The Business & Craft of Trailer Editing, Making Your Side Hustle Your Career, and Staying Motivated Along the Way | with Chris MacDonald

About Episode

Chris MacDonald is an experienced veteran trailer editor who has worked at Universal Pictures and other major studios such as Sony, Disney, Paramount, and trailer houses such as MOcean and Aspect (to name a small few). Chris is also the co-founder of the wildly popular online editing school, Film Editing Pro, and today’s discussion balances a combination of understanding how to build a career as a trailer editor as well as making the transition to building your own business if that is the right path for you.

Whether you work in a creative industry as a craftsperson, or if you’re an entrepreneur running your own company (no matter how big or small), you are the CEO of your business. In today’s gig economy where the next job is never promised, you must learn the necessary skills and mindsets to run your business and present your services effectively in order to survive. And in today’s conversation with Chris he and I discuss perhaps the most important key mindset to learning, growing, and succeeding whether you are a craftsperson or entrepreneur – “The Beginner’s Mind.”

Given that Chris and I both agree the fastest path to success is failure and having a willingness to accept there is always more to learn, we dive deep into navigating the politics of the trailer world, managing studio & network notes, better understanding how to approach the creative process, and the best (and WORST) parts of working in advertising. Then we discuss his path from trailer editing to teacher, mentor, and entrepreneur – specifically how he became the creator of one of the leading schools in the world teaching the creative side of editing both short form and long form. But of course none of this came without its share of doubts, obstacles, and a raging case of imposter syndrome, all of which you’ll hear about today.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: My guest today is Chris MacDonald, who's an experienced veteran trailer editor who has worked at Universal Pictures and other major studios such as Sony, Disney, Paramount to trailer houses such as Mocean and Aspect, just to name a small few. Chris is also the co founder of the wildly popular online editing school Film Editing Pro. And today's discussion bounces a combination of understanding how to build a career as a trailer editor, as well as also learning how to make the transition to building your own business if that is the right path for you. Whether you work in a creative industry as a craftsperson, or if you are an entrepreneur, running your own company, no matter how big or small, you are the CEO of your business. In today's gig economy, where the next job is never promised, you must learn the necessary skills and mindsets to run your business and present your services effectively in order to survive. And in today's conversation with Chris, he and I discussed perhaps the most important key mindsets to learning, growing and succeeding, whether you are a crafts person or an entrepreneur, and that is the beginner's mind. Given that Chris and I both agree that the fastest path to success is failure, and having a willingness to accept that there's always something more to learn. We dive deep into navigating the politics of the trailer world, managing studio network notes, better understanding how to approach the creative process, and of course the best and the worst parts of working in advertising. Then we discuss his path from trailer editing to teacher, mentor and entrepreneur, specifically how he became the creator of one of the leading schools in the world, teaching the creative side of editing, both short form and long form. But of course, none of this success came without its share of doubts, its share of obstacles, and a raging case of imposter syndrome, all of which you're going to hear more about today. All right. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Film Editing Pro co founder Chris MacDonald. To access the show notes for this episode with all of the bonus links and resources discussed today, as well as to subscribe, leave a review and more, simply visit zackarnold.com/episode199. And if you'd like to learn more about Film Editing Pro, or you want to take one of their five 100% free courses on editing, visit filmeditingpro.com/zack, and that's spelled Z A C K. I am here today with Chris MacDonald, who is an experienced veteran trailer editor. He's worked at Universal Pictures. You've also worked with other major studios, such as Sony, Disney, Paramount, you've worked at trailer houses such as motion and aspect. And you were also the co founder of the online editing school Film Editing Pro. And, Chris, this has been a long time coming this conversation between you and me because we have lived in very, very similar worlds over the last 15 plus years how our paths have not crossed until today. I don't know. But I'm going to rectify that problem. As of right now. I am super excited for this conversation today.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, I am to 100% This has been a long time coming. And I'm really looking forward to talking to you too. So yeah, thanks for having me on.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, you bet. And just for the people that are listening today, I want them to know that there are a couple of different directions this conversation may go and who knows we might go in a completely third different tangential direction. That's just as fun. But for those that are interested in the craft of trailer editing, short form, this is something that I not consciously but unconsciously of underrepresented in the guests that I've had on the show. And the stories that I've told which is ironic, given the first eight to 10 years of my career was mostly trailers in short form, which most people don't even know. But then also I want to speak to those that are of the entrepreneur mindset, that have ideas and ways they want to bring value to the world because it's not as easy as putting up a website and doing some training videos and having a YouTube channel. And I'm sure you and I can talk about all the craziness that comes with trying to provide a service while also making a living as a craftsperson. But where I really want to get started, because you're kind of a man of mystery, and there's not a whole lot about you available online. Tell us a little bit more about how you originally got into the world of editing short form and trailers.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, absolutely. So I was actually going to a liberal arts college in Virginia. And I was studying painting and drawing. Because my focus at the time, I wanted to do 3d animation. So I had done that since I was like 15 years old. I did some freelance work with some people I had met online. And it was really in its infancy at the time. So it was easy to be one of the better 3d artists. Because that's at that point. All the artists hadn't started doing it. It was just the tech nerds. Anyway, but I was going to college for that. And then I had a scholarship there which put me in touch with some of the good people from the alumni department. And one of them happened to be a VP a universal so I had a very, an unnaturally easy in as far as getting kind of a foot in the door. That said it still took me probably nine to 10 emails a fast rate him to actually have him out to kind of Keven consider being an intern. So I went out there. I actually at the time I interviewed at Disney for 3d animation. And then I interviewed at Universal with him to be an intern, which could have gone a graphical route, because his department was mostly trailers, or it could go in editing route. And I never really, I had done some editing in the past, just for fun, mostly editing my own 3d animations into kind of little things and playing with a little bit of music and sound design and stuff like that, but nothing at all. I think most people by that point in their lives, they've probably done more editing than I had. But it seemed really cool. And I really enjoyed working with the sound. And I was like seeing kind of what these editors were doing and their timelines looked insane. And I wanted to know how you got to that point. So I was like, Alright, let's try that. And then fast forward, like 15 years, and I was still doing it. But I followed the same progression that a lot of people do. I started out at the time in the tape room. So I was an intern slash like kind of IO guy, we would make duplications of like three quarter tapes, and Digi betas. And then kind of towards the end of that everybody was transitioning to digital. And then I became an assistant editor did a lot of work and editing on the side to kind of show producers and try to get my feet into the creative aspects of things. And that worked. So then Junior editor editor started cutting trailers. And then as most editors do, I kind of bounced around between a couple of shops after my experience at Universal because, you know, we can talk about this more, but that's definitely a good way to increase your salary quickly, because it's very hard to move up fast in one place. But yeah, yeah. And then it's something that was born out of that.

Zack Arnold: I always know that I can date somebody relatively quickly based on their journey when they started talking about three quarter tapes. And did you betas, you and I could probably swap horror stories, appealing labels and using the bulk eraser and the magnet and all the things that we do as interns and assistants, and then you talk to the younger generation, and they're like, three quarter inch? I don't I don't understand. I don't get it. What does that mean? Yeah. So I know that we're of a similar generation. And we have similar intern horror stories.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, it's funny, too, because like, I just turned 40 In February, and I didn't feel old. But recently, I've had to tell people about three quarters, and did you beat us and stuff like that? Literally talking to some of our students, as far as what a kind of an intern level position is going to do? And I was like, Let me think about what you're gonna do, because you're not gonna do what I did. And then I realized how old I felt, because nobody even knew what I was talking about. Yeah,

Zack Arnold: Well, we're definitely going to talk in depth about Film Editing Pro that time will absolutely come very, very soon. But one thing I'm curious about just to dig right in immediately, you said that you started wanting to do the visual arts, 3d animation, painting, etc. And then fast forward 15 years and here, I am still working on trailers. Yeah. Is there still a part of you that wishes you had gone a different route and climbed a different ladder? Or did you really find your thing and decide, you know, what it actually is trailers?

