Meet the top editors behind MrBeast, MKBHD, and Quenlin Blackwell–here and onstage at VidSummit

At this year’s VidSummit, running Sept. 29-Oct. 1 at the Irving Convention Center in Texas, YouTube veteran HopeScope and her “hubbager” Tyler Allen will take the keynote stage for Beyond the Timeline: The Editors Behind YouTube’s Biggest Channels.

This in-depth panel pulls together pro editors Rachel Kisela (former Lead Video Editor @ MrBeast and founder of EditHers), Mariah Zenk (Lead Editor @ MKBHD), and Olive Oaking (Director of Post-Production @ Quenlin Blackwell) for a look at one of content creation’s most important and underrated jobs.

As the panel description puts it: “Great videos aren’t discovered in the edit. They’re built there.”

Attendees can expect expert advice on everything from storytelling, pacing, and humor to viewer retention, the art of the cut, the ins and outs of creator/editor collaboration, and how to find and shape your personal editing voice.

For a little taste of what will happen on stage, we snagged Zenk, Kisela, and Oaking for a Q&A about content, their careers, and our ever-changing industry will look for creators over the next couple of years.

Check out our chat with them below–and to see them in person next to dozens of other dynamite speakers, get your VidSummit pass here.

Q: Why did you choose to participate in this panel? What insights do you bring?

Rachel Kisela: I’m really passionate about bridging the gap between creators and editors! Running my community of women YouTube editors and creators, EditHers (www.edithers.com), has allowed me to gain a lot of insight into what problems lie along the hiring and post-production workflow. I find that creators and editors BOTH produce their best work when they understand and respect each other creatively, so I’d love to do what I can to help strengthen these relationships in our industry.

Mariah Zenk: Rachel Kisela invited me to join the panel, and given how much she has contributed to the women’s editing community, it was an easy yes. Rachel founded EditHers, a community for leading women YouTube editors, which now includes more than 400 editors and creators. Editors are becoming increasingly visible and recognized within the YouTube space, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see talented women receive the recognition they deserve while also finding a community of peers. I’m excited to contribute to that conversation and share my own experiences as a woman editor working in the creator space.

Olive Oaking: I actually don’t know why, I’m still trying to figure that out. I’m not one who usually seeks out opportunities to network or give any sort of educational knowledge out to people who may want to get into video editing. Partially because when I look around at my peers or other working professionals, I don’t feel as technically advanced in video editing.

That where I excel is instead in my distinct comedic voice and style, where it almost doesn’t matter that things aren’t as clean or perfectly smooth as videos from other creators. That the audience is more focused on the comedy in the video than the fact that mic audios may be missing, or the sound effects and background music are too loud, or that I forgot to blur something in the final cut when it’s already been uploaded.

Rachel Kisela was the one to reach out to me to join the panel, and I said why the hell not. I just felt honored to be thought of for something like this.

Q: How did you first end up working in content?

RK: I grew up during the rise of YouTube, so I was making videos and imitating editing tricks from my favorite YouTubers in middle and high school. While in college, I started freelancing for creators before I really even knew what “freelancing” meant. I noticed a bunch of TikTokers were blowing up during the pandemic and not building a longform audience, so I started sending out tons of emails asking if they needed help with their editing.

By the time I graduated, I had built up enough of a YouTube editing portfolio to land a job at MrBeast. I learned so much there, gained so much knowledge, and realized how much opportunity there is to build a career in this. For the past couple of years, I have been freelance editing full-time, and working a lot with the team at HopeScope–and I absolutely love it!

MZ: I’ve always loved YouTube, and I’ve been a user of the platform since at least 2008. I studied media production at Missouri State University, where I worked for the university shooting and editing fundraising testimonial videos between classes.

After graduating, I was fortunate to land a job as a video editor for a direct-to-consumer business in St. Louis, where I spent three years. While I was there, I applied for a video editing position with Marques Brownlee after seeing the job posting on Twitter. Almost five years later, there’s no other place I’d rather be.

I was told they received more than 10,000 applications for my position, so I genuinely have no idea how they found me in that crowd—but I’m incredibly grateful they did. I’ve been extremely fortunate that my career has allowed me to make a living doing one of my longest passions.

OO: I’ve been a content creator myself for many years before I even had any success in video editing. In fact, being a content creator as an individual exists for me completely separate from my career as an editor. Where on one side of my identity I was posting goofy comedy TikToks to over 500,000 followers back in 2020, to then in my day to day life, I started working as a very inexperienced junior video editor at a small local creative agency in my home town. I found myself editing for local businesses and creating very bland commercial content for corporate companies, a complete contrast to my digital footprint.

