Best of Editing Luke #9

It certainly didn't happen by accident, but day after day that seemingly unattainable goal started to look more and more realistic. Three years and three months into the game and today my combined video views from YouTube, Vimeo, and Yobi.tv now total more than one million! That's a pretty respectable milestone if you ask me.

Divided up over a number of projects, I'm proud to say that the views didn't all come from a single video or from uploading someone elses' content or from a cheap attempt to go viral - no, the million views (and counting!) have come from simply sharing film school shorts, experiments, travelogs, parodies, and a variety of other original content that I've created over the years. And to be clear, the number doesn't include any of the corporate edits or videos that I've done and that others have uploaded to their sites.

It's a small time success story in that there are those who have achieved this milestone seemingly overnight - but, for my sake, the number simply means that people have been watching. Whether the number was 10,000 or 1,000,000 that's all I ever really cared about. 

The number is more or less a realization of a goal that seemed almost impossible to reach when I started out, and in that sense it's a marker for the determination and effort that I've invested in myself and the work I'm passionate about. It feels incredible to have reached one million views and have perseverance to attribute it to.

Thank you all for continuing to make the journey a rush!

Best of Editing Luke #8

Standing in that empty dorm room for the final time was like the last few seconds of an epic film, where the camera remains stationary on the lead character who looks defiantly ahead before walking out of frame. It's the kind of goodbye that really gains meaning the further away you get from it. What's next? What did I learn? What did it mean? It's a real life adventure, and it's crazy to catch yourself in such a meaningful act break.

University is behind me now, and as I've already started moving in a new direction I don't really know what's next exactly. If anything, it's just nice to be reminded how much is still left to be experienced. To escape from that 'bubble' and plunge head first into something new again. It's a bigger beginning than an end - another fresh start.

Best of Editing Luke #7

To be honest, I've never considered myself a hipster - at least it never seemed that way by comparison.  The connotation actually suggests a form of loathing to me.  The kind of person who would shun you if they saw you buy your groceries at Walmart or remove a song they liked from their iPod the minute they heard it on a popular radio station.

Then I thought about my traits.  I'm a former film student, current video editor and photographer, living in a loft apartment, who blogs, who fills walls with inspiration boards and make-shift posters, who over the last 6 months has stocked his fridge with increasingly more obscure brands of beer, and as of yesterday, a guy who redesigned a blog header featuring himself with stereotypical film-hipster glasses that have no practical purpose.  Oh yeah, I went there.

You won't find me shunning the mainstream however.  You also won't often hear me say that I don't like something because I think too many people already like it either.   

The few things that bother me about the mainstream are often easily applied to the things that bother me about most things in general.  No matter what social classification, it's a lifestyle built on distaste that I dislike (uh oh, double negative).  I just don't want to hear about a life defined by the ways it's been segregated, I want to hear about how amazing it is because of the things you've embraced.  

Originality shouldn't exclude others from sharing experiences, it should be defined by how unique your perspective, reaction, etc. is within those everyday occurrences.  This should be unshakable, and your passions shouldn't waver at the first sign of criticism.  If someone else liking or disliking something completely alters your perception of that thing, maybe you never really cared that much about it in the first place. 

Hipsters can be too far into the alternative to recognize that they're still a product of a mass culture, and likewise, the overly mainstream person is neglecting to see that most ideas evolve from far more obscure places than Hollywood.

I've created a paradox with my non-hipster, hipster critiques.  But what's clear to me now is that it's easy to become what you thought you were avoiding - or at least share some part of it.  We're all posers to some extent though, and that's a good thing. It means we're continually borrowing inspiration and finding ways to cycle through cultural influences. Then again, maybe I'm just a dickhead.