Chris MacDonald: Well, you know, I'm interested in a lot of different things, I think I could have gone many routes, and then just as happy with it. And it's funny how life goes, I mean, I'm sure you've had similar experiences, you're like, you know, I never really thought that. If you if you look back, you'd never know that these particular dominoes would have led you to where you ended up. But they were absolutely essential to get where you are. And if you're happy where you are, then that was the perfect path to take. So currently am happy where I am. So I don't I don't wish I could redo anything, you know, even even earlier than then maybe even five, six years ago, when I was still editing full time. I was kind of still happy I was editing because trailers are, and they still remain to be a pretty niche skill. Most people don't even realized the trailer editors are different from feature editors. A lot of people think that whoever cut the movie probably cuts the trailer. And it couldn't be further from the truth. I mean, maybe sometimes, but ideally, no. And I, you know, just not to speak down about the 3d community, but like it has that blew up with the advent of a lot more digital film, animated films and stuff. And so on many levels, that job got a lot more commoditized I think the trailers did, and that pushed salaries down and increase long work hours. So, you know, of course, as editors, we have long work hours, too. But yeah, I think trailers are still a really cool thing that it's fun to be a part of something that's a little bit behind the scenes that nobody knows about.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I agree. One of the most common questions that I've gotten from anyone that's interviewed me that's done more in depth research than Oh, you're the guy that worked on Cobra Kai and they actually see the breadth of my experience. They see that I've done trailers I've done commercials I've done promos I've done behind the scenes. I've done HBO first looks I've kind of covered the gamut. And they always ask me, Well, what's what's your favorite thing? And I said, if I could choose to do anything as an art form, and not worry about the business or anything else, trailers were my favorite. Because trailers are just, they're this empty canvas, and you can take anything and turn it into anything else. So what I always tell people is that my favorite thing to do as a career was editing version one of a trailer my least favorite thing to ever do on the planet is versions two through 71, which is why I made the transition to long form. So I want to talk both about the business of trailers and the art form of trailers. Because like you said, there's a big difference between long form and short form. And while I don't believe that you can only do one thing, like the industry says, Oh, you're just a short form editor. You're just a long form editor. I don't believe in that pigeonholing. But the flip side of that is editors that say, I am a storyteller, and I can cut anything. I don't agree with that, either. So let's talk specifically about the language of cutting short form and cutting trailers.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, it's really it's an important distinction. So just talking about the first thing that you said about how it's fun 100% Agreed, because, yeah, I mean, with with something that's scripted, and you've got the director, and it's, it's his or her baby, and it needs to go a certain way it needs to meet his vision, her vision, the vision of all the investors in the project, you're gonna have some latitude and some creative abilities. But with trailers, it's kind of like, I mean, your only limitations are what shots and lines do you have to work with from the film? I mean, you have to stay somewhat true to it. Everybody likes to say, you know, while trailers, they just make things up, that never even happened. And occasionally, you know, you'll have a comedy trailer, especially where you'll have lines juxtaposed like somebody says, hey, that's, that's a great question. And you know, but it's responding to something that happens 30 minutes later in the movie. But you know, what, I think as long as it's true to the style of the film, it's not too big of a deal. But yeah, trailers really let you do a lot of cool stuff. And I think my favorite part about cutting them was the sound work. And I'm a guy that cannot dance. I rarely listen. I mean, I listen to music, but I listen to like instrumental stuff, like you can. I mean, it's a joke with my friends, I know nothing about sports, or music. But like, I can edit with music. And I like listening to nice music. So that was actually a real challenge for me is the the rhythm of the trailer. And staying because I mean, like, especially if you're cutting, I hate to use the phrase cutting to a music cue, because that's really reductive. But if a music true cue is laying, essentially a tempo out, you have to kind of adhere to that, to some extent, that doesn't mean you put a cut on every single major beat of the music. But it does mean that you know, somebody's going to kind of be getting into a rhythm as they're watching. And your dialogue lines need to weave in and out of that. And then your big moments and your sound design and stuff like that, which is, you know, anywhere from a single washer hit to 15 layers of you know, who knows what, that needs to happen at key points. So, so you kind of you're creating your own scaffolding on the timeline as you're working. And it's I've often like likened to trailer editing to do and so do go sudo go Sudoku, I say that, you know, the more numbers you get, the easier the puzzle becomes, the faster you can complete it. But at the beginning, you're like, I don't know where to start. And that's often how people are with trailers. Just on that, on that note, like something that I'll often give, as advice for people when they're first starting any trailer cut, is a lot of your ideas are going to come as you're often not as you're watching the film, but more like when you're doing your breakdown. And you're going through the dialogue. And I always I mean the way most trailer writers do it, you'll watch the movie, if you have time, you'll watch it a second time. And you make take some take some notes like oh, big moment, you know, towards the end, I gotta include this guy doing this thing and this kiss between these two people. But then like, you really just do type out every single line in the movie, you type the data, the character, space, hyphen, space, what do they say? And you do that it takes eight to 10 hours, it's forever. But as you're doing that you're getting ideas, and you're getting really intimately familiar with exactly how the story flows, what people say, and you're thinking, Oh, this moment up here, you know, that would be a great setup for this huge set piece of action that occurs way later. And with trailers like you could do that, like it doesn't matter. Like put that, you know, put that stuff in the beginning. But yeah, a lot of times people will just start with whatever inspires them. When they're cutting trailer, it's like, oh, I have a really cool idea for a montage at the back. Well start with that, edit that stick it in another timeline. You know, we call them constructs a lot of timelines that are just like dialogue exchanges, or cool moments or action thingies that we've put together and you'll have this like, kind of favorites band that you've created full of like interesting pre edited stuff that you've done. And and the more of those that you get, you know, the more that it starts to look like a trailer when you put it on one single time.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I've always had that when I was in the trailer world that a trailer editor is really only as good as their breakdown. Because if you're not good at breaking down, and I'm sure you've seen this many, many more times than I have. But even in the I think I was in trailer for 567 years jumping back and forth between houses, and there's nothing more frustrating than when you're brought into the Get a little project, and you get somebody's quote, unquote, breakdown. And it's basically the master file of the feature with 12. Read random locators and you're like, No, where's the bin with a breakdown? They're like, Oh, that's it. Those are my moments and like, Are you kidding me? Like, I would like you, I would take 1012 hours, I would watch the whole film three times once just me on the couch watching it, because I'm the audience member to breaking it down scene by scene by scene markers for every single one on the frame. Third one looks head turns, locations scopey shots, right? So in that process, like, for example, somebody would say, Well, I have my assistant do that. That's what I'm writing. That's what I'm internalizing the moments. And the creative process requires you to take all of this randomness, and turn it into some cohesive sense of order. And that, to me, is a very specific skill that when you're in long form, you don't necessarily develop and I found that so many of my problem solving skills as an editor came from having to solve story issues and trailers that then transferred to long form. So one of the things that people have asked me many times, and I'm sure you get it as well, from those that aren't familiar with the industry, just to go backwards for a second before we get back into the weeds. Does this mean we actually get to watch the whole movie? Or do they just tell you what parts to use? I'm sure you hear that all the time?

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, I do hear that all the time. And I, I was initially very confused by the question, because it seemed like the answer was so obvious, because you have to watch the whole movie. But um, but I guess I guess if you're being realistic, if you get on the trailer really, really early the movie, you might not actually watch the whole movie, because it's probably not fully shot yet. So you might be watching some watered down weird version that has slugs up that say, you know, so you know, Batman, you know defeat Superman, you're like, Oh, well, I'd like to see that part. But it's not available to watch yet. But yeah, you watch it pretty early. But you know, especially with VFX heavy movies, it's really difficult to edit anything, especially a trailer that's supposed to be so attention grabbing and whatnot. When you're working with either animatics or a storyboard like you might be like, a lot of times, it's just a storyboard frame that's up on the in the rough guide. And you have to somehow, at an early stage sell that that moment is going to work. And that's where sounds really kind of carries a lot of weight to a lot of another another big gripe I hear with trailers of course is and I'm sure you've heard this, too is that oh, trailer spoil the film's? Which, I guess so sometimes. I mean, like, if the film is based on a well known something, you know, if it's a superhero thing, or if it's a book, you know, and then they get revealed? Well, first of all, if you read the book, you know what happened. But a lot of times I you know, my thoughts on that were, well, you can probably guess what's going to mostly happen, like usually the good guy is good at eat the bad guy, or, you know, the couple's gonna get together. I mean, unless it's a crazy movie, like, you know, a memento or something weird or some sort of thriller. But with movies, where the when the ending is really kind of unpredictable. Editors, and the producers and the studio execs are typically quite careful to not reveal that. So I don't know, I always I always kind of laugh when people say that, especially and we see that a lot in Facebook comments and stuff like that. Trailers suck, they just revealed that, you know, they spoil the ending. And I'm like, no, man with a movie like that. It's the journey. That's the fun part. Like unless, if you're just waiting to see what happens at the end. I mean, you're oversimplifying this process, enjoy everything, and the spectacle that's been laid out for you in the movie.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And I also think what happens a lot is people don't really understand the many layers of politics that go into those decisions. I've had more than one occurrence. I'm sure this has happened to you. But the very first trailer ever cut. This is literally over 20 years ago now, which breaks my heart. But over 20 years ago, the very first trailer that I cut ended up winning the Golden Fleece award for the golden trailers when the golden fleece, and I was at the gym of all places, just chit chatting with this guy that I had kind of just become like gym friendly with like, Hey, what's up? How you doing? And he had said to me, what do you do for a living? I'm like, I'm a trailer editor. Oh, cool. Give me an example of some movies that you've worked on. And I gave him the name of a movie. And instantly His face changed and he got angry. He's like you, you owe me $10 Because that movie sucked. And I want to go see that movie because of your trailer. Like, it's my job to make it look good. But there's also so many cooks in the kitchen when it comes to show this moment, not the show this moment. And I'm sure you've done many a trailer where the finished version goes into theaters, and you're just like, oh, I can't believe they told me to use this moment. Yeah, right. It's very complicated.

Chris MacDonald: It's uncommon to be that like a golden fleece kind of a concept. If anybody that's not familiar Golden Fleece award is the award that gets given to the trailer that looks the best for the worst movie,

Zack Arnold: Best trailer for the worst movie. That's the name of the award.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah. Which is such a compliment, if you get that award, because that's a really hard job. But like, you know, if you have a movie that's that bad, your budget for marketing probably isn't that high. So it's not going to be too common unless you just kind of get a diamond in the rough, which just sounds like you were in that circumstance where the editor that you can afford to hire for that is going to knock it out of the park for the trailer. Typically, you're going to kind of have an equally bad trailer. But yeah, that worked out for them, I suppose in the box office?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, it's certainly did. And I think that it's really interesting, you bring up this point, because I think this has a lot to do with really taking opportunities when you have them. Because I know that you've done the same as far as like starting off at as an intern, being a runner or climbing your way up and taking those opportunities. But the reason I was handed that movie is because nobody else at that company was willing to cut the trailer. And I had just started making the transition from assistant editor to editor, and they're like, Hey, do you want to take a crack at it? Yes, give me the movie. Like I just I took it with a full head of steam, and then ended up getting the Golden Fleece for it, which looking back was just insane. But I was so young and new. At the time, I didn't realize what an anomaly that was. Yeah. But what I discovered and I want to learn more about this, from your perspective, because I never went fully down the road of embracing the career path as a trailer editor. And I bailed relatively quickly because I knew I wanted to do long form. Especially as I was working on movies that were getting bigger and budgets, and we were getting earlier assemblies, I was way more interested in watching the assemblies and comparing them to the later cuts that they were giving us and actually cutting the trailer. Like I want to be in the room doing that. But one of the things that I found happening is I climbed the ladder. And it's a joke that I would tell too many that wouldn't understand it. And I think you would, I stopped using an NLE to edit my trailer as much as using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and quadrants. And I said I don't want to edit my trailers with Microsoft Excel. What does that mean to somebody that isn't on the inside that doesn't get where I'm coming from?

