Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Our Favorite Tech and Moments of 2021!

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

It's the holiday season so the team got together to recap what a crazy year 2021 has been for tech (and for us). Marques and Andrew sit down with each member of the MKBHD team to ask each of them what a few of their favorite moments, projects, and tech of the year were. Twitters: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/AdamLukas17 https://twitter.com/hayatohuseman https://twitter.com/DurvidImel https://twitter.com/timmcmahonn https://twitter.com/Mikey_Emerick https://twitter.com/danggvinh https://twitter.com/BrandonJHavard Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ Shop the merch: shop.mkbhd.com Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.ˇ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge betmgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario all right welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts i'm marquez and i'm andrew and we are closing out 2021 with a bit of a shake it up episode. We're changing up the format because we had some fun ideas.

We want to go over them. Yeah. Which are mainly looking back at 2021 and then eventually looking forward at 2022. So today, this week, we're looking back at 2021. And there was some really cool stuff that we really enjoyed that was fun and that we want to see more of going forward um but i think we want we just wanted to look back at 2021 because it was a pretty big big big year for a huge year for the whole team the channel everything we've been doing

we obviously have grown the team a bit we have the studio channel now we have the waveform as a video podcast and as a clips channel and it's weekly as well this year and it's it's constant it's working it's going great and so for this episode we want to bring on some of the team members who have joined actually everyone on the team we're going to have on and we're going to talk through the best highlights of 2021 in the tech and youtube world that's what we're going to do so i guess we'll just start it off. We'll kick it off with Adam. You want to come over here from behind the board?

Let's get it started. All right, Adam, welcome to the set. Thank you. In front of the cameras this time instead of behind. Usually right over there somewhere. I'm over there. I can see my chair. It's empty inside.

You've got the mic on this side too now. So I would describe you as a podcast producer. I say producer instead of editor because it's kind of like the whole process. It's the recording. It's the editing. It's the production, the video, and the audio. It's a podcast producer. I say producer instead of editor because it's kind of like the whole process. It's the recording, it's the editing, it's the production, the video, and the audio. It's a whole thing. All of it. Welcome to the other side of the camera.

Good to be here. I've never been in this room before. It's pretty nice. You've been on camera up here a couple times. We've brought you in for a few little things. So I guess a retrospective would be having worked on all of these podcast episodes now, since the video's launched and everything,

do you have a favorite or one that sticks out as a behind-the-camera person? Yeah, so it's funny. Both of my favorites are not videos. They were from before when we started the video. Because the first one, I would say, is Neil deGrasse Tyson's. That one was amazing. That's like he's one of my idols. So being able to like edit his whole conversation

that he had with Marques in like Retro Tech because we got like the full interviews so I could chop it down for an episode once. That one was pretty cool. So that was like right when you started, right? That was like my second week. You got to come in and directly edit Neil deGrasse Tyson. Like the raw audio where he's like talking to you

behind the camera, like cracking jokes, dad jokes and stuff. That's pretty cool. He must be a fun edit because he sort of just talks in waves and he can sort of go on for five consecutive minutes

on one thing. Yeah. And if you don't edit it at all, it's just kind of like... What do you mean by fun? I just mean like how torture it's very difficult to take time out of a Neil answer because he just keeps talking the whole time some of his points later on are like directly built on points he made earlier in the sentence so like you can't

just chop around it yeah you like take a part out and then like 10 minutes later yeah I need to put that I should have cut that in yep yeah exactly it was part out and then like 10 minutes later, you're like, oh, I need to put that part back in. I should have cut that in. Yep. Exactly. It was really interesting. And then my second one was probably the rise and fall of Boosted that David and I did. That's what I was going to guess. Yeah. That one was insane.

Just the whole process of like talking to all the people that talked to us. That was really nice. And then editing it was mayhem because David and I had never done anything like this before, like together, a full story like this. So we were here till like, I think like three in the morning that day. Yeah. Just like editing. And when we got certain background tracks to like fade into certain things,

we were literally at our desk jumping around like, oh my God, that sounds so good. Yeah. David, Adam, take it away. What's up, y'all? I'm David Amell, and this is Waveform. Today's episode, Boosted to Busted. Adam, take it away. of shrinking down the amount of things recorded into the final video because there isn't that much extra that gets recorded. You know, maybe for the video where I went to Jimmy's, you know, huge studio,

there's a little extra that I'm cutting down trying to fit the story right. But for a podcast like that, there's, I'm imagining a ton of stuff that got recorded and didn't make it in. Everyone we spoke to was an hour long interview. Yeah. And we spoke to like five or six different people.

So you probably cut out like half of the things that were said we said like the week leading up to the edit night we were just setting each other transcripts and being like if there's anything that stands out to you just highlight it in the transcript so we could just find it in the audio and edit it together when we need it yeah it was it was chaos but it was really fun it came together really well i i wonder now about our challenge for doing a video version of it because it was really fun and we planned it around audio and the transitions and the interviews and everything. And now we're doing a video podcast.

And I wonder if there's something like that in our future. But I think that was a really well put together piece. David and I have been talking about how to translate that, something like that to video. And we're going to need a lot of help from Michael. So Michael, if you're watching. Yeah, Michael will do're watching do a lot yeah well we could ask him about it so for everyone who watches on youtube they've kind of come to know you as the person who's putting in all these like little meme worthy like edits or little captions of like kind of

the editor responding to them and people love it do you have a specific small piece that maybe an audio listener hasn't seen because it's in the video or just like something you worked really really hard on for like two seconds of a joke that you remember yeah so there was one podcast i think it was the one that came out on october 22nd it had something to do with thes. And you mentioned something about the land of misfit toys when referring to Samsung products. I remember this one. And that was the first one that I was editing at home on the laptop. So the whole process was like new to me because it's obviously not running as smooth as the computers here in the office and stuff.