It wasn’t until I started pursuing freelance work for my creator friends that I found my creative editorial voice, that I had some comedic sauce that could be put to use on a bigger scale. That I could be editing for the people I enjoy watching on YouTube rather than local HVAC companies.

Q: What appeals to you about joining VidSummit? Are there specific things about the event that made you excited to participate?

RK: When I started my first full-time editing gig at MrBeast, I felt my world shift. For the first time in my life, I was in rooms full of people who viewed the future of media similarly to me. It was absolutely life-changing to be around like-minded people, when for so long, I felt like I was the only person in my community that believed in YouTube so strongly. I love attending conferences like VidSummit because you know that every person you talk to has that shared value in common. There’s also so much value in connecting creators across channels, genres, and regions. Many folks working in the YouTube industry genuinely want to help each other grow, it’s amazing.

OO: I’ve never ever had any sort of public speaking experience so honestly just to try something new. Never been invited to an event like this so I’m just doing it for the plot.

Q: How has the scope of your job as an editor (or editorial manager) changed over the last few years? Do you think more people are recognizing that editing is a crucial component of content creation?

MZ: I was hired as an editor for Marques Brownlee’s main channel, which is still my primary role. Having grown up watching Marques on YouTube, it’s an incredible full-circle experience to now be the only other person besides Marques himself to have ever edited one of his videos.

One of the great things about working within a relatively small team of 17 people is that everyone is willing to brainstorm, collaborate, and step in to help when needed, so our roles naturally overlap. Over the years, my role has expanded to include assisting with our subsidiary channels and leaving revision notes across the team’s edits. I occasionally help produce and edit the WVFRM podcast so that other team members can take time off, and I’ve also joined the writers’ room for The Studio channel, contributing to content ideation and planning.

I think editing is finally being recognized as a critical component of successful content rather than an afterthought. The downside is that we’re also seeing successful editing trends get copied and replicated across the platform. As more creators adopt similar visual languages, developing an original and recognizable style becomes more important than ever.

OO: I began working for Quenlin Blackwell over 2.5 years ago, being the sole editor for her YouTube channel. She’d film whatever she wanted, would send me the footage, I did whatever I wanted to it, and I sent it back.

In the beginning it was just us two. But since the growth of our show Feeding Starving Celebrities, the team has expanded tremendously. The way we operated changed drastically, with my role shifting from just a video editor to Director of Post-Production, where I began overseeing so much more than just the final cut of our videos, but rather a post-production process that you would expect from a whole network television show. So much more has been added to the process of creating our show, and even with regular videos on the channel. And the editorial team has expanded too, so now I work with and oversee multiple editors to get things done. It’s like I accidentally became important at work.

I definitely think more people are realizing the importance of editing. It can change the final product of a video so much, having a feel for the pacing and timing of everything, let alone if it’s adding a whole other layer of comedy to it. I feel it and see this realization too. I’m constantly being reached out to by creators who are trying to emulate the editorial style they’ve found in Quen’s videos. Because they see how much it adds to her comedy and want to replicate it for themselves.

Q: What are you most paying attention to in our industry right now? What do you think will inform how you approach making content over the next 12 to 18 months?

RK: I have been so fascinated with learning how people’s viewing patterns and behaviors with YouTube have changed over time! I used to be very mindful of how graphics are sized and legible on a phone screen, and now I’m much more in the mindset of editing for TV. More and more, I’m editing longer videos for creators that are performing really well on their channels. I recently edited a video for a client that was over double the length of their longest video, but also outperformed their top performer by 30x.

I’m also very open-minded to incorporating new tech into my workflow, and I enjoy learning how to tell even better and clearer stories in post using innovative production gear. The production team at HopeScope has gotten me into working with 360 cameras and camera glasses, and I love seeing other YouTubers utilize unique perspectives and new tech.

MZ: Our industry is constantly changing, and very little is ever set in stone. I think one of the most important skills you can have as a creator is the ability to remain flexible and adapt to changes in the platform without losing sight of what makes your content unique.

One mistake I see creators make is allowing the platform to dictate what they create. Personally, I find media that doesn’t conform neatly to a box, expectation, or set of rules to be some of the most interesting and enjoyable. Analytics and performance data are important tools, but they can also send you in circles if you let them completely dictate your creative decisions.

YouTube’s recent shift toward “engaged views” versus “shared views” is one example of a platform-level change that could have a significant impact on creator businesses and audience expectations going forward. More broadly, I think there’s a lot of uncertainty about where the industry is headed. I don’t know that anyone can confidently predict what the next year or two will look like, which makes adaptability—and maintaining a strong creative point of view—all the more important.

 

VidSummit is a Tubefilter partner.