Chris MacDonald: Well, if I if I fully understand what you're saying, it's you're referring to the paper cut process, right?

Zack Arnold: I'm referring not only to the paper cut process, but to the testing process, the studio notes process, and then saying according to our quadrants, and the people that have watched this, you know, based on the people with clipboards at the mall, okay, we think version A of this trailer should be frank and trailered against version beaver. And I was just like this, like I said, I love version one, I hated versions two through 78.

Chris MacDonald: That's an awful conversation. Yeah, that's the worst time to be a trailer editor is when you're being forced to put together pieces based on arbitrary testing results. Because I think so a lot of times what will happen is, with trailers, there is always almost always there's more than one person cutting the trailer. And the bigger the movie, the more people cut the trailer. And obviously, some movies have more than one trailer to have the teaser than the off trailer, one trailer to trailer three. But we're I'm talking about just one trailer like it's the trailer one, the major trailer, it might be out with 10 different editors at four different shops. And so well, first of all, you know that your chances are one in 10 of finishing. And not even because you know, an executive will probably on a big movie, have enough budget to scrap all of them, fire all the shots. I mean, everybody gets paid, but then start over with a fresh perspective someplace else that can happen, especially depending on like tensions are. But towards the end of that process, when you've got a couple of cuts that everybody's really resonating with internally, the editor, the producers at the shop cutting, as well as the studio themselves, everybody's pretty burned out and jaded. And it's kind of hard to see through your own experience of the of the cut. You can't look past what you've already seen when you know, the jokes aren't funny to you anymore, the action moments don't matter, you're not scared. So people send them out to testing audiences. And you know that I don't know if that's changed recently as far as how they get the people for that. But it used to be that like there literally be somebody out with a clipboard and from the movie theater saying, Hey, you want free movie tickets to such and such. Just come and watch these four trailers. And they'd gather together you know, as much of a diverse demographics pool as they can old young every shape, size and color, and they get them into a room, show them a trailer. And then they say, you know, did you like this part? Did you feel like this actor and this actress felt genuinely you know, connected here. You know, how do you feel about the ending? Were you excited to see the movie? Were you disappointed? Did you feel like it was ruined? And some of the questions can be very helpful. But typically, what goes out the window with something like that is context. So if you're saying, you know, what did you think about this moment? Well, maybe who's ever trailer it was had it set up with three things that that made that moment non sequitur, it didn't make sense at that point. Or maybe the music wasn't cut well at that moment, so it didn't play as strongly as it could. It doesn't mean that the moments bad doesn't mean that jokes not funny or that action set pieces and cool. It just means that it didn't work in that location of that trailer. Without music under their circumstances, or the person that said they didn't like he was just having a bad day. Who knows? But then you get those notes. And you know, the testing results come in and everybody knows their trailers are just gonna be ripped apart more than likely. You know, it's less common that you know, oh, everybody isn't testing loved your stuff. Usually, it's like, well, we should also try another music cue, which is like the worst Note that you can get, because everything's cut to the music and a trailer.

Zack Arnold: Oh, is it is that hard to just swap out a music cue real fast?

Chris MacDonald: Yeah. I mean, that's excruciating. Especially if the music has a different tempo from what the queue was already there. A lot of times, just going off on a major tangent, with music alts, and stuff like that, when you want to try a different feel. If it's just the style of the queue that somebody doesn't like, I would always search on a library for something of a similar BPM for identical BPM, so that I knew at least my moments were going to land exactly in sync. And I could just drop the music and see how it felt. But you don't always get that luxury. But yeah, testing is, is rough. Yeah.

Zack Arnold: That was always one of my favorite notes from studios. When you feel like you're ready to finish. This is great. We're ready to lock just swap out that end music cue and we're good to go. Like, really?

Chris MacDonald: Only. Yeah, totally,

Zack Arnold: It's just one note, one simple note, and then we'll lock and then they see like, oh, well, now it opens up a whole can of worms. For me, my breaking point, and I won't say the name of the film, but anybody that actually I'm not even sure anybody would be able to do the research to answer this. But I'm not going to name the film. But I went through and I did, I don't remember the exact numbers in the 30s number 30, some versions of a full theatrical trailer, and it was small enough and independent enough that they weren't, they weren't double or triple vending. So we knew we were the one that was going to finish. But it went for about eight months. And the studio executive was just we had done three completely different directions. So three trailers from the ground up. In total, it was about 37 Some versions, and then they sent it to the filmmaker, creator, you know, whoever was was going to make the final decision. And they said, I really like this one, they were because they didn't like the current both let will show me some of the others. version two, we locked as is version two with no changes. And that was when I was like, I'm out. I just can't. Because you spend all day every day living with one movie. And it's not like you get to like, for me spending six 812 weeks with one episode of a TV series. That's tough. You get tired of it, spending a year with one, two and a half minute piece, you lose your mind. And then for somebody to say all these changes we gave you just go back to version two. I was like, Yeah, I just this is not for me. At least finished. I did finish like I look online to this day. And there it is. But just you know, so many memories of the process being so miserable.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah. Yeah, that is another tough part about trailers is that, you know, speaking of the double, triple, quadruple of ending, or even having three guys or girls at your own shop cutting on it, you know, you don't stand a very high chance of your thing, making it out the door. So you do have to kind of like in long form I'm, I don't think that ever happens, does it? You just you cut it? And

Zack Arnold: no I did. Either your work is going to show or there's they've scrapped the project and nobody's ever gonna see. Alright, so if you did work on the new back, girl, well, yeah, then nobody's gonna see your cuts. But there's no such thing as double venting in the long form world because they don't have that kind of money or time.

Chris MacDonald: Right. And that's the tough part about trailers. Because you know, you could work you could have worked on all that thing. And, and the, the filmmaker could have been like, I don't like any of these, and this guy sucks. So let's get somebody else. And then you have nothing to show for it. And because of confidentiality, you probably can't even you can't put it on your reel. Nope. So exist for 10 months.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that's very, very challenging. And the reason that I wanted to bring that up and kind of lead the conversation with it is that I'm always a big believer in not allowing there to be any secrets and just kind of here's the unvarnished truth about this sector of the industry or this or that. But for those that haven't disconnected, that are still listening to our conversation that are like screw trailers, I want to talk about the fun stuff, I want to talk about the craft because again, like we started, I think there's nothing more fun as an editor than editing a trailer. But it is a really challenging and difficult craft to learn. And not only have you learned how to I don't like to use the word master the craft, but you've gotten to a very high level with your craft as a trailer editor, but you've also taking on the near impossible task of teaching it. So before we talk about the process of teaching it and building a business around it, I just want to talk about the actual craft a little bit. If I'm somebody that wants to be a trailer editor, and I'm listening to this, I aspire to it. I do my own trailer edits, I can now rip a movie off of YouTube or whatever and I can make my own spec versions. What's the difference between a perfectly adequate trailer editor and one that just really gets it?