So I was at home sitting on my couch. It's like 11 o'clock at night and I'm only halfway through the edit, but I must've spent like an hour and a half trying to like track all the points to make like the, the Samsung Bixby home speaker float by people's faces and everything like that. And then I finished it and I felt so proud and I looked at the time marker and it was like,

I'm a minute 32. I really need to like bunker down and really edit this. Yeah. No, there's so many little things that are like, what is the worst ROI on a moment in a video? Where it's like we spent an entire day on five seconds. Like we've done that before. It's real. All of our robot shots are like five hour shoots.

I think most of that list of worst ROI would be robot shots are like five hour shoots. I think most of that list of worst ROI would be robot shots. I think there's some, uh, some really heavily edited like graphics stuff where it's like, we can, we just try a bunch of different versions of it until we get the right one. Um, but yeah,

no, some of it's, some of it's practical and we'll spend a very long time and it's so worth it. Yeah. And that one freaked me out because we publish at 4am on Fridays and it was like 1130 on Thursday night and I'm still editing and I was like I that was not a smart investment of my time I appreciate it because it probably made my joke actually land where if without it it probably wouldn't have so

thank you thank you for having my back all the time worth it do you have a favorite piece of tech for 2021 2021 the iPad mini hands hands down oh the hands on mini that's a good one hands down easily really yeah well i don't have a m1 pro max whatever macbook like i don't really need it so i didn't really like i wasn't as excited as everyone else in the studio for it but the ipad mini has like directly changed the way i used my ipad like i traded in my pro or i try to i'm still going through that process, but traded into pro, didn't need it, got the mini. It's been working perfectly for me. So how have you been using it? Cause I remember you really debating on getting it cause you love the form factor, but you're a physical notes taking kind of person. And how

has that transition been? Yeah, the pencil for sure. I've been using notebooks and actual bullet journals for like the past five or six years. So like I wanted to be the digital for sure. I've been using notebooks and actual bullet journals for like the past five or six years. So like I wanted to be the digital guy, but I really couldn't get away from the notebook just because opening a book in the morning and sitting down and writing down your tasks and everything is just like an experience. But there's apps like Notability and things on the iPad that make it great. And there's a paper-like screen cover. This is not an ad that works perfectly. I got a, well, now. This is not an ad. That works perfectly. I got a, well, now it's definitely not an ad

because I got a knockoff off Amazon. Nice, nice. Ad for knockoffs. Ad for knockoffs. But it works perfectly fine. It's done well, yeah. Sick. It's going to be hard when we ban you

from looking at your screens in the morning for 2022. Yeah. To be part of this, so. A lot of writing. Unfortunate. Can't do that. Still works for 2021, though. Yeah, so far.

We have another two weeks. Yeah, two more weeks of it. Word. Allortunate. Can't do that. Still works for 2021 though. Yeah. So far. We have another two weeks. Yeah, two more weeks of it. Word. All right. Thank you so much. That was awesome. See ya. All right.

Hayato. Yo. Welcome to the, in front of the cameras. Yeah. I'm introducing everyone who's been behind the cameras a lot to also in front of the cameras because everyone's got both sides. He's been in front of the cameras on the studio. Yeah.

That's true um i would describe you as and you can correct me or add to this if you want as the uh studio channel producer yeah yeah that's pretty much what i've been saying yeah it's like a it's a it's a video planning job a video shooting job a video editing job all wrapped into the one and then we publish and it's all it's a whole thing it's the studio channel it's behind the scenes you guys have seen it you're subscribed i just hopefully hopefully yeah you better you better be um anyway how how's your 2021 been what was your what was your last 365 days like it's been good man i mean i moved to brooklyn we from from indianapolis it's a long way so you know came from the midwest i'm. I'm out here now. We launched a channel.

It kind of, it got pretty big pretty quickly. I mean, we're 600K right now. That's awesome. Doing pretty well. It's been a good year, I think. Well, it's been a bad year. Existentially. Personally.

Personally, it's been a great year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess I want to ask a couple, well, we have some questions about 2021. We're going to go back a little bit for this episode I want to ask though since you started this year you joined the studio you met all of us what was the number one thing that you expected

the studio to be like that it wasn't when you got here oh that's a good question that's not one of the prepped questions just springing them on you I think most things have been pretty That's not one of the prepped questions. Just springing them on you. I think most things have been pretty as expected for me. But I guess one thing, I didn't know how all of us would get along.

I didn't really know you guys personally. I think we met once or twice. Yeah, just briefings. But I don't think I ever had a conversation with any of you guys. I knew Adam and David, we already were good friends before this. But yeah, just getting to know everybody. And I didn't know anything about you guys as just people to chill with. It's a weird, yeah. It's like something you have to think about more as it becomes a team

instead of just like, oh, it's just me and my apartment, whatever. It's a team building process as much as anything else. Because that's another thing for me is like, I've never worked in person with people in the tech field. It's always been a remote job. So it's been a big adjustment, kind of switching over to in person. We're always in the office every week.

Yeah, it's way different when you're constantly only doing work stuff from being in the same space every single like for a long amount of time like you're past some work stuff you're doing more like personal things and everything and it's i'd like to say we've all meshed very well yeah so far i love working with everyone here it's super fun yeah yeah um so out of all the positions we hired for the second channel was is a little different for us it's something we hired for that hasn't been created a little different for us it's something we hired for that hasn't been created yet yeah it's kind of like the least defined position we did so what what were you kind of expecting when you came into the position and what kind of did it meet those

expectations has it been very different i'd love to know your thoughts on how it's been so when we first uh talked about bringing me onto the team like mar Marquez, we FaceTimed basically and just had a quick 10-minute interview. And he basically just outlined exactly what we're doing now, which is we want to do behind-the-scenes videos, obviously, but also do challenge videos, do sort of vlog style, and kind of play with different formats. And I think we've kind of done all of that so far. It's been pretty good.

with different formats. And I think we've kind of done all of that so far. It's been, it's been pretty good. Um, yeah, I think this is, this is pretty much been almost exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, it's, it's a lot to come in and say like, Hey, we're starting a whole nother channel.

