My Most Misunderstood Video Yet…

Hi guys!

This week, I launched what’s quickly become my most controversial video yet – even more controversial than the time I said Premiere Pro was better than DaVinci Resolve.

I made a video about how you can use A.I. in your video workflow whilst not making generic slop. I offered three key examples: creating decent transitions, masking, and background enhancement.

What I didn’t realise was that some people would completely misunderstand why I made this video and how it’s critical of generative A.I. It’s been a real learning journey for me posting this, but it’s something I feel really proud of and stand by as a video.

Before anything else, if you haven’t yet, watch the video below – it’s 12 minutes that I put a lot of work into, trying to make a tutorial that also tells a funny story that’s relevant to the topic. Check it out here:

First things first, I do not think the generative A.I. scenes in this video look good. In fact, they’re there to show how rubbish generative A.I. looks – and that’s why Teacher Fin is shooting them down, one by one. The cyborgs/robots are meant to represent the slop machines that are out there in the world, and I’m shooting them down. That’s also why I literally start the video saying, “I hate A.I. slop,” and why Teacher Fin says at the end, “Let’s never do that again” after becoming A.I. for a second.

Second, this video had every opportunity to be sponsored by multiple A.I. companies, but we decided to say hell NO to that. We wanted to focus on real-world use cases for A.I. and how annoying some of these “magic” A.I. tools can be. Which is why, after talking about Higgsfield being used for transitions, I criticise the company’s pricing and say that it’s not worthwhile. And I know some people will say almost the opposite: that Higgsfield can be used for more than just transitions. Sure, but that stuff looks rubbish to me, and this was the only good thing I could actually get out of it.

I almost cut that transition segment out of the video, but I didn’t because I wanted to show the reality of using Higgsfield. It’s annoying to use, overpriced and, at the end of the day, it’s slop. Do I recommend it? No. But the video shows what I think is the most interesting use case for it! Sometimes it looks fine, but most of the time, it doesn’t. I think most people watching will think, “Yeah… I’ll save my money”. Which I’ll be happy about.

To add to that, some people have criticised the video for using A.I. to fill in backgrounds of scenes or make transitions, and pointed out that you can do that stuff in real life. I totally agree with that – but so many of us YouTubers do not have the budget for set designers, or even a cameraman! We’re not Hollywood studios who can afford more people than just ourselves, so replacing backgrounds using A.I. is a simple and effective way of making a scene look better. I even say in the video, while talking about masking, that masking is good for solo videos where you’re the only actor, because, again, it’s a useful tool for YouTubers like us.

Of course, it’s not an ideal situation using A.I. to enhance backgrounds. If I had the budget, I would have loved to make my house look post-apocalyptic, but that’s just not realistic. Using Photoshop, I could at least make my house fit the theme of the video a little better, and still keep some soul in the scene. BUT it would have looked a million times better if I could have afforded to have real people design the set!

I’ve been thinking about this video for a long while now, and I stand by what’s in it. I also think it would be tricky to be in the editing space and not talk about A.I. because it’s coming for everyone, whether we like it or not. What I can at least try and do is point people in a direction that uses A.I. in a way that retains some soul, rather than making slop. And, in the process, I can hopefully put people off making slop by saying how awful it is!

Salesman Fin showing you he’s real…

Also, upon reflection, something I do wish I had done in the video was create an alternative transition manually which showed how you could do that for free. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen in the final video – but it’s something I can see retrospectively would have worked a lot better to enhance the point of not needing to use generative A.I.

Anyway, this has been a huge topic, and I really hope people will look beyond just dismissing this video because it talks about A.I. I’ve tried really hard to find that middle ground of being critical and finding real use cases for A.I. that can help editors – and tried to do it in a fun way. Because filming with Teacher Fin and Salesman Fin in one video… That’s like Avengers: Endgame for my channel! If only Detective Fin had been there to join in…

Thanks for reading this one and watching the video! If you like it, give it a like on YouTube and drop a comment. And then get outta here! Happy editing!

Fin