Chris MacDonald: Hmm, that's a tough question. There's not much different. Because if you're working as a trailer editor, let's say 100% is the best trailer that ever existed, and you're nailing everything, most to even stay employed, you need to be operating 85 to 90%. So, you know, like I understand not want to use the word mastering, but like getting really, really good at anything, the difference between somebody that consistently does a great job and wins and everybody likes their stuff. It's like gold and silver at the Olympics. I mean, it's, it's marginal, it's by a hair. But I would say that, gosh, I would say that the ability to take some of the defeat that happens, and take it as a challenge, or a bad movie, or even even silly stuff, like even you want to include these, whatever number of moments, but it's, you're not really able to fit it in two and a half minutes, at taking any of those challenges and viewing it as the fun puzzle that it is. And being enthusiastic to figure out a way to cut something in a different way to fit something that doesn't seem like it should fit, to present it in a light that makes it interesting and not boring. And being able to do that every day, or most days, not every day. But you know, relatively consistently, I think that makes the difference. Because, you know, in any job, people get burned out. And, you know, like I think the most effort any trailer editor might ever put in is probably when they're first starting out. Because every single thing nothing's second nature, yet every single thing is hard. Motivation is sky high. So you'll you'll it's a labor of love. As you get better, it's very easy to get complacent with anything that you do. Because you're still going to be putting out 85 90% of quality stuff, it's better than most people could ever hope to do. But it doesn't mean it's good enough, it's not going to beat the seven people around you that are at that same level. So it's just going that little extra bit trying to train the second or third music you just see. All right, I'm really glad I tried that. And you know, what's funny is like, that's where in the trailer industry, I quickly learned how valuable producers were. And you know, the term producer is thrown around, it means a lot of different things. You know, it can mean somebody that's funding something, it can mean somebody that's actually hands on in the trailer world. The producer is one of the roles is the liaison between the client and the editor. And I initially thought like, I was like, Well, this is a waste of time job like nobody's paying this person, I can just talk to the client. Why would I just do that? Well, for a lot of reasons. When you were there till 3am. And the next morning, you come in and the client has notes, maybe you wouldn't be as chipper to talk to the client, which needs to be the case. But also the producer has no skin in the game. So maybe if you're like, I don't know, I've tried everything, this just isn't working. It's no sweat off the producers back to say, Well, why don't you try? Let's try this new music? Or what if we rearranged how we presented this information. Because if you had this thing first, and this thing's gonna seem way cooler when it happens. And you might be like, I guess like, Alright, fine, I'll try come back in three hours. And then it works great. And you're like, oh my gosh, that's the best thing I've ever cut, and everybody loves it. And now everybody's like in the campaign, it's like, you have to cut it in that order. And this is not the new, it's the new archetype for how we deal with this moment, you have to cut it just like Joe Blow did. So I think I think the producers are very valuable in that regard and becoming an editor that can self produce, and then is willing to give yourself unbiased objective notes and look at your own work without without the lens of Oh, but I'm gonna have to be the one to do that. If I decide that's what should be done. That's a real challenge. And I think that's a sign of maturity, and professionalism. Probably with anything that you do, is being willing to be your own harshest critic, and then deal with it and make it happen through the skills that you've acquired over time.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I think that's a really great observation. And just to dig into it a little bit deeper. One of the biggest mistakes that I've made multiple times throughout my career, but probably the most so in my trailer editing career, just because I was younger in that portion is thinking that when I would cut something here is the trailer say no, no, no, no, that's a trailer that we're not at the fact that this is the trailer yet. And in the world of scripted like you said, I have a script I have characters I have a story. There are certainly a lot of things that I can maneuver around structure of scenes, taking out lines of dialogue. I can choose different songs for a montage. But essentially the story is the story with a trailer can be anything and you're convinced No, no, no. Oh, I've seen the movie three times. I know better than anybody. This is the story we need to tell and this is the trailer and you can always tell the less experience from the more experience and their inability to let go Have those ideas? And I'm just as guilty as anybody else. And I'm sure you see this all the time.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, it's very hard. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of parallels to how like, let's say, the structure of a film. I mean, you know, the idea of a cold open, that works well, in a lot of contexts. A movie that grabs you initially with something really neat, and then says, you know, 2020 years earlier, and then it starts telling you the story. That's a little cheesy, but like that aspect of grabbing somebody's attention, that works longer, and it also works shorter. And then after that, I think thinking clearly is also I mean, especially like, even with long form, like I see, I would find long form challenging to do at a high level at this point, well, maybe not at this point. But like, if you're cutting trailers on a regular basis, or if you're doing long form on a regular basis, it's hard to go between the two, because your internal metronome is just set to one or the other. And so like, if you have a longer format editor, cutting, the trailer trail is going to feel a little bit slow, it's going to, it's not going to be able to get around the movie quite as easily. And you're not going to take as many liberties with doing so because you're used to not being able to do that. And then vice versa, if you have a trailer or cutter movie, you're not going to have like the wonderful pauses and the moments to let to let the audience member either figure something out or absorb something that just happened, and feel the emotion that you're supposed to feel from a movie. I don't know what the original question was.

Zack Arnold: But whatever was going somewhere even better, because I love this conversation, I want to keep going. Because I think this idea of the internal metronome is such an important part of going back to where we started, which is understanding the language of trailer editing versus short form versus long form versus commercials versus music videos, and goes back to this idea of as editors, we can move around, but we can't just assume because I'm a storyteller, I can cut anything. It drives me crazy crazy. When editors say this, it drives me just as crazy when a producer director says, Oh, well, you just do short form, you can't do long form. I've been told that crap my entire career. But when editors say well, I can do anything that's not true. And that internal metronome is such an important part of the conversation, because I've seen it from both sides as well. When I was in trailers, I was hired to do a pitch reel, which was essentially a three to four minute extended trailer, plus cutting two scenes of an indie feature so they could shop it around town and the studios. They love the sizzle is like a four minute extended trailer and four minutes sounds really long, but you're supposed to tell more of the story when you're pitching. And then they have a cut the two scenes and they're like the cuts are good. But you need to slow down. You don't need to cut it like a trailer let moments breathe. And you don't have to show every person's line on camera. And it was just me kind of having to recalibrate the way that I approached specific scenes and cuts in that language in that metronome. But then on the flip side, I have a friend of mine, who was an Oscar nominated a List Editor worked on some of the biggest films on the planet. This was years ago. They said we're putting together kind of a sales real pitch real can you take a look at my trailer unwatchable. I mean, it was on watch doubly bad. And I really hope this person doesn't know who they are, because I would never mention their name. But it was terrible. And I was scratching my head like, how is that possible? You work on things that I could only dream of cutting someday. But you can't cut a trailer to save your life. And it's two completely different storytelling skill sets.

Chris MacDonald: And it's not that they couldn't eventually it's that right? Then they couldn't you have to kind of recalibrate yourself. And you can't do it instantly. It's impossible. I mean, even within the the advertising and trailer world, there's 15 second spots, there's 32nd spots. And there's people that do a lot more of this stuff, the spots. And then there's people that do a lot more trailers and some people bounce between them. But man, if you've been cutting 15 second spots all day, that's a firehose of information. And there is very little empty space in that timeline. And if you did a trailer even attune, 30 minutes and 30 seconds, which we think of as fast compared to the film that has to go way slower. So I mean, it's like there's all different levels of calibration, but you know, you could do it all. But you can maybe do it in the same week. You know what I mean? Yeah, like you need some time to get used to it.

Zack Arnold: Exactly. Yeah. So the another thing that I've gone through both as just a fun exercise, but also a frustrating exercise is not only kind of playing with the story beats or kind of trying to cheat, but actually changing the genre of the film. So as an exercise this was years ago, I think it was even before YouTube existed, or it was right when YouTube came out. My God I sound old talking about this, but the studios were actually spending money to cut parody trailers. So I was hired at a major alias trailer company to cut a horror version of The Sound of Music and never made the light of day I wish I could share it. I don't even have a copy of it anymore. But it was called this the what was it called? This sounds that rocks the cradle. So it was basically The Hand That Rocks the Cradle meets the sound of music. Totally playing with genre conventions is one of the funniest things I've ever cut in my entire career. But I've also been asked legitimately by a studio, we want to make this more of this kind of a movie instead of this kind of a movie. So how has that experience worked for you where you're legitimately being told to skew the entire genre just for the sake of selling tickets?

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, I didn't obviously cut this, but you reminded me of that. Have you? Have you seen the one on YouTube? It's elf cutters, a thriller? Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah, that's such a good example of that. You know, I honestly was never really told to do anything that drastic, I'd say, This sounds so silly. But you know, sometimes you are told to cut a female friendly version of something, particularly action. So that, you know, the girlfriend will say, Fine, we'll go see whatever if the guy wants to see it. The funny thing is, you typically don't do male friendly versions of romantic comedies. But, but it's, that's probably the closest I've really done to that. Where, you know, you've got what our Mission Impossible 47. And, you know, you might choose music that's a little bit softer. I think it's silly, because essentially, it's assuming that women don't like action, and they don't like fun, exciting stuff, which of course they do. So I always felt like it was kind of an exercise in futility, and you're just making something slightly more boring for, you know, a woman that's like, well, I just want to watch an actual movie anyway, what are we doing this for? Anyway, that's a tangent. But yeah, I've done some of that. And that's where like, you try to get the you feature the female character a little bit more. Maybe the music is a little bit softer, you lead into a joke that, you know, testing audiences, again, back to that might think is a little bit more relevant to women than men. It's usually a disaster, because the movie isn't designed that way. But I've yeah, I've actually never cut something specifically, massively changing the genres like that. That'd be I've seen people do it, it'd be a fun thing to do, but I haven't personally done it.

Zack Arnold: Well, the reason I bring some of this up in kind of the darker sides of the trailer world and having to change genres, or, well, all the things that are challenging are because I also believe whether somebody's listening right now that wants to be a trailer editor, not trying to dissuade anybody or anybody that is in the trailer world that might be a little disenchanted or even burned out by it. There was no better film school for being a storyteller and learning how to solve problems than me being a trailer editor. I am so thankful that I spent years learning this craft, because there have been so many times in the long form world that a challenges come up that a literally, I've shared a wall with an Emmy winning editor. And they couldn't crack something because it really required an outside the box approach. Because of all the neural pathways that I have from being a trailer editor, I could look at it from a totally different perspective. Oh, just shift this bite with this bite and change flop this shot around and add this and that do the music with this. And it's like boom, done. The only reason that I can do all that is because of my experience and trailer. So even if somebody doesn't see trailers as the long haul, there's no better film school for being a great editor, I believe than working in short form.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, agreed. It's a whole bag of tricks that you might not otherwise pick up and get access to a grid, for sure.

Zack Arnold: Well, we've talked a lot about the business of it. Now I want to talk about the business of teaching it. Because I am just insanely interested in your journey to going from high level trailer editor to not only am I going to start what I'm sure at the time was maybe a side hustle, and we'll learn more about it. But really taking on the hardest part, which is not here. The buttons are here the bells and whistles, here's how to teach creativity. So talk to me about the origin of Film Editing Pro,

Chris MacDonald: Hmm. Yeah. I think the idea well, so I've always wanted to just, I've always been interested in a lot of different things. Like I said earlier, I was interested in 3d animation. I like art. I like, well, now I like trailers. You know, I like rock climbing. And I like I like spreadsheets, and I like math. And I like all types of things. And I like psychology.