It is kind of running point on it. Like, yeah, it's different for all of us. And we're a channel that's so focused on like very specific things at very specific times. We do reviews. We do like pretty specific tech stuff where this was like, there's a whole broad stuff we've never even attempted to step foot in before.

The other thing though about the studio channel is like, uh, when I've, I've done videos for so long and they've gotten more and more planned and more and more you know well executed around what we're planning and so you know i get comments all the time like oh we want to see marquez vlog something or we want to see like the behind the scenes of how something's made or something unplanned or something like that and i like i know i'm supposed to be able to like pivot and stop on a dime and change up things really quickly. But I just couldn't get myself to to suddenly do that type of video again. And so I feel like the studio channel is the perfect place for that. Obviously, that's what it's built around. But it allows us to sort of play with that, the format a little bit more, play with the perspective. And I guess that's the word,

the perspective. Each person can be first person or third person in any studio video. I'm happy to be able to bring a less polished, less professional format to the... It's not even about polish. I think it's less about polish. It's just about planning. It's about like when I shoot an MKBHD video, I think we have this sort of game where we'll shoot all the A-roll and then we'll

guess how long the edit will be. It'll be like a 35-minute talking to camera for a 15-minute video. Where a studio video, I mean, you can speak to this. How long did we shoot for this road trip versus how long the video ended up with a board game? It's a very different ratio. So that's a different, that's the format to my brain. That's the biggest difference between them. Yeah. I mean, I think the road trip was something like 30 hours of footage just between the three cameras we had over two days. It was ridiculous.

Was that your favorite project of the studio so far? Yeah, by far. I was going to ask that question next, but yeah. It was the best one. It's been cool because we've done a lot of different things. We've done short reactions, BTS game videos. We made a parody video one day just out of the blue. Like you said before, you came in and we kind of talked about

accomplishing all these different mediums. And for going on six months, I think we've done almost all of them. We have a couple other ideas, but where the studios come is awesome. I think it's really, really fun to watch. I think it's going to have a huge 2022. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Do you have a favorite piece of tech in 2021?

So the obvious answer is, I'm sure like everybody's going to say when they come on here is like the new MacBooks. They're great. It's a pretty easy answer. Yeah, but it's for a reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I think that is my actual answer,

but the more fun answer that I think I would throw out there is I think the Rivian, the R1T. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You guys saw how anti I was on that. I kind of thought that's how you were yeah yeah it's um you know i've never been like a huge car guy in general i've especially never been a

huge truck guy but um that that that thing was really just so different it did so many things it's so modular it's so uh interesting yeah yeah yeah Like I love the, I love seeing more competition in the EV space. And as much as I do love Teslas, that's not the only car brand that I would like to own in the future. So it's like, let's, you know, let's get more competition out there. The Rivian looks, looks great. Yeah. One Motor Trends car, truck, truck of the year.

Truck of the year. Truck of the year. We have made that mistake plenty of times already. No, I, I think the rivian was my favorite new ev yeah and it's interesting because we do get to see a lot of them like we had what we have we had the hummer here we had the mini cooper ev here we had the audi e-tron rsgt f-150 lightning eqs a bunch of different evs come through the studio some of them we point a camera at some of them will get written up for top gear but i think the Rivian has been far and away also my favorite EV that's come

through the studio that we've gotten to take a look at. And I'm, I'm rooting for it. I know they're not prioritizing it as a company, but I'm rooting for the Rivian R1T. Yeah. That's a, that's a, I like that answer. Well, thank you for that. Thanks for reminding me of how great the Rivian is. Always a pleasure. See you in the next episode. Sounds good. Thanks a lot, Hayato. We'll be right back after a quick ad break and we'll get David on. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express.

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23rd to the 31st, and your gift will be tripled for three times the impact. All right, David, welcome to the 2021 retrospective. Thanks for joining us in front of the camera. Again. Yeah. Hello. Hey. I forgot.

You've been in front of the camera. Yeah, no crazy entrance this time. Hey, well, I could have edited it in, but now that you said it i guess i can't so it's my fault i apologize to all the viewers 100 your fault so we so i want to i'm starting off with like sort of introducing everybody just so we all have the face to the name on the podcast we have a studio channel you joined the team this year and as the position i would describe as sort of a writer researcher script supervisor generator, creator, creative brain helper? I don't know.

There's a lot of words in my head to describe it. How would you describe it and how has your 2021 been? I'm a content farm. That's all I do. I pump out content. That sounds so sinister. Yeah. Actually, a lot of people have asked me, like, what exactly do you do there?

Because I think for like Adam, for example, his job is very obvious, right? Like he produces and edits the video podcast. Hayato produces and edits the studio channel videos. And that's something I've thought about a lot. Like, how do I like measure my success at this job? Yeah. It's very difficult. Yeah.

how do I like measure my success at this job? Yeah. It's very difficult. Yeah. Um, what I tend to tell people is like, well, I have a lot of conversations and I try to like make ideas more interesting than they seem on the surface. Yeah.

