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mutants
have you ever felt like you didn’t belong? like an outsider?
it’s rare that i encounter someone else that is thinking about the same things i am. this can make a young person feel alien, like a mutant.
directing my first-year 5-minute film was the first time i really felt at home; on set, i didn’t feel like an alien any more. i was surrounded by others committed to making movies, being taught by professionals who took our passion seriously, and was weekly helping make someone’s dream a reality.
so often, our friendships are based on setting — people near us right now. but the Internet has brought us the opportunity to find people who share our same interests. while we may be sometimes more disconnected from the humans nearby, a beautiful thing happens when we find a community of people like us… a collection of fellow outsiders…
editing
after we wrapped “the darkness rolled over her” in November of 2020, i quarantined for 2 weeks, and then headed to my parents’ house for a late Thanksgiving. i stuck around for mom’s birthday, then Christmas… then… i was just kinda there.
and of course i brought all the film footage with me and began processing it. it took a while to figure out a workflow, how to sync the audio, etc., and then even longer to actually do it all. much of the process involved a lot of waiting.
during the waiting, i watched Columbo with mom and dad while scrolling through Instagram. one day i see a collaboration video posted by someone i follow — not anyone i knew personally or had even met, but someone i followed because they had some interesting and inspiring visual effects content.
the collaboration video was made by several people that seemed to fit a similar description — people i’d enjoy following and being inspired by. and i see they are all part of something called edit.party. well an “edit.party” sounded a lot more fun than waiting on clips to sync, so i looked into it.
edit.party
when the pandemic started, one thing that affected me immediately was my office shut down. i don’t work for a company, i own my own company — parabolos. i don’t even have an office building of my own. my office is the various coffee shops around town. so when all the coffee shops started closing, i (and others like me) had no choice but to work from home (and it was the safer thing to do anyway). as a single guy who often works alone, a lot of my human interaction came from the coffee shops i sat in for hours a day.
the same kind of thing was happening for a digital artist named cache_bunny. cache gets a lot of energy from being in a co-working space, everyone working on their own projects, but being able to ask questions, bounce ideas around, and inspire each other. with covid, that was now gone, and we were all home alone. so cache set out to fix that, and created edit.party.
edit.party is a zoom call set up to be a virtual co-working space. mics are muted to minimize distractions, though there’s usually music being piped in if you want to opt in to that.
but you can see everyone. people like myself, working. sometimes they share their screen, and you can see what they’re working on. i’m inspired not just from their work, but by their process, their work ethic.
mics are muted, but the chat is open, so you can reach out and communicate (old AIM style) and eventually get to know the regulars, of which there are many.
and did i mention it’s open 24 hours a day? every day? that’s right. this zoom call has been going on non-stop since May of 2020. over a year and a half. hop on right now, and depending on the time of day you’ll see editors and videographers from both US coasts, musicians from Indonesia, Canadian dancers, British 3D animators, Indian visual effects artists, Mexican drone photographers. you’ll learn about NFTs and FPVs, Houdini and Octane, lighting, color, greenscreen… you name it.
earlier this year, many of us started talking to each other on Clubhouse (voices only, like a conference call… basically the opposite of edit.party) and really got to know each other. more than one night, i stayed awake until the sun came up. we’ve had pizza parties and a new year’s party. we celebrate birthdays — cache’s was a big blowout, and the edit.festival celebrated one year of edit.party.
the meetup
then it happened. restrictions started lifting. people started receiving vaccines. we still aren’t back fully to life as normal, but edit.party people were starting to meet each other in real life. two here, another couple here.
when i thought i was going to Mexico for work, i let cache know. and she and the other LA folks started putting together something fun for the weekend i would be there. my Mexico trip ended up getting pushed another 6 months, but i wouldn’t have missed the first big edit.party meetup. my budget was tight, but thanks to my good buddy Will (who lent me his house and a car! what a champ), i was able to make it work.
the first edit.partier i met in person was my good friend Markus. Markus reminds me a lot of myself — ambitious, funny, emotional, really into the psychological craft of cinema. it was so surreal seeing and hearing each other without being inside a little pixelated box.
then the next day, i invited a few of the crew over to Will’s for a little pre-party before the huge meetup weekend. this spontaneous little pre-party ended up being a good thing, as a lot of us that had been dying to see each other and spend time together got to get some of it out of our system before the big events to follow, freeing us to spend time with lots of people without fearing we’d miss out.
of course, we hopped on edit.party to get everyone pumped for the next day’s activities.
i had my cousins make me an edit.party shirt and some hats, and i asked everyone to sign the shirt. it’s currently one of my favorite possessions, and i need to travel a number of places and get some more signatures — New York, Canada, Mexico, India, Germany, South America, Africa… we’ve got edit.partiers from 6 continents and over 80 countries (that we’ve counted).
i could write for hours about the LA meetup, but i’ll spare you, and just share a few shots from that weekend. i don’t really have a ton of pictures, sadly, because we were all just enjoying being with each other in real life. but we had a huge picnic with about 60 attendees, a house party at the edit.hau5, a cookout the next afternoon with live DJs, and a beach bonfire to cap off the weekend.
mutants?
i remember something we said on Clubhouse one night back in January. that we all grew up feeling like mutants, but now that we’ve found each other, we’ve realized… we’re the X-Men. what made us outcasts has made us powerful in life.
and being able to share that together has been incredible.
i belong here. we all belong here.
when i sign on most days, i ask everyone what they’re thankful for. i’m thankful for edit.party, and i’m looking forward to meeting the rest of them soon.
until then:
I’m thankful to have met you! I share your every sentiment and yes those late night talks are absolutely special! Hoping to meet all of you in the future soon!! ❤️❤️
This was so beautiful Skid and made me smile from ear to ear. I am so grateful for you and the edit.family …you captured the true happiness of this precious community. Can’t wait for the day to finally meet you! Much love!