Zack Arnold: You and I have a lot in common by the way. Yeah, no kidding. It's kind of creepy, but go on.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah. So yeah, I kind of knew that. Like trailer editing, for me was fun, but it's one job. And I kind of want to do a lot of different jobs and at with something like that you can, like you need to be so focused on doing that really, really well. That I mean, a lot of folks will they'll become producers like editors, they move up to producers and then they own a shop or then they move to the studio side. And then they overview oversee things from a macro perspective and run the campaign and now they're strategizing using budget and they're also reviewing trailers and you know, strategizing on the on the smaller level of getting in the way It's like that. But I don't know, that didn't interest me as much as kind of doing my own thing. And I've always liked teaching too. So when I was in 3d I would write articles and I do tutorials and stuff like that at the time. And and of course with the internet now you can do anything from anywhere. For the most part even editing like I'll somebody trailer editors. Now we're editing from home gets tricky with security. So that's not like, nobody should be asking to do that right off the bat. But um, yeah, so Film Editing Pro kind of came up in the mind of my it was my wife's idea, actually. She was like, Well, why don't you just teach editing? Because I was just thinking, well, let's just start another business, let's just do something completely different. Let's teach dive on whatever. And we tried a couple little things. I did some stuff with video games, you know, I didn't know what to do at the time. And I was mostly spending a lot of my time editing, which was really hard to learn something new to focus on that well, also editing. And she was like, just teach editing, you're doing that all day long. You have insights into it, just teach it. And I was like, Yeah, I guess so. But it was, it was funny, because like, when the idea first came up, I wasn't an experienced editor at that point. So I didn't, I was like, what I didn't deserve to be teaching this, I'm still learning this. Looking back, I guess we're kind of always all still learning it at some level. And at some point, you just have to say, Alright, I guess I know what I'm doing, for the most part. So we started off, I met a cool guy that he was a choreographer, stunt choreographer. And he had filmed this awesome fight scene and an ally. And you think that my first course would have been about trailers, but it wasn't because we had access to the super cool fight scene footage. So we taught like action editing, and we taught how to sound design it and how to set up the story for it. And so we released that course in 2014. It took, I don't know totally took every course really every course that we make takes about a year and a half to make. It's been a while at this point, since we've released our last course this next one that's coming out is going to be much larger. Most of our courses are between like 30 and 50 lessons. And this next one's like 140. Wow. Yeah, it's a beast. But um, yeah, so we released that. And it worked out. Well. We use Facebook advertising to kind of get the word out. I think you and I have some similar mentors in the world of marketing.

Zack Arnold: I was literally just going to ask who's been in your ear? Because everybody just assumes, well, Zack must have figured all this up by himself. Like, No, I didn't. It costs a lot of money to learn how to do this stuff. So who's in your ear? who's been there since the beginning?

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, well, I learned a lot from honestly, the inspiration to even start my own business was probably Tim Ferriss, back in 2006 2007, I read his book, The Four Hour Workweek, which is such a misnomer, because it's not about working less, it's just about having the ability to do what you want for the hours that you want to do. And most of us have managed to find our way into things that we like doing. So we work 60 hour weeks. But it's fun. So that's cool. So he was kind of inspirational, and even just putting on the weekend. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about, like putting in the effort outside of a day job to build something on site that's exhausting. so it better be something that you like, because you're gonna be doing it after dinner. Because you're gonna get home, maybe if you're lucky, you're gonna have dinner at six, or seven. And you'll hang out with your wife, your girlfriend or whoever for a couple hours. And then at nine o'clock or something like that, you got to work for three hours. And it's not easy work either. It's complicated work. So I did that for a long time to get that first release out. It was it was a lot. But it was fun. And I was excited about it. So it didn't feel like work. And then that day, so that worked out well. And we got the word out with with Facebook, I follow a lot of teachings of like Ramit Sethi I know you're familiar with him, right?

Zack Arnold: Oh, yes. Yeah, he is. He's basically my business mentor. And most of what I've learned has been from him and he and I are now friends. But yes, definitely a core foundation of everything that I built, actually have a podcast interview with him and shameless self promotion, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. If somebody wants to listen to it, I saw that, that's we're mates. He's a big influence on my work.

Chris MacDonald: Super smart guy. He's a psychologist by training. I think it's

Zack Arnold: not by training. It's just he's naturally very, very good at He's certainly learned about it, but it's not like he has a degree in like us being a psychologist per se. But essentially, he's he's, he's what I call a financial therapist. The work that he does is essentially the the deep rooted psychological issues that have to do with money, building a business, and I kind of stole from him and basically now I'm a career therapist. So all the horrible, you know, crazy voices we get in our head and the doubts and everything else, when we want to pursue things that we really love. I help people overcome those as a career therapist the way that he does as a financial therapist, but he is brilliant when it comes to building a business and teaching people how to teach and structure all of these things. So yeah, he's he's, uh, what am I definitely probably most likely my biggest influence. Not the only one, but the biggest one for sure.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, he's a big one for me too. Because there's a lot to learn like when you're I mean, Man creating an online course or something like that. I mean, first of all, you need to know the topic. Second of all, you need to be able to take that topic, especially something that's kind of esoteric and like, femoral is editing, where it's like, how do you describe, you know how this works. And, and obviously, not everything works the same way. So like to make this moment a work and this film is going to be very different, you can't just say, it's not always the same solution. So you'd have to kind of dig down to like, what's the underlying structure? What are the fundamentals that make something feel funny or sad or exciting? And then what are the technical aspects on the timeline? How do you put that together? Is it the sound effect, right here is it the four shots that preceded the shot that make this one work, and if you didn't have them in that order, you could have the same shot in the same place. But it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, because you haven't built it up yet. So kind of like dissecting all that and writing these scripts, I mean, every course that we do probably has a three to 600 page script that we just write in Microsoft Word. And everything that we talk about needs to be shown on screen. And what you show on screen needs to reinforce what you're seeing. And it's almost worst, I mean, it's better off to have a black screen with nothing to look at, than to show the wrong thing. Because then the person is going to be getting very confused. And they're going to be hearing one thing and what they see is not going to necessarily correlate to that. So you need to think about how do your graphics illustrate the concept that you're talking about? Should this be a demonstration of a technique? Should you do something in After Effects where you've got shapes that kind of form a metaphor and explain something? So we spent a lot of time and that's probably why you mentioned I'm a man of mystery, because I'm not on camera much. Because originally, it was just like, well, I didn't have a camera when we first started. And then as a byproduct of that it it required us to think more about well, if we're not going to have a talking head, which sometimes is great. But other times it can just be lazy. Let's show let's show something instead, let's make it meaningful. And not stock footage, not a movie playing for 45 seconds, like something that means something. So we put a lot of time into thinking about that. The art of teaching is just like kind of its own thing, obviously. But yeah, I don't know. So we built that we built the business gradually. Facebook ads kind of help get the word out. Now we're doing YouTube a lot more. We've got I forget how many courses we've got the art of music, drama, which is which is essentially just like feature editing, like long form type stuff. We give like 1000 dailies and we do some music drama trailer, we do a basics course we teach DaVinci software, we teach premiere software, we teach action. Eventually, we're going to teach all the software's, but we kind of did try our training backwards, we started with the hard stuff. And now we're filling in the bottom with like, Okay, we will show you how to use Premiere. But there was so many of those resources out there when we started already that it really wouldn't have made anything that we were doing special or different. So we're just doing that now just to be completionist.

Zack Arnold: Well, I also think that you did it the right way. And the reason I say that is because I've had multiple people that have come to me and said, Well, you should just be teaching editing, I don't I don't want to learn about time management or productivity or this or that, like, teach me how to edit. Number one. The reason there are so many people on YouTube and elsewhere that are teaching the fundamental hard skills, the buttons, the menus and whatnot, is because teaching the creative process is damn near impossible. So the fact that you decided to take that on first and get the hardest part out of the way was the right way to do it. Because my guess is how would you if you were to look back in hindsight and say, well, we should do the fundamentals first, you realize, well, this is just so much easier. And it's it's making revenue, and I guess it works. So do we really want to take on the hard stuff, but you decided to take it upon yourself to say, we're going to be the place that you want to go if you want to learn the creative thought process of editing. And that's the really, really hard one to do. And clearly you've done it successfully. But that's the hard stuff. That's the hard stuff.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, that requires a lot of thinking a lot of, you know, like, I'm not I don't purport to be an expert in all aspects of editing, of course. So it also requires a lot of talking with other editors. Even within the trailer world, like I probably spoke with and had great conversations with, I think it was six or seven other editors. And we talked about like, you know, every lesson focus in that course, every lesson focuses on a different thing, like, you know, a music stopped and comedy, or how to build up to a big moment in an action film. You know, how to the subtlety of sound design used within a drama cut, and how that needs to be different from other genres. But you know, even within that world, I wouldn't call myself by any means an expert, or the best in any of those things, either. So I was, you know, seeking out people that were especially good at each and each part of that and then of course, with with long form, you know, speaking with more folks that do a lot more of that and then reading every single book and then thinking deeply about how that relates to the skills that I'm already comfortable with and how to translate that and how to guide people through that process in a way that makes sense. So yeah, it's it's been a lot of work. But it's been fun.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, it says the one of the things that I say to my team all the time, and I'm sure you can relate to this is that it all starts with Well, I think I just want to, you know, start a side hustle and maybe get a little bit of passive income. And anybody that's done this for any length of time, they hear the term passive income. If somebody's listening, they didn't see your face, your face said it all your life just like, yeah, right. I always say that passive income is where you work 20 hours a day, so you can make money while you're not sleeping. There's nothing passive about any of this, like, granted, I can go out for the afternoon and do something with my kids. And I can make a sale and get a notification, but the amount of work that goes into building the infrastructure to make that possible, never in a million years, would I have guessed how much infrastructure technology like I don't know if you've ever felt the same way. But when I go back to editing, it's like a vacation. Oh, my God, I have one job. I have one piece of software and one job, instead of managing a team and 27 different pieces of online software and coding and skills. Like it's really overwhelming.