Um, it's hard. I mean, like I've been here for a bit too and I've, it's been hard to have like one kind of position and like a lot of it is helping facilitate more conversation and more ideas and while that sounds like when you just say it out loud not that crazy but like it is vastly important to not a traditional name of a position I guess you would say no I thought about that myself like how do I measure my like importance or success at this position but the thing also is is while you're adding all of that, this whole team is wildly talented

in so many different positions where when one member is out, another member can step in. And like we've had almost everyone in here has probably done every job at some point. And that is so, so important. And so the reason why this team can churn out content like we can in such a small team no i think what you hired me for is definitely the the thing that i love doing the most which is just like having like just really like nailing down into an idea further and further until you find the golden nugget in the haystack that's the wrong terminology the needle in the chocolate

yeah exactly exactly um like for example i don't even know if this is a future question you were going to bring up but like for example like the air tags video we did the like apple wins even when they lose that was like one of my favorite i remember we had like a four hour conversation in the studio about that and it wasn't forced it was just all like wait but if they do this and it's just like just extrapolated itself yeah um and so yeah those are my favorite type of conversations to have in general and so when we can have them like together in a studio setting yeah that kind of was one of my questions i mean i feel like the the many minds is greater than one

many arms make light work something something, something, something like, I think the fact is if I were to just keep making videos about my own thoughts, I would, I would run out much faster. And I think when we get different perspectives and different thoughts and different experiences all into one, it makes for much more interesting,

dynamic, different looks at things. And that also was one of my favorite videos. I don't know why I like animal references so much, but like it helped me so much to think about like the way sharks and their little menorah fish yeah yeah remora fish that that was uh happy hanukkah everyone i like that that's what i said yeah i like that we got to do like uh sea research for that video too a lot i also did uh what was the other one planet

there's octopi and another one there's another random fish oh no you had the um the cicada wing for a folding phone that was a good one that was a flex pie 2 so that might have been right before you guys started but um kind of going off that

you're doing a lot of research here not all of it is on like specific things you normally would research cause you used to do your own videos and reviews and everything like that. Is there anything you've like become seriously interested in after you did research for a video and like, just kind of were like, Oh, this is crazy interesting.

And when almost deeper than what you needed to for the video. Um, I don't know if any particular thing, but it is like even just doing basic research, like when we did the like reviewing every iPhone video and just going on the Wikipedia page of that particular model and reading everything about it and then like interlinking to different things and being like, oh, this costs like the equivalent of a thousand dollars when it came out. And then next year it was 300. Like, that's insane. And just like sort of seeing like the trends of a thousand dollars when it came out and the next year it was 300 like that's insane and just like sort of seeing like the trends of things moving i will say when we do the long form podcast episodes which um those have been amazing and i think the boosted board episode even though it was the first one was the most freaking wild insane story that i never ever

anticipated was going to be that crazy and And then it just ended up being like, what? Yeah. Previously mentioned with Adam, but we were like, yeah, how do we do more of these? Because obviously we're video now. So we've done, we crafted this whole thing around audio and we had the voices and the interviews popping in. How do we, as a way, as a video podcast, sort of deliver that experience, but also in a visual way too so that's a new challenge i think we we can take on in 2022 i think it'll be really interesting especially because there are so many of those stories out there yeah um but yeah i think that that is also it's consistently one of our favorite things to talk about for this last year it's definitely something i want to

explore because like it's really interesting you can you have so much flexibility when you only use audio because you can just control the environment so easily and cutting and cutting yeah yeah like when we had like all the people being like casey casey casey casey hey i'm casey nice that and i guess i'm a youtuber i guess i'm a youtuber it's harder to do that with video you can but it's it's different yeah we'll figure it out we have michael he does wonderful things yeah he can i'm sure he can whip some stuff up wizardry yeah so i'm really excited to like dive deeper into some of those ideas um in the coming year for sure we did like two or three of them maybe four but i would like we did a couple i would like to do for sure it was the first year and we're getting into the flow of things and everything um do you have something so you cover a lot of things and like

we're obviously restraint to restrain to covering so many things was there anything in 2021 you're sad we didn't get a chance to cover oh sad sad you had to have cried it's interesting for me because moving from a um only android phone like YouTube channel slash website. For almost five years I worked there, and it was just like phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, phone, phone. And I never really got to cover anything different. When I first started covering tech at a publication, I was doing only VR,

and then I did only electric skateboards for a while. So it was like that, but then switching to Android, it was like just Android for like four years. So even, I tell people this, like I could not have given a less of a crap about cars until I started working here. And then I'm really interested in EV tech now. You own a Model 3 now.

Yeah. Like I just like, it's cool cool being able to cover a lot more stuff and having your horizons expanded. As far as what I wish we covered more of, I don't know. I like that answer. I mean, it makes us feel good that we've gotten to help broaden it.

I think a lot of people don't realize how many EVs we get to experience. And I think this is also true about me. Maybe four or five years ago, I didn't really have much of a foot in the car industry at all. I didn't have that much car testing experience. I think I went to CES

and I was at the BMW area outside and I got to sit in an i3. And they were like, all right, this is the i3 demo. We can drive around this parking lot a little bit. And then to test the object detection, they were like, all right, this is the i3 demo. We can like drive around this parking lot a little bit. And then to test the object detection, they were like here, pointed at this barrier, floor it.

Like, really? And they were like, yeah, floor it. And I floor it and it automatically stopped before getting to this very obvious barrier and my mind was blown. I was like, car tech is the future. It was amazing. That's the reason I think I like EVs

is because they're actually just computers. Yeah. There's a lot of tech in them. On wheels. Exactly. So it's like there's so much more to cover because, I mean, I'm not a regular car guy and the regular car people will probably be really angry at me if they hear me say this. Chill, everyone.

I just feel like regular cars are like you can measure things in terms of horsepower and whatever, but there's just so much more in EVs. This is my, this is my. Don't tag me on with that statement. Hey, there's a lot in both of them. You're all, I know there is,

but like, I, my least favorite thing is the, uh, the car media traditionalist where they're like, well, you don't know anything about cars. So why are you making car videos?

And when it's like, well, you know, those people had to start somewhere too, right? It's not like you're born as the top tier host. So yeah, you kind of have to work your way into it. And I was just's like, well, you know those people had to start somewhere too, right? It's not like you're born as the Top Gear host. So yeah, you kind of have to work your way into it. And I was just saying, like, now we've had at least a new car every month here

just to try it and to have it for a couple days and to live with it and to learn about it. And whether it turns into a piece, a video, a studio channel thing, a short, a Top Gear article, like whatever it is, all those experiences add up to the context we're able to give. So I agree. Their computer is basically on wheels now, and that's a whole new thing we're getting into.

