through the project piles and I could piece together, but I actually do put I still on occasion put some good bloopers at the end of the episode itself. I mean, I don't make any because I'm one takes tricklin. But you know, I also know you you you actually do have a talent for that, because like sometimes I was like, man, do we just

shoot this in like ten minutes? Well, whereas I'm thinking, I guess we can reshoot it just to have two options. But it was already good for this And that's the thing that I'm always asking you guys, right, I'm like, are you sure you guys don't need another one? Because

I'm always second guessing myself. You know, when I'm when I'm in the moment, I can't tell if it's good or not because I'm I'm just doing it, doing it the best way I know how, And then I rely very heavily upon a director to tell me if I have you know, like like Jonathan, could you try this again, but do it in this other way? Like I think it might be more beneficial for you to have more gravitas, which I don't know where I'm going to pull that

out if that's over the direction, but whatever. Um. But yeah, it turns out that I guess it's my sensibility. It tends to go well with the scripts that I tend to do, and and it also speaks highly of the writers who, when they know which person is going to host a particular episode, they tend to write to that person's strengths. There's some episodes where we have a script and we haven't assigned it a host, and in that case, the script is kind of like a it's kind of

waiting for personality to be injected into it. Um. But there are other times where like, oh, it's Jonathan, let's make him do that terrible Christopher walkin impression. Does write that in and I don't do it. I heard that can give me a crisper walking impression. I like to do Christopher walking as if he were hot spur from Henry the fourth part one. So you're gonna get a little Shakespeare took. But for mine own bot, my lord, I could be contended to be there in respect for

the love I bear your house. That good. Yeah, you gotta do that. You gotta do the like no good for you. That was good. It's also good to It's also good to occasionally occasionally do like a whisper, like you know, you gotta run down the road fast, like you gotta do what I'm goner. I'm gonna have to practice my walking. Now is the world. I don't do an impression of walking. I do an impression of an impressionist doing impression of walking. That's that's how far removed

mine is. But that's all right. Reminds me of Michael Caine doing an impression of people doing Michael Caine impression. I've never seen that I have. It was in an interview, and I don't remember what it was. Yeah, some some sort of show. You know, everyone does impressions of you and he's like, yeah, they're terrible. I do see that. The secret to saying his name the way he says his name is to say the words my cocaine, cocaine, cocaine. Yeah,

that's the secret to saying his name. It's a little off topic, but then you rate, Yeah, where do we go? So this was great. I love that we had a chance to sit down and kind of talk about what it is you do and how it's done, and also to maybe introduce people to the series What the Stuff, because it it is one of those where you're going to get a full view of the capabilities of how stuff works. We're talking about a team of writers, many of whom are also some of the hosts of the show.

You have a variation of hosts so that people from your favorite podcast. They're all in these various episodes, huge number of topics ranging from science to technology to pop culture to everything in between. Um, and we're having a blast doing them. Um. Any passed any final thoughts before we sign off? Really? I mean, I guess, yeah, if you, if you, if you're a casual movie watcher, or watch

videos on YouTube or any sort of video content. Try to try to think about the editing every now and then, try to try to actually analyze what's going on there, because you you'd be surprised at how impressive of of of a job it is. A lot of times it goes kind of like good sound design too. It's like it goes unnoticed, like if you did your job correctly, people don't even think about it. Yeah, it's it's when editing has been poor that it becomes noticeable, right, because

then it becomes a detriment. I think of films where I feel like the story was disjointed, and often that's because you'll have a narrative moment happening in the film, there's a cut to a new scene before the previous one has had any distinct resolution, and it might move on to something different, and ultimately that can cause an audience to feel a little lost or unsatisfied. And if you're watching a great movie with great editing, then you know that doesn't you're just like, oh, that was a

fun movie. But if you watch one where the editing was disjointed, either on purpose in order to achieve a specific effect or just incompetently done. Then you could be feeling a little uncertain and lost. But then there's also the movies that the editing is almost a character in itself because it's just so jarring. Um Mad Max, the most recent Mad Max here, I think, yeah, I just saw that the other night and blew my mind. But yeah, the editing is so intense. Do do Warrior for the wind?

That like guitar? That that was next level? Yeah. I think of Tarantino's films. Tarantino's films where the editing is very much upon it. He's manipulating the audi and uh, yeah you can. I mean that some of the best editing I've seen in films consistently came out of the Tarantino movies. Um so yeah, I mean, very good point. Definitely pay attention to that. Keep in mind if you

have a goal of getting into the video industry. Editor is one of the best things I can think of, simply because you have a direct hand in how that story plays out. I mean, you know sometimes you know, a director's job is to get the performances that is that are needed to tell the story, but the editor is the one that puts it together. And you know, like I said, you can have you can have a good amount of material from a director and turn it into a great movie with a very talented editor. Yeah.

So I'm I am constantly thankful for the skill of the editors here at How Stuff Works because I might do there are times where I'll do it take and I'll think I probably could have done that better, And then when I see the video and my wow, they really put that together in such a way that it was it was perfect. I couldn't the thing that the doubt I felt in the moment was completely removed by the skill of the editors. So oh no, I won't because you keep me employed, all right. So um, anyway,

thank you so much Chandler for joining us. Guys. Make sure you check at What the Stuff episode Man, that is what the Stuff shows are so much fun to do, so check those out, and if you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, you can send me a message. The email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff Works dot com, or drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter or Tumbler. The handle it all three of those is tech Stuff h s W. And I'll talk

to you again really soon. For more on Mix and thousands of other topics, stuff works, dot Com look