Chris MacDonald: It really is. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of Front Loaded work to write. I mean, you know, you work your butt off, like, for example, making a new course you just did a launch. Well, now, you're not working quite as hard on that course, I imagine. But sales are coming in and during the launch, you know, was the launch week, or whatever it was, was less work than the eight months or a year and a half to lead up to that. But the works got to come at some point. If you want passive income, it's like go play in the stock market and cross your fingers, I guess.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. And there's the front loaded part is so important for people to understand. Like it, here's an example of what I will consider as close to passive income as possible. Two days ago, got a notification on my phone, somebody joined your move yourself program $297, I built that in 2017, I haven't done shit on that program. In five years, there's a web page, there's a button that goes to a checkout page, somebody decides to give their money, they get an email sequence, they get, you know, access to modules, that's now passive income. But it's not like I can just like rest on my laurels on one course I built five years ago, as it is, I'm sure the same for you, you continue to build more resources, your students come to you with new challenges, you have to continue to meet those challenges, your team grows, therefore your income has to grow. So it's just this never ending pattern of there's always the next product to create the next marketing challenge to solve. So it never really becomes passive. But yeah, every once in a while you're like, oh, 300 free bucks. I didn't do anything today. Like, that's nice, but it was years of Front Loaded work to be able to do that.

Chris MacDonald: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, like supporting the people to take the training to I mean, people have questions like, the better you do a job with a course, the less questions people typically have. But everybody still has a question here and there. So, you know, giving good answers to that. And, you know, giving the occasional cut review when people you know, when people want that type of stuff. But yeah, it's Yeah, nothing's really that passive in life. So it's like pick, pick what you enjoy, because you're gonna put some time into it for sure.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. I mean, if there, if there was ever good advice that you can put on a placard in front of your, your workspace, that would certainly be it. I love that, like, you know, there really is no such thing as being passive. You might as well enjoy it, because it's going to be a process and it's going to take some work. Yeah. So the next part of this journey that I think is so important to dig into, which is where I think the vast majority of people that are listening are going to be at, we have very few listeners of any that are eight or 10 years into building a successful online business that also happen to be craftspeople. I know for a fact, we have a lot of people because they get these questions all the time, I want to start something I've realized that I don't want my only source of income to be this one craft that I've done my whole life and they want to learn how do I build a side hustle? How can I bring value to the world? What does it even mean to bring value to the world? And I had somebody that interviewed me on a podcast about I don't know, it's like a month ago. And they were telling me like, yeah, I've got this friend of mine. They said that they were thinking about building a course for editors on time management and productivity. But then they talked themselves out of it. And they're like, well, Zack's already done that. Why should I bother? And I was like, no, they should totally do it. Why? Why should the fact that I've already done this thing, stop them. But what they imagine about me, and I'm sure they imagined about you as well, why would I teach anybody about trailer editing? Like Chris has already done that? Who am I to think that I can build this, but rewind to when you decided to start Film Editing Pro? Did you think, well, if anybody's going to teach this, it's going to be me? Because nobody knows better than I do? Like, weren't you in the place where you're like, Who the hell do I think I had to teach anybody how to edit?

Chris MacDonald: I still feel that way. Yeah, I mean, all of us have impostor syndrome to some extent, right. Even and even as an editor, I won't diverge too far into that, but even as an editor, by the way, Every editor's Bay you go into is populated by one person that is thinking that they're about two days away from getting fired. People are about to figure out that I have no idea what I'm doing. And today might be the day they think. So, yeah, if it helps with anybody's self confidence, yeah, we all feel that way. So don't worry about it.

Zack Arnold: So how did you overcome that when you decided I want to build this thing, because what you've built is pretty impressive. And it's really it's far reaching all over the world. And you are now the resource for a specific thing. If somebody says, I want to learn how to edit trailers, Film Editing Pro duh, done, you don't even have to look elsewhere. But you that wasn't the mindset, I would guess that you thought of when you began or even to this day, you don't feel that way. So how do we help people overcome that that want to start their own side? hustles or build their own enterprises?

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, well, so a couple things. So first of all, if somebody's already done something, that doesn't mean, it shouldn't be done, again, because you're gonna have your own perspective to add to it. By the way, if you're going to do something that's already been done before, don't watch what's already been done, because it's going to screw up your head so much, you're not going to be able to come up with original ideas. I haven't watched any other editing course out there, because I don't want to know what's in them. I probably should. But I don't want to see it. Because then I'm going to question this or question that or want to feel the need to include it in the minds gonna look like theirs. And I don't want that to happen. So realize that you have your own perspective to offer on things. That's number one, I say number two, is kind of search your mind? Do you have more than one skill that can synergize with each other? Right. So I mean, that's the happy intersection. If you've got a Venn diagram, and you've, you're good at editing, and you're good at running a business, and then started editing business. Or if you're good at editing, and you, you know, you're into fitness and you and you understand time management and those types of techniques. Or maybe you can specifically also try to assist editors, and everybody else but editors in particular, that can be a very targeted market with a unique perspective that you can offer to those people. So do you have two skills that the combination of which is becomes unique, even though the individual skills are not unique? And then I guess I would say just be kind of be confident. Because you're, you know, no, I mean, yeah, there's people smarter than other people. But for the most part, it really is true, it's just about how much effort you put in. And if you know, if you've got, if it's you and somebody else, and they're trying to, you're given the same task, start a business that accomplishes X, Y, or Z. And this person is a genius, you know, but it's the rabbit in the hare thing, you know, they might never get to the, the, you know, the finish line. And a lot of really, really smart people, they have short attention spans. So maybe they make some really fast progress. But you know, if you can stick with this, and that's the same thing we were talking about earlier, what makes a good editor, so you got to stick with it. And you have to be willing to pivot and adjust and figure things out with everything that you do. Like, particularly in this world of starting an online business, like you mentioned, Zack, there's a million tools that you have to learn. And it's funny, like, I always kind of laugh when I see on like Facebook groups or forums related to that type of stuff. And there's somebody who's just starting out a business, and they're looking to hire like a virtual assistant or something like that, or a marketing consultant. And they think this person is going to set everything up for them. And they're going to come up with a way to market their materials, and then also handle all their customer support, and build this and like, basically run their business more than one maybe, eventually, but you kind of need to know how that all works first. So it's like you read books and stuff like that, like, like, oh, Steve Jobs did this, or, you know, Lee Iacocca or whatever did this at you know, these major companies? Well, you're not a major company. And if you want to be in charge of a business that can turn into something, and you can maybe have some people help you out with it, you need to know what they're going to know. Or at least you need to know the basics of it. So learn how to do the technology, it's going to be annoying, you know, figure out how to do a little bit of CSS, so you can fix your own stuff every once in a while, learn a CRM or marketing platform, and figure out how to build some automation and how to send out an email to a bunch of people and then make an announcement. Learn a little bit about online advertising, learn about each social platform that's currently relevant. I know, that's always changing. But, um, you know, and read some books on marketing and just kind of get into it and understand that you're going to be wearing 15 hats. And, you know, but it's, you're, you're, you're in school, you're in a training ground, and it's going to be cool, because especially if you're like, probably, you know, me and Zack. It's fun to take a break from doing one thing. You know, it's like, you know, I'll sometimes I'm working on writing a script for something and I'm like, Yeah, I don't feel like writing anymore. Well, guess what, you're in luck, because you've really got to work on that spreadsheet to take a break and go do that. And you can just kind of exercise different parts of your brain and that's what doing these types of things. Let's You do. And that's what I was so drawn to, is it was just so engaging, and it lights up my whole head, maybe not all at the same time. But throughout the course of the day, there's a little bit of everything. So there's a lot of there's a lot of reward at the end of that rainbow, or, I don't know, scary path, depending on how you look at it. But there's never been a better time in the world with more opportunity, more cool technology, access fast internet everywhere. And a lot of people will say to like, Well, why, to your point? Like, why should I start because there's so much competition. And that's true, there's never been more competition ever with anything than there is now. And that same statement will be true in one year and 10 years and 15 years, unless something crazy happens. But the cream always rises to the top. So there could be 1000 people doing the same thing, we'll just do it really, really good. You know, proofread your work, you know, like, like, I always complained to my wife, I've got a good friend. And I'll tell him listen to it's just so you can, you can laugh at it. But we would be in the same math class. And he would finish his she's a really smart guy, and he would finish his test. And he go, I'm done. And he go bring it up. And I'm like to teach you check it, did he he didn't check it. And I'll spend an extra 10 minutes and I'll check it. And I get 100. And he get a 97 or 95. He's like, Oh, I missed it. I missed that one dumb question. I'm like, well, take your time, polish it, do it better. So same thing with this, like put out a polished product, spend the time to review the lessons that you've been writing and working on or you know, whatever you're doing, like, look it over and look at things from the perspective of a potential customer. If you're selling something, send yourself your own email, look at your own ad, click on it go to the landing page. Does this look interesting? Does it work? Is it weird on my phone? And I say all this, and I'm sure there's people right now going through our stuff. And they're like finding complete issues and problems with that. But you know, hey, nobody's perfect. We're all working on it. But yeah, just do a good job and stick with it and, and have the confidence to know that if you complete it. And if you think it's really, really good. By the end of it, it's probably better than most people that most people are doing.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, well, the vast majority of people, like you said, they might start out fast, and they get really excited and motivated. But then they get into the long haul. Like everybody's got a podcast that has three episodes. Not a whole lot of people have a podcast with 300 episodes, because it just becomes drudgery. And you're just in the trenches, and you got to do the work over and over and over. Everybody loves sending their first newsletter to their list, send 152 weeks a year for eight years in a row, it's hard coming up with ideas for a newsletter or for a course or a Facebook Live or whatever it is. So you have to really understand that Yeah, might be a shiny object at the moment, but you really have to be willing to commit to just show up every day. And yeah, like you said, if you if you put in the time to make sure that it's quality, not perfect. But you know, I have a very high threshold for what I consider good enough. But I also don't pursue perfect at the expense of good enough. Knowing that there are I'm sure that there are 100 different errors on my website used to keep me up at night. Now, just another you know, another regular day knowing that there are 404 errors and misdirection. I've got a typo here in there. But if by and large, the trend is that things are written well, and there aren't errors and typos. And it's the kind of thing that most people aren't going to see. And that's what I'm going to put out into the world. But the one part that you said, that's so important, and again, it just shows how similar I think you and I are in our mindsets. And are you just totally as a tangent? Are you local in LA?