So big fan of that. Do you have a favorite piece of tech that came out during this calendar year? Yes. So, okay, I had to answer this question for a friend of mine the other day, and it was very hard to answer. Okay. for a friend of mine the other day and it was very hard to answer. And I would say,

if I gave like a, I'll give a physical piece of tech and then more of like an idea piece of tech. Interesting. Okay. I like that. The physical one is probably AirTags. And I only realized that this morning.

But I have like- What did you lose? Everything. I lose everything. I have an AirTag on everything right now even though my like the iphone i have is not my like main device i use it sort of as like a remote control it's an air tag hub it's like your metal it's an air tag and apple watch hub it's just like yeah yeah it's like a metal detector yeah um but i lose so many things and airTags to me like I I was a tile user since like

2010 but and I lived in San Francisco which is probably the most saturated tile city there is and even then it sucked and so the idea behind AirTags to me is really cool just because the network is automatically there and it just

it always works and like that is really cool yeah um so that's as a physical product i think 30 for peace of mind on anything expensive that you own is really nice now actual tech that came out this year that i'm like well not physical tech um two things tensor because i'd been waiting for this for so freaking long since like 2016 when the pixel first came out i I was like, this isn't really a Google phone. It's just a rebranded Nexus that Google has

more say in the design of. So like having vertical integration in a Google phone is a big deal. Even though the natural language processing on the Pixel, on like Tensor is like the most obvious and really only major thing that people are

actually seeing on tensor like the natural language processing is so fast that it's keeping me on the pixel even though my pixel is pretty buggy it's so fast that i voice type when i'm at home like yeah 90 at the time i said this in the review but i think I sort of understated it. Like I use voice way more on the Pixel than I do on other phones. It's like it's dramatically better. So, yeah, I'm fully with you on that. Yeah. Also, at the risk of turning this into a whole other podcast, I feel like we're about to see a little bit of a wave of custom silicon everywhere. Yeah.

Like we have the off-the like Snapdragon chip and they're obviously trying to make improvements in these sort of natural language processing and computational photography and stuff like that. But like Apple's showing what you can do

when you have a lot more control over your silicon design and then we'll start seeing like okay now Tensor's doing it and obviously the iPhone's had it for a while and we're going to start

seeing more of that. I think that's going to be something to keep our eye on for 2022. But you're going to say one more thing. Yeah I just think it's amazing that you can tailor well right I was going to get one more thing. Yeah, I just think it's amazing that you can tailor.

Well, right. I was going to get to the end. Yeah. I just think it's amazing that you can tailor your own like SoC hardware to what you want to do on your device. And I think that's going to add differentiation in Android phones over the next few years because like Oppo Group is supposedly making their own chip and Xiaomi is supposedly making their own chip. Anyway, that's done. Other thing, Material You I think is really cool.

It's not tech, but it's tech design. I think it's cool. I think it's a good design direction for Google. Do you change your wallpaper on your phone just to see what Material You will do? Occasionally. I did that a couple. I actually just changed the crop of one of my wallpapers and my accent colors changed and I thought that was interesting.

Interesting. Yeah. It's like the sample area changes. You found the like pixel by pixel. Yeah. Yeah. So that was fun. Yeah.

No, super into that. I think we'll look forward to a lot of this. Keep an eye on 2022 and that's of course what we're talking about in the next episode. But yeah, thanks for joining us in the retrospective, David. Appreciate it.

Thank you guys. I'll be back with a vengeance soon for sure next week next week oh shoot okay all right welcome on tim welcome tim to the waveform podcast tim's coming in coming in hot from his remote location today. So you've got the mic, you've got the setup going. Welcome. Yeah, you guys are in my childhood bedroom. I've slept in that bed and that bed. Both. That is rare.

Is it? I don't actually know. I had bunk beds as a kid. Did you sleep in both? I mean, did you switch nights or I originally slept on the top bunk? Then after a while I slept in the bottom bunk. It's Thursday. I'm feeling like the top bunk.

Yeah. No. Okay. No, it was like I slept bottom bunk with my older brother until he went to college and then we swapped and then the cycle repeated with my younger brother. So I was top and then bottom. I'm starting to realize that I had bunk beds by myself and that was kind of weird. Oh.

But all right. Cool. All right. Let's get to some tech stuff yeah all right so i'm introducing everybody so tim i'm going to describe your position and then you can add or adjust as needed tim is our uh graphics wizard i think i nailed it i didn't i definitely didn't realize how many image manipulation needs that we had at the studio until we had the ability to do them. Like this is one of those things where like I'll talk to other YouTubers

and they're like, oh yeah, I just gave it to my graphics guy and he did it. And I was like, what do you mean? I don't have a, what are you talking about? And then obviously Tim joins the team. You joined this year, right? This calendar year. Yeah, it was in May. Yeah.

And so there's obviously's all obviously thumbnails but there's also like our discord and our our channel banners and our social media stuff and there's just a ton of image manipulation wizardry necessary to make the stuff that we're picturing in our heads and make it come to life is that is that an accurate description yeah let's say that's accurate you could have stopped at wizard and that would have been perfect. Okay, perfect. Yeah,

no, I like it. I think it's good. No, so, so we're looking back at our past year. Obviously 2021

was a pretty intense year, pretty chaotic in a lot of ways, but also a lot of fun. Do you have any favorite, now that you're on the team, any favorite projects

that you've worked on over various MKkbhd channels in the past calendar year oh um okay so favorite project for the studio was making the studio making that channel because you guys were very uh lenient on timing i had a whole month to come up with the branding the logo logo, the look for that, which from my last job is not something that I got. We usually had, if we were pitching a client and we had, you know, a logo or brand package, we had like a week. So it was very hard deadlines, very fast deadlines. So to have a month was like, oh man, I can like sit with this. I can,

