‘Have you seen THE edit?’ is a question that comes up more and more in fan and edit communities on social media. This can be boiled down to the start of this edit trend is THE Pedro Pascal edit made by dvcree on TikTok
It’s odd to think fan edits are a love language or form of art, but they are. Nina, also know as @timotheedit on TikTok explained she explained why she started her account and making edits.
“From a young age, I watched an extensive amount of TV shows and films, and became obsessed with them and immersed myself in the worlds that was created and the characters.
“When I would become obsessed with a show or film I would watch endless edits on YouTube desperate to consume more media surrounding it, so once I had downloaded TikTok and saw edits constantly on my for you page I decided to create my own edit account.”
It’s not as new as people think, TikTok For You pages may be flooded with edits for the latest hot and trending films, like Saltburn and THE Jacob Elordi edit. But this phenomenon has been an ancient art and practice by fans since the 80s and 90s. Dawning back to the days of VHS.
The first-ever fan edit can be dated back to Star Trek. Back in 1975, Creator Kandy Fong created a mash-up edit of Star Trek bloopers in homage to the Beetle’s music video for Strawberry Fields.
From airing edits at Trek Conventions to now posting them for the world at the click of a button. Maryam, another edit account under the name @babykitsune_ on Instagram expressed her fondness for edit culture becoming more ‘mainstream’
“They low-key have shited pop culture, it’s so interesting to see people (editors) get a bunch of notoriety from it
“Back when I did it, it was only people in the fandoms that would follow your account but now the follower bases are so widespread”
But it’s not just single fan accounts for one actor or artist, there are ‘multifandom’ accounts that will make montage edits on a particular theme including several fandoms.
There is also a big community on YouTube that makes longer-form content and edits compared to TikTok edits that are a minute long.
Editing styles and programmes vary between every account. Some will have a specific type of style like flash and shake techniques they use for edits and different colour palettes.
Nina said she has a particular love for “The beauty of (Blank) edits” For example, her personal favourite edit is her “The Beauty of Ladybird edit” where she found a song that ‘‘encapsulates the feeling I got from watching the film’’ and paired it with the certain scene to demonstrate how beautiful filmography can be.
While Marayam may not have a particular favourite edit of hers, she said her style was very basic for the time, “There weren’t that many editing styles, people just did what they liked. I did a lot of themed edits with photos and with videos I mainly made just black and white border stuff.”
Both Maryam and Nina expressed different views in how their accounts were viewed at first. Maryam remembers it being quiet a small pleasure she’d share with a few friends in similar fandoms.
“I also became friends and mutals with other edit accounts and found out that they were also just teenagers in their bedrooms so that sort of broke the illusion I guess because I used to idolize these bigger accounts.”
However, Nina explained that the perspective of her sister and mum changed when they saw her successful edits and were impressed with her skills.
Nina’s first post actually a Harry Potter edit she has since privatised because she found it to be ‘embarrassingly bad’ but soon after started gaining traction for her Timothe Chalamet edits and made her account solely about that.
However in Maryam’s case, her account never had a sole focus, it would go through phases of specific interests. She described her account as something that focuses on Teen Wolf, Marvel and DC, then the Dolan twins and then just actors.
Eventually, both Maryam and Nina retired their accounts, Nina commented on the matter that there were three distinct reasons why she stopped editing.
“I just became less obsessed with Timothee Chalamet. Once I started caring less about Timothee Chalamet I felt like my edit account was boxed in a bit, and that all I could post was Timothee edits otherwise I would lose followers. Secondly, after growing to over 60K followers there was a lot of pressure to edit and it was just less enjoyable. I grew to become more caring about whether a video did well or not and lost my passion I’d get embarrassed if an edit didn’t do as well as my others
Lastly, when I was at my peak of editing and posting every week was the during the summer before university started. I had much more time to watch movies and TV shows and editing. When I came to university there were other priorities and I didn’t want to focus on editing because I knew I would grow to hate it.”
However in Marayams experience when ending her time as an editor she jokingly admitted “I stopped editing because I finished secondary school and I thought that would be a good landmark to end it on,
“I made a whole story and post about it, it was so dramatic. I was acting like I was going to war.”
However, Marayam did briefly revive her account during lockdown, explaining “I was bored as hell and just did a few for fun. I was kinda proud of some of them so I posted them as a way to see my progress”
On reflection, Marayam questioned herself, “I can’t believe I did this for fun, and to destress?
“But I guess it made sense at the time as all my other creative outlets lost fun or control of what I wanted to do because of exams, like writing, drawing, painting and cooking, exams took the fun out of that.”
No matter what, the editing community has grown massively over the years and has become a massively popular and appreciated art. From THE edits becoming a cultural phenomenon to people sharing their favourite edits with friends, it’s time we appreciate the minds and efforts that go into these posts, viral or not.
Nina explained “Depending on the edit, they can take anywhere between 1-2 hours or 4+ because sometimes you have to ensure the best quality clips for movies, especially if they’re new. Or extras like captions and transitions can make it difficult too.”
For Marayam she found edits could span an hour and a half if she did it in one go or days if she left an edit to start another, which she often did.
Continuing, Maryam said “But doing collab edits was always a stress or messy. I did two and we would decide on a theme or actor and split the audio to make one cohesive edit.”
Edit culture has continued to grow and become a love language for editors and fans a like. Some even make a cultural shift with edits, making unpopular songs popular again like Shaggy’s Hey Sexy Lady or Sade’s Smooth Opperator.