Chris MacDonald: No, was for a long time for 17 years. But my wife and I just moved to San Antonio,

Zack Arnold: oh, bummer, because I was gonna say you and I are gonna have to meet up in person. And now it sounds like it might require a plane ride. But it might be coming out in November, though it's possible. If you are, then you will, we might need to connect because there we have so many. It's so interesting how similar our approaches have been, even though our paths are only crossing now. But the most important thing that I found that's been very useful to me, and I think would be good advice for others is what you said about this idea that you can't just outsource learning these new skills. I'm never going to be a website developer or a website designer. I'm never going to be somebody that's professional level salesperson with CRMs or anything else. But what I've learned and I actually applied this exact same approach to being an editor too, I learned just enough about the other stuff that I can speak their language. I can't do their work for them. But if I'm going to talk to a colorist, I know some of the language that they use. So it's not can we make the Brady thing brighter, right? Like I want to be able to talk about the blacks and you know, be able to talk about Chroma and whatnot. I could never color anything to save my life. But I can speak the basics so we can speak the same language when I talk to composers. It's not just really broad generalities. It's understanding bars and measures and instrumentation strings versus brass, but I'm not going to tell them how to do their job and as an online entrepreneur I designed my first website all by myself, I built my first mailing list all by myself. And then I start bringing in people that can supplement that. But I have the ability to have that conversation with them. So it's not, hey, build me this automated newsletter system to send out emails is do whatever you want. It's I built complex automations. So if I have to do it, I will. But I can also converse with them and say, Well, I think that the logic tree should go here, they're just you go ahead and you do all the work, you know better than I do. But I can have a legitimate conversation on a professional level. And if you're going to be an entrepreneur, unless you've got tons of money, that's the only way you can solve problems just by learning how to solve them yourself.

Chris MacDonald: You just set it to unless you have tons of money, because then you can hire the best of the best for everything. Well, then why am I the one who started an online business, like you seems like you're doing fine, you just go lay on the beach. And most people aren't that and you're, and you're gonna kill your profit margin, if you have to outsource everything to I mean, those people get expensive. And, and also like not the not having the ability to fix something or do something immediately, you're going to have a frustrating day to like, you're going to be waiting for somebody to get back to you. And what you know, why isn't my web designer responded to me, it's been 15 minutes, and we need to do something, we're having a launch right now or whatever, well, if you knew how to do it yourself, you could just hop on there and fix it. And maybe you're not the guy that does the web stuff all day long. But you can step in and help when needed. And, you know, I think that's, that's, that's part of the training that you have to put yourself through to run a business. Like you said, you have to at least be able to speak the language of the different departments or different types of stuff that go on in your business. If not do some of that yourself.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. Every single stage of the process, whether it's a landing page, whether it's building a course, sending an email, if I had to do all of it myself, I can do every single stage of the process and I can go from I have an idea to I can put it on my own version of a website to I can build a course to I can sell it, I can send the emails, build the checkout pages, it would suck. Because I don't have people that do it all day long that are refining it and taking it to a different level. But I can do all of it myself. Yeah. And that is really the place that you need to be as an entrepreneur, because like you said, I don't want to think like, Well, I'm gonna have to wait a week until my developers available against we can fix this one stupid typo in the headline of my sales page. Yeah, it's costing a lot of money. So I have to learn basic HTML and CSS and just enough to be able to keep things moving. And then understand when do I bring other people in so they can take it to another level. But the scary thing that that brings up is the idea that well, I'm going to fail. And I'm probably going to fail publicly. Especially in the early stages. I know for me, there are a whole lot of public failures, websites going down on the final day of OpenCart. Stupid typo, people didn't understand the offer, whatever it is, I'm guessing in your earlier days, couple of pretty big monumental failures that were public.

Chris MacDonald: We still do that. And they're even more public. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, things happen. You know, I it's just fix it quickly. Apologize. And you know, if your best your best fans, customers, community, whatever, just realize that you're a human being to and the people that you work with as human beings. So I mean, whatever. Don't you know, don't worry about it. Like like Zack said, I mean, I don't know, you got two examples right in front of you of people that do this all day long, but screw up on a regular basis. So it's like, feel free to make mistakes. Yeah, I think everybody you've ever been has heard that, you know, you can't be afraid to make mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the more you learn, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the person who succeeds the most of the person who's made the mistake that you know, the most mistakes, but it really is true. I mean, you know, it's ideal to learn from other people's mistakes. I know some people that insist on making all of their own, and that's just exhausting. And it's slow. So the more you can learn from other people's and that comes from taking well courses of any sort, reading books, reading articles, talking with people that do the same thing as you. So you can reduce the friction that you're gonna encounter, and the potential embarrassment, but you're gonna make mistakes, and it's fine, who cares? You know, don't be a wuss, suck it up. And, you know, something that you said earlier, too, about, you know, everybody's, you know, there's a million places with three podcasts, or everybody sent one email to a to a list of people, but doing it multiple times, and over and over and consistently is the hard part. When I think, you know, this might also be a trite phrase, too. But you know, these cliche phrases, they're important because their true motivation gets you started and discipline keeps you going. And that's the same with a diet or an exercise plan. And, yeah, so you develop a routine and you get into something and that's, that's man, that's, as you know, that is easier said than done, to be just And when you have your own thing, because especially when work has been front loaded, because if you made a course a year ago, and it's selling, okay still, and you know, you should be working on the next thing or you know, you should be doing this and it's a Thursday, it's sunny outside, you don't feel like doing it, you want to go out and I don't know, get lunch at three o'clock for the next two hours, you can do it. But if you do that too many times, you know, so it's really difficult to, to kind of, the more freedom that you have, the harder it is to define your own boundaries. So that's, that's a challenge everybody, not everybody's cut out to do to have their own thing either like a lot of people. A lot of people function better with the, with the structure of a work environment. Or as some people don't want to be responsible for making big decisions, that could be really bad. And the bigger your business gets, the more decisions are important your decisions become, and the more repercussions there are. So the fatigue of making those decisions kind of gets a little scary and exhausting, sometimes to the point that at the end of the day, sometimes after some things that have gone on maybe with our business, and I'm like, Oh, I don't know, if we do that, you know, it might make people upset or, and then by the end of the day, it's like, hey, what color? Should we paint the cabinets? And I'm like, I have no idea. I can't I can't make that.

Zack Arnold: Oh, yeah, I've gotten to this point multiple times, both with my family, with my kids with my wife, even with my trainer, they'll say what do you want to do today, I'm like, no decisions, just tell me what to do. And I'll do it. I am all out of decisions. Today, I cannot think about one more thing, just you figure it out. Because it's exhausting, right. And as an editor, as for living, you make micro decisions 1000s of times a day. But it's compounded when you're an entrepreneur, because it's not just 1000s of the same micro decisions, it's different decisions with different parts of your brain, like you said, it could be in a spreadsheet, it could be with copywriting, it could be with sales, psychology, so many different things. And it's all these micro decisions that are constant. And it's just they bombard you over and over and over. So I really have had to learn how to rather than just consistently be an entrepreneur all day, every day, it's kind of like in the sprints. Like if there's going to be a sprint with our team for two or three months, we've got a launch, we've got a product, and then when the launch is over, I said to my team in September, like there's gonna be a maintenance month, we're just gonna fix some stuff because I just don't have the energy to think of the next product and write the script. So like it's, it's it's a very, very different schedule and pace than when you just show up at 9am Every day work until 6pm Like, but like you one of the things you had said that I both agree with and disagree with is that some people are just not suited for it. And they don't they don't they need the structure. I agree with that. Where I disagree with that is that I think that the way that our society is constructed, that's not a flaw, that's a feature. We don't want you to be good with your own freedom and your ability to work with lack of structure, because we want our employment and our company to provide it for you. So you feel the need to work for us instead of working for yourself. So we've designed a society of people that function best and full time jobs with structure, which is why structure is not taught. It's one of the reasons I had to learn time management and prioritization on my own, because I didn't want to work within those confines. But I hadn't been equipped with any of those tools. I agree. Yep. So I think there are a lot more people that are suited for it. They're just not equipped for it yet.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, it's not a skill you're taught ever. Well, I mean, you teach it, but not many people teach it.

Zack Arnold: Right. And I again, I don't think that's a flaw in the system. I think that the system is designed that way. We just we don't talk about it. But what I'm curious about now, is from the moment you said, I'm I'm gonna just dabble. Maybe I'll make a course. From that moment when it all started to when you you've pulled the plug and said, I am an entrepreneur and the CEO of Film Editing Pro full time and I say no to trailer editing gigs. What was that amount of time? One week? Wow. So you just stopped taking trailer work on me? Do you decided to build your business?