you know, see if it works, see if it's something that can like sit with this i can you know see if it works see if it's something that can like expand and breathe and the team will like and so yeah coming up with the branding for that was awesome um for the main channel probably doing the ford f-150 thumb because they got into top gear magazine and that was pretty that was pretty sick uh waveform clips i love i love doing all the waveform clips mainly because like we come up with some goofy stuff sometimes but they're so quick that like it's kind of satisfying to adam will come over with an idea and then we'll just bang it out and then it's done but it's it's it's pretty cool with those and then it's done. But it's pretty cool with those and then main waveform is fun just because I can mash your guys' faces together

every now and then. Dude, I would have to come up. Do we have to explain what this is? We might have to explain these. Explain what you're talking about. I think it'll be easiest if you do it. I might have to put out like a gallery. No, no, no, no.

Maybe we'll do one sample image on the podcast. I'll take the fall. It can be a picture of me. I think basically, I think, you know, you can do a lot of different things for thumbnails, for videos. For the podcast, we like to use cutouts of actual frames from the podcast.

And so we have the angle that's on me. We have the angle that's on Andrew. And so Tim is always working with i don't know five to six screenshots or images from each camera's frames and can easily overlay them very quickly and make us look like a hybrid frankenstein human which is quite hilarious sometimes if i'm right it's usually because you're just using the previous week's thumbnail cut out and then matching us up framing wise yeah like the the sizes of your heads are the same i just have like the new thumbnail on 50 opacity so it looks

like um what was that annoying orange it basically looks like annoying orange where like the eyes are right down next to the mouth yeah and uh it's just it's like left us in tears like so many times it's one of my favorite things to do on accident and definitely on purpose what you were saying before about uh you know coming up with the graphics and logos and a whole visual identity for a brand in a week is it's so kind of crazy to me like if you're coming up with with this whole thing to be sort of representing this brand going forward for any number of years, basically, I feel like you'd want to spend extra time getting it right, getting a couple different iterations down and making sure you feel comfortable with it before putting yourself on a deadline. Is that I guess is that a typical like difference between sort of the previous traditional job versus this one i mean that just depends on studio to studio and client and like i my first internship we were rebranding john free to hair care and we were doing their packaging and that

took i think four months and they went through testing and we went through prints. We talked to the Japanese team. We had a Skype call. Like that was a huge thing. But like the last company I was at was a small studio. We had international clients, but like some of the small clients we had just didn't have big budgets. And when you don't have a big budget, your time is cut really short. And so a week to them is like actually a long time because it's thousands and thousands of dollars that they're investing into these designers. So it just depends. Like,

yeah, you would love to have two weeks and like really talk it through the team, but it's it kind of is what it is. But yeah, there is a big difference between my last job and this one and just previous design jobs like the workload is probably way more at previous jobs and way more consistent like there are definitely days here where it gets really busy but for the most part it's pretty contrasting in workload it's it's a lot lighter here um but i uh oh the another big difference is just not having like as many creative heads above me like an art director senior designer creative director like that's a very big difference between last job and this job and something i like kind of had a hard time grasping in the first month of being

here but like all of you guys is talking to you guys and getting feedback and review like i felt pretty like i was in good hands like this channel has been running for 10 plus years. So it's been, it's been chugging along just fine. So, um, I knew if I asked you guys about advice or if something wasn't working, it would, it'd be fine. Yeah. I feel like my favorite task now is explaining something visually that I want to exist that doesn't exist yet. I mean, I think we have to bring up one of the weirdest things we've made Tim do, which was Marquez's handsome squid word. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. Yeah. So we'll have an idea and we're like, all right, so basically I don't know how to do this,

but what I'm picturing is, and then just word vomit. And then hopefully you understand what I'm picturing in my head and then can create it or use what we've given you to create such a thing and so i don't know if you want to describe the last one but i think basically it was a video thumbnail where uh we had an image of me and we're like we need one of them to be me and then the other one to be kind of like a super exaggerated you know kind of like handsome squid, kind of like that version of me. And then good luck, Tim, and we'll see how it goes. And that's exactly what you made. Yeah, that was probably my favorite project of the year

because getting a creative brief that was like, can you turn me into a handsome Squidward? Anything SpongeBob, I'm in. And it was such a weird thing because it was like all right i can do a lot of stuff with him in photoshop like there's the ar with the faces but it was like that's not enough i gotta make him look crazy weird and so i like googled like beauty apps and there's one that i downloaded that was like a free trial but after a week it's like 30 a month or 30 i can't remember i think it was a subscription week it's like $30 a month or $30. I can't remember.

I think it was a subscription, but it was expensive, but you can change everything on your face. There's like three filters just for your, your chin. And so it was like, I like, yeah,

I took your face, ran it through, saved it, and then took that picture and ran that through. And it just like kept yeah like exponentially getting more handsome squidward so i think what someone called you lord marquand that was good the comments always get me yeah no that's but yeah that one was a lot of fun yeah you we've definitely asked you to do some weird things.

