It’s the FIRST edition of Video Builders. HYPE.

Today, we got:

🎥 a breakdown of minimalist YouTube content, basically how to grow without editing

📈 A cool new AI editor trick

🎬 Micro Review of an AI video clipper tool

Let’s begin…

The traditional perspective on YouTube growth is:

“flashy retention editing = success”

However, many creators right now are taking the exact opposite approach.

MINIMALISM.

Let’s extract the principles of why this style is so effective and how you can apply it in your own ventures

Authenticity

I call it the “real bro” vibe. The complete focus on them without any artificial edits makes their videos feel more like a conversation from someone you trust vs. an optimized information capsule.

We live in a world of immense loneliness. Hundreds of thousands of families are broken. People are looking for connection they can’t find in “the real world”.

If you can feel like a surrogate friend/older sibling/parent & have the courage to speak about uncomfortable topics, an audience will SWARM to you.

In a world where everyone is chasing the most effective editing tricks, simply talking to a camera about problems is a path to success.

Storytelling

All of these gentlemen I’m linking are great storytellers.

They’re able to bring you into their world, and speak confidently with visual language. If they rambled or didn’t speak with truth, then nobody would’ve watched these.

Storytelling is the most impactful skill you can develop when it comes to making content. It’s a universal language.

Tell a good story, and the world is yours. Regardless of your editing skill.

They still follow the principles of attention & retention

Just because you’re minimalist doesn’t mean you reject effective marketing.

Take this video by Theo for example:

• Enticing title that makes fans ask “what burnt you out?”

• Depressed body language against harsh black background sticks out from the sea of hyper edited thumbnails. Mood of seriousness.

• He immediately gets into the content within >1 sec. Strong hook.

Takeaways:

If you’re trying to leverage minimalist content,

1. make videos on topics you can speak about authentically

2. practice practice practice storytelling (if you don’t know where to start, try this)

3. still be conscious of thumbnails & titles

AI Video Editors are finally picking up some steam.

People are now creating full videos by linking ChatGPT & CapCut together.

Are they great? Absolutely not. Will it be huge in 6 months? Yes.

Check out this thread below.

Review: Opus Pro

Opus Pro is the front runner for 100% AI short video editing.

When it first came out it was…bad. It pulled clips without context. The captions were terrible. Out of 10 clips, maybe 3 could be worked with. Every month, it got a little smarter.

Now, I believe it’s finally good enough to use in your workflows.

It’s extremely easy to use. Even a VA can use it without trouble.

First, just paste the link to your video. Wait 5-30 minutes while it gets processed. And voila, you get clips.

Here’s a clip I created as a test.

Our takeaway:

Use Opus to find & clip raw sections of large podcasts. This will save you 30min-1hr of time. Then, edit them yourself.

Opus’ output clips still have too much dead space, weird hooks & sloppy captions for you to rely on them blindly.

In 6 months, we’ll swing back.

If you have anything interesting to share, send us a DM on Twitter: @tigerjvideo & @videobuildersio