Chris MacDonald: Well? Yeah, well, the I ended up leaving my last trailer in a job in a was February of 2017. I don't know I probably had another month, month and a half left to finish the charge or the trailer and of course, before we can launch it, and I so Okay, so let me rephrase that six weeks, because then when the launch went, Well, I was like, Ah, this works. I mean, I knew it worked already, because we had launched the art of action editing before that. And I'm probably answering this question terribly. But we launched the art of action editing in 2015. It was built in 2014 launches September 2015. Very small group of people. It made a little bit of money, but it worked like it's sold and people liked it. And I was like wow, that's Pool, if you can do it once you can do it 100 times, if you do it small, you can do it big. So, so building the trailer course was kind of the thing that took took a couple years after that. But the second that that went well, and it's like, okay, we've done this twice, you know, I'm no longer employed as a trailer editor. And then the launch went fine. And it was like, Okay, now we're gonna make this course we have all these other cool ideas. I was like, I'm never, I mean, I'll cut my own trailers for Film Editing Pro. But um, it's never going to be probably worth it to me, again, to spend as much time as it takes to cut a trailer versus making more training and growing the business, you know, and teaching more people that way than me just doing the one off skill plus, I became addicted to just all the cool stuff that you get to do, and the toys that you play with. And, you know, I like getting in there and playing with the automation for the marketing and, and designing you know, flows and conditional things. And I think that's fun. So yeah, I'll we do have a lot of people that come to us and ask, you know, if we can kind of trailer for them, whether it's me or somebody else that works with us? And the answer has always just been no, I'm sorry. But you know, if I hear somebody I can refer you, which now is is turning into some, it's that can be actually a little bit better now. Because so to this point we've had, we've had our training courses specifically, like, for example, let's say the audit trail right again, and somebody will finish that course. And they're like, Oh, that was really cool. And I learned a lot. And I think I want to pursue that. What do I do? And up until this point, my answer has been like, I don't know, like good luck, sensitive emails, you know, be persistent. Like, yeah, you can, you can do it that way. But I can't really help you.

Zack Arnold: Put yourself out there that yourself, put yourself out there.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah. Yeah, go stand awkwardly around other people and hope that they start talking to you, and they have a job for you. But so and then also speaking with a lot of the folks in the trailer industry recently, a lot of friends and co workers and stuff like that, after, you know, after all the pandemic stuff, well, during that a lot of places scaled down big time, and they had to get rid of a lot of staff. And obviously, it was a disaster for a lot of places and a lot of people. But I mean, so much is flooding back in, especially with entertainment, then now places just can't get editors fast enough. It's probably getting a little bit to a stable point, sort of now, but everybody's always looking. And especially for entry level people. Because if you hire me assistants and runners and people at that level, are always being promoted up to the next level. And in the world of trailers, it's a little bit different than long form. But we have pas and runners just like just like long form. And then you go to an AE, where you do a lot of like sequence preps, like a finished TV spot or finished trailer, you replace it with all the final feature footage with links back to the completed feature, you pull cue sheets, which is basically saying like how many like what sound effects that we use when these cues that we use, oh, wow, it's gonna cost that much. And then you send that to the sound department. But then you're practicing to edit on the side. Junior editors are actually now full time editors, but they just get, you know, kind of the entry level projects. And then you get regular editors cutting, all the fun stuff. But those lower level people, Assistant sprinters are always being promoted up. So you always need more assistance, and you always need more runners. And our email list, I mean, it's actually funny. So I assumed that our email list would be full of entry level people, people ready to start in those lower level positions. And what I'm finding is that there's like kind of an equal number of people that are ready for entry level. And then people that are legitimately like cutting really good stuff, or already have careers and took our training just to kind of like, fill in some blanks that maybe want to move forward in their careers, or they want to try something different, and they want to just bounce around. So yeah, so now basically, you know, we're feeding people into the industry at all levels. And eventually, to get back to the original point of accepting trailer work. We'll probably have something on the website where people can post jobs and projects and stuff. But of course, was something like that, like, if you're not careful, a lot of garbage is gonna get posted. That doesn't pay well. And people are very unreasonable and horrible to work with and become another Facebook group. And man, we could talk for hours about how negative those are.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, let's not do that. Right. But essentially, the very short version is that from the the inkling of the idea and to 2014 it was around 2017 You finally said this is when I'm going full time I'm not a trailer anymore. I'm an entrepreneur, and you've been doing this full time building this thing for the last five plus years. Correct? Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I'm still at the point where I'm kind of waffling on the fence after a year eight, right. One tip one toe in the deep end year. One toe on the deep end here, for the most part have been telling people that I'm retired editor and not taking on shows but you know, I've got a soft spot in my heart. For Cobra Kai, so we'll see where that ends up. But I can, I can very much relate to anybody that is having a hard time choosing which direction to go for sure. But when it comes to your dilemma, just again, shameless self promotion of how do I solve the problem of helping people to find the next steps of their career paths are building their network or presenting their services. I know a guy that can help you with that problem, because that's another one of those areas where there are just no good resources. And there are no good resources, because it's really effing hard to build these resources and teach them because they're so esoteric, and you have to build the frameworks and the ideas. But that's the direction that I chose. And that's why I think that there's so much synergy between what you do and what I do. So

Chris MacDonald: yeah, and just the you know, we had a number of folks that signed up for your, for your recent course that are loving. So that's yeah, so thank you for introducing us to that.

Zack Arnold: And there are clearly great students and good seasoned professionals as well. I'm very selective about the quality people in my community, and a whole bunch of influx of new people. And I was looking at just because we have all the analytics and the behind the scenes like, Oh, these are all Film Editing Pro people? Of course they are. So yeah, I think there's a long and synergistic future between the two of us being able to help each other's communities for sure.

Chris MacDonald: So 100% Yeah,

Zack Arnold: so I want to be very, very conscious of your time. I have one final question. If we were to go back to the Chris that was into interested in painting and animation and 3d and visual arts, and you were to talk to him? Would you tell him to do everything the same way again? Or is there still a part of you that would be interested in pursuing a different path? And you've gone on now?

Chris MacDonald: Do it the same way? Yeah, the boring answer, but I think that's the truth. I'm happy with how things went, I think there's still a lot of cool stuff to do. I mean, I get bored pretty easily. If it's the same thing every day, you know, I have, like most people, I have a problem, where it's very easy to start a project. But that is easy to finish it, especially when it goes well. And you're at like the 80% mark, and you're like, Hey, I see where this is going. And I would do that with artwork, too. My parents would always give me a hard time I would start designing like a 3d, whatever. My mom said, everything I made look like a potato. I think I graduated past that at one point. But you get that you get kind of there. But maybe you didn't put the textures on and it's not late yet. And you're like, it's good enough. It's close enough. But it's, uh, yeah, obviously, it's important to finish things. And so at this point, yeah, I'm mostly kind of excited about the new projects that we have going. And we've done so much teaching. So far. And we've covered so many, like big topics that we have, we're starting to get more flexibility and what we can dig into. And the nice thing about like growing a little bit and maturing at least a little bit as a business is that like, in the past, it was very, it was tough, because like, if we didn't launch a new course, well, we didn't really have a business and like you can't keep the lights on and you can't pay anybody to help to do to, you know, to do any sort of work with you. And it's getting a little bit better than that, you know, organic people coming in, and the YouTube, like, we have a very small YouTube channel. It's like, it's, I mean, it's 59,000 people, you know, in the comparison of YouTube, it's tiny, but like, really cool people come in from that. And it does a great job like introducing people to what we're up to. youtube.com/filmmaking, bro. Thanks. But so we've been able to spend more time on stuff like that, which is like, you know, we can scratch your own itch just a little bit more, we can play with gear, you know, like, we have this video that's gonna be coming out probably January or February, while about building your own home network like a NAS, which is like, I love that stuff. I would build my own computers as a kid and I still do, I still do my own computers. So we get to geek out with hard drives, and like RAID arrays and all this nerdy stuff. And kind of in the early days, there were just you didn't have the luxury of time to do stuff like that. Because if you weren't making if you weren't doing something that would make the business money right now, or soon thereafter, the business is going to die. And now being a little bit bigger, we can do cool, fun stuff that isn't solely focused on business. It's focused on whatever you're interested in at the time, and that kind of jives really well with me.

Zack Arnold: Nice, I'm looking forward to when that day comes for me. I'm still I'm still at that stage of have to build the next product to keep the lights on keep the team on board. So I envy the fact that you have moved past that and will probably pick your brain some more offline to see what steps I could potentially take to alleviate that gorilla on my back because it sounds like you've lived with that gorilla. And you've you've mostly not completely gotten rid of it. So

Chris MacDonald: he's got one big hairy paw on me.

Zack Arnold: All right, it never goes away. For those that are listening other than youtube.com/c/filmeditingpro where can we send them if they want to learn more? are about you about your services, they want to do your courses, I know that you've got a special promotion specifically for our audience. So how do we take care of our listeners today and get them started working with you? Yep.

Chris MacDonald: So filmeditingpro.com/zack. So you'll probably put this in the notes, I'm guessing.

Zack Arnold: This will be in our show notes. And it's Z A C K because my name is spelled wrong every single day of my life. So I want to make sure they go to the right place filmeditingpro.com/zack And what are they going to find when they get there?

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, there's where you can pick kind of any topic that you're interested in, we got drama stuff, music stuff, sound design, trailers, of course, action, you kind of just pick whatever topic you want. And we'll, we'll send you about an hour of free training on that topic. It leads of course, later on, you'll be given the opportunity to buy the full course if you want, because that's how we run the business. And of course, the full course has a lot more in it. But even if you're not interested in that you can get the free stuff. You'll learn a bunch and it's really fun.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I love it. Most people would be charging just for the hour of lessons. So the fact that you're willing to do that I love by the way that you're totally transparent. Yeah, if you want to buy something, we have stuff to buy, which is I think another area that entrepreneurs are just so afraid, like, oh, I, I can't tell them I'm actually selling something like if it's gonna make somebody's life better and provide value to them or give them a skill, like, sell it to them, but also give them the free value to get started. And I think an hour of free sample lessons is beyond generous. I think that's awesome.

Chris MacDonald: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, there's a lot out there. So it's good to be able to look behind the curtain a little bit before you drop some cash.

Zack Arnold: Exactly. I will speaking of being generous, you've been more than generous with both your time, your experience, your expertise, really glad we were finally able to make this happen. And I'm looking forward to continuing this relationship offline and learning more from each other and how we can help each other's communities. So Chris, it has been a pleasure finally making this happen. Thank you for being here.

Chris MacDonald: Absolutely. Zack, thank you for having me. Real pleasure.

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