Some things I'm assuming you did not do at your other previous design positions. No, I used to. So when I worked at Apple, I did that to my art director all the time. When he would walk away to go to briefings or something, I would get into his computer and change his background. And I would put him and me in a situation and put our faces on. Like you remember like the Seth Rogen video with, um,

where they did, uh, Kanye's thing with Kim Kardashian, where he's on the motorcycle. Oh yeah. Yeah. What video is that? Um,

found lost me. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember the name of this. Yeah. There's like Joe Rogan. And, um, bound. Lost me. Yeah. I don't remember the name of this. Yeah. There's like Joe Rogan. And, um,

I can't remember his friend that did like the movie. This wasn't something your superiors asked you to do though. I'm getting way off. I'm getting way off topic. I feel like we're giving you things that, uh, previous employees haven't asked you to do, whether you've done them before on your own time,

Tim, that's not here or there, but totally. Oh no oh no they supported it like i would have a review every few weeks with my my boss and he was like hey man you're doing great you know things are really looking good and we love that you're like messing with rob keep it up like a old married couple like no it was like everyone was egging me on but i'm used to getting vague descriptions from like friends that i work with for freelance and like the last job we would just not even get briefs sometimes and it would be like we want you to use this picture and do this and you're like that's it so i'm uh i'm kind of used with having to to um translate things into what i need them to be so i do want to add

a fun fact though so the last job i worked at was called one trick pony and we always referred ourselves as ponies and the interview you did with colin and samir was talking about hiring people to become and like trying to find unicorns and so when i got the job i texted michael's like this pony's a unicorn now i'm so excited i was like i got the horn horn that's awesome now we are going to graduate yourself into a unicorn so yeah or i need that uh that photoshop real quick um i have a question though so what is now it's gonna happen you've used a bunch of different things as like uh you know you have tools on your desk i don't have you have a question though. So what is, now it's going to happen. You've used a bunch of different things as like, you know,

you have tools on your desk. I don't have, you have a tablet, you have a stylus, you all this stuff. What was your, what was your favorite piece of tech to come out maybe in the last year in 2021? I mean,

obvious answer would be like the MacBook, the 2021 MacBook pros, just cause like I'm running a 2015 and like, they're just dreamy. But, uh, my real favorite would probably be like, I don't really care about cars, but the Rivian was a pretty cool car. I think it was like polarizing in some respects, but like, that's what draws people to it.

Um, I thought that was super cool. It was also cause like my parents got really amped about it. My mom just doesn't like cars. So it was like, oh, this is like really making waves with like just generations. So that was really cool. AstroBot was probably like top tier. You're definitely the first person to say that, I can tell you.

AstroBot was like top tier tech because it just brought on waves. Like we saw that and we heard about it launching itself down the stairs and everyone in the studio ran to their photoshop and was like memes i'm making memes and we all just generated like the best stuff so yeah astrobot gets my vote there it is astrobot top tech of 2021. Astro Bot gets a vote. Love that. Alright, thank you, Tim. That's our 2021 year in review with the man, the myth, the legend himself, fan favorite, Tim. Thank you so much.

We'll see you on next week's episode. See you in the next episode. Sounds good. Thank you, Tim. Pleasure as always. We're going to hop on a quick ad break. And when we get back, we're going to bring Michael. You know what's great about ambition? You can't see it.

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and keep your focus forward on what's coming next. Plus, NetSuite has compiled insights about how AI and machine learning may affect your business and how to best seize this new opportunity. So you can download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform, netsuite.com slash waveform netsuite.com slash waveform. All right. Welcome Michael to the 2021 retrospective. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me.

So I guess I'm, I'm starting everybody's off with a, I'm going to give a description of what you do and then you can add to it or refine it or whatever you want to do. But I'm going to, I'm going to call you Michael are our motion graphics wizard. I think you like wizard a lot. Yeah is a good good inclusive word magical because really again it comes down to like all right we have ideas and we have things that we were picturing in our head that we want to turn into actual content that other people can can consume things we picture and have no idea where to even start at making if we had to do it.

Yeah. And so we try our best to translate those ideas and deliver them from within through the power of the internet to you across the country. And then you take that and somehow deliver it back and in a world of technology are able to create magic. It's great.

Yeah. I think I nailed it. Magic. I love it. Yeah, the internet is a big part of that, isn't it? Considering that I've been in the office with you guys like a total of one time, right? Right.

Yeah, no, it's definitely about, and it's about not only just being able to translate that stuff, but also passing files back and forth a lot is just an exercise of like, what's the most efficient way to do this? I think we'll just go upload this to dropbox or slack or something like that and then pass drafts back and forth and then like screenshots of motion graphics before we're finishing them and then finally passing the final file back and forth but uh yeah how was your how was your 2021 and how was your what was the maybe your favorite stuff that you worked on

during this past year yeah um i guess favorite stuff i've worked on this year i mean for sure the studio intro has to be a big part of that um it was just so cool to like start from scratch like we've done so much with the mkbhd brand um and moving forward and being able to create this entirely new style with the help of tim of course um shout out to tim who you just interviewed and i heard was hilarious um great um but no uh being able to start from scratch with a completely new style i mean the textural elements and the colors and everything has just been completely blown out so we've done a lot of really fun stuff with it i think at one point when i uh rendered that stuff out i gave like three options at the very beginning and it was like a super safe one that

was like almost black and white sort of newspaper printy looking texture and then went all the way to like insane colors like no real color palette just an explosion of colors and like that's the one we ended up going with so i was like okay sweet at first i was like i didn't need to present that uh the range probably but no it was good so, that was a lot of fun. Yeah. I think one of the coolest things on the studio intro is how when you guys brainstormed it, like you and Tim obviously worked very close with this together,

is that you've incorporated something into it that's a little different than the MKBHD channel in that you added a bunch of assets that we can then replace and make in reference to the video. So like we have ones with Mia, you guys just did a holiday one which is awesome that is like gumdrops and candy canes and stuff like that and yeah you've done all these really really cool things with it do you have a favorite asset

you've created or animated so far in there i think um you mentioned it but mia has to be my favorite on that one i think it's just like it's probably pretty obvious yeah i like yeah yeah because it was it was fun to have like you know i started with a still shot i cut it up into like segments so that it looked like you know i could rotate the arms and make it look like it's a video of her or something like that um but her do you guys call her her i do for some reason immediately now we don't know about the bigger one yet but the thing is i know that's we we are calling it mama that's yeah i think mama mia i feel like it has to be a her again just for that reason on the note of that if we need to we need to place mia with mama mia we do need to give you an updated photo of that so it can be yeah

for sure. But no, and then, of course, the other thing making that fun is the most recent intro. I couldn't resist putting a Santa hat on top. Yeah. Which would probably like make it malfunction. But you could probably actually probably get caught in the gears. And it would be a mess. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm going to I'm going to guess I already know the answer, but let's do it anyway. What was your favorite piece of tech to come out during 2021? Ooh, you already think you know the answer. I think I know the answer, but I'm going to let you say it. Okay. For me, it is the M1 MacBook Pro. Called it.

