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filmmaking
document updated 27 days ago, on Jan 25, 2025

the style of videography that imitates an individual creator, but with a larger budget

With the rise of YouTube and TikTok, many people consume content produced almost entirely by one creator — script writing, shooting, acting, editing, and promotion. (some small chunks of the work might be farmed out, such as stock video, voiceover, or post-production freelancers, but almost all of the creative control and on-location work is done by one person) As this "individual creator" style has become more commonplace, there are sometimes instances where a larger team tries to imitate this style, perhaps to try to gain credibility by using its grassroots appearance.

However, these groups can have different intentions. So this document mainly ignores intention, and instead analyzes things from a filmmaking perspective, such as ways to identify such content.

examples

things that suggest a larger team was involved

Significantly more expertise than one person can handle

This is the biggest one.

If there's a lot of expertise needed for 1) fairly professional/fancy post-production editing, and 2) a lot of different drone footage recorded, and 3) someone with a lot of industry contacts for doing sales meetings, then it gets to be hard for one person to hold all that expertise in their head at once, no matter how skilled they are.

Significantly more time than one person has in a day

If you have access to most of the team's finished products, you can look at the time between each video, and try to determine if it's remotely possible to schedule that all in for one person.

More than one main "locus" of creative control