Is that your guess? I called it, yeah. I was saying, this thing is like, I feel like we're trying to not say it too much and not give it too much praise, but as media professionals, this thing was right up our alley. I'm not shocked that it's everyone's favorite

thing, but yeah, clearly it was great. Yeah, I was going to preface my answer with I would guess that probably I'm not the only one that said that. Multiple people have said it as one of their things and i think they've been like i'm gonna think of something else as well because it's like so easy but i think you probably are one of the people that are you you have one right not yet we've tested so we've we've tested different specs and we're we've decided on a spec that will be the new. Have you?

Yes. I'm so interested to see how it changes your workload and stuff like that, because you are someone who's working through some massive, massive rendering. And also, I'm someone who works on a laptop 100% of the time. So I don't, I mean, I, we originally, like last last year or whatever, we were talking about my setup. We talked about Mac pros and macro pros and stuff like that. But honestly, like I am someone who loves the change of scenery and loves being able to. Well, back in the day, it used to be like go work in a cafe or something like that.

But now it's more so like if even just leaving from my office desk to the kitchen table to the living room couch like i just i need change of space and like being able to be flexible i like that i can be in an airport on the way to somewhere and like render something or like fix you know yeah i've never really been tied down to a desk with a desktop so i'm i'm not ready to do that so but then when i saw this come out i was like oh shit here we go i can i can make this happen i mean and that's not something that like in your field of work motion graphics usually needs a lot of computing power so that's not something that's been like very possible and this is why you said you have been doing it this is going to make it

far far easier and maybe way more people doing motion graphics to be doing how you been doing it this is going to make it far far easier and maybe way more people doing motion graphics to be doing how you're doing it yeah i feel like most people are using like built pc desktops for my work of my line of work but i just got too sucked into mac os to begin with and then um yeah just the portability i've just i've been struggling through but now i think it has paid off because eventually i'll have one of those bad boys in my hand and we'll be good and we can get you a new mouse too and silver yeah yeah yeah you like how i'm always not that darker space gray stuff we get that silver stuff um i'm always like trying to tiptoe i'm like i'm like if you already have one that you're sending me it's okay if it's space gray. But if you're going to buy one,

please God, make it silver. Yeah. No, I kind of was experiencing the same thing. I edited the 20 questions with Mr. Beast video. We shot that in North Carolina, of course, where he's at. Imported it all there. Started editing it there. Continued editing on the plane back here.

And then have been editing in various rooms like around the studio and my own house over the weekend until like bringing the plane back here and then have been editing in various rooms like around the studio and my own house over the weekend until like bringing the finished edit here which is something i honestly don't think i've ever done with a video before um and yeah the change of scenery is kind of nice so i've uh i can relate i can relate this it's like we can't stop talking about this laptop because it's so good at so many things that we do but i know that'd be like if an amazing camera came out like there's no way we wouldn't talk about it i know it makes me mad because you're like we can't just keep giving apple credit here but at the same time i'm sure there's plenty of people with this one if you can't give apple

credit for this then i just i don't know how to get into how to convince you otherwise. That might have been my favorite genre of YouTube video this year, which is notoriously Apple-critical YouTube channels trying really hard not to give Apple too much credit for this one. The anti-Apple contrarian take, I didn't see a lot of them for this, and that just shows you how good this computer was. Yeah, it was really fun to watch those videos for me, and probably for Apple, to be honest. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of good stuff there. Honestly, also, as far as specialized workflow stuff, I just want to give your setup right now a shout-out real quick. So we've got you recording on your iPhone for the podcast, but then hold up your watch, because the viewfinder's still playing, right? Oh, it's gone? No, it's happening.

It's happening. Yeah, it was pulled up before. There it is. So you're using the rear cameras on the phone. So there you go. You can see the actual shot from the watch. That's pretty special. We appreciate that.

I was like, yeah, I can't be the only one with a webcam. Sorry, am I allowed to cuss? Is that a no you're good yeah also now tim's the only one with the bad webcam so congrats tim got him thank michael for that sick well yeah we're gonna we're gonna talk future in the next episode but i think it's safe to say uh pretty much everyone here has really liked the new MacBook Pro so far. For sure. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah, yeah, sure.

So we've asked you to do some kind of wild things, at least wild things we think of, at least. And some of them are like, if you think about the road trip, like he had to do a crazy map of everything. Do you have like a hardest thing we've asked you to do? It's funny you teed it up that way uh i was going to turn around to you and say ask if you had a guess of what i would say again but you already said it yeah the funny thing is is like i make i think that might be the hardest but then i also just have no idea like when you send stuff to us we just think it's like magic so we don't know i would kind of maybe the thing

about the the stuff i'm sending like i i feel like i kind of have an idea of how it would be done meaning i took one motion graphics class in college like i have a fundamentals of after effects i have a i understand like if i had to do this stuff myself subtract the design element of it just keyframing and moving things around, I could do it. It would just take me a really long time. Yeah. That being said, when I sent you all of the instructions and how I was imagining this map and all of the different things moving around and panning and showing exactly how this road trip went, I honestly, I'll admit, I didn't know how to do it at all. I didn't, I wasn't sure if you'd come back and say, listen, I have a different idea for

how to do this because honestly, this is a little too complex and we probably can't get this done. Yeah. And you did exactly how I was picturing it, which was like showing the different progresses of the different cars around this thousand mile loop of three different cars at once and where they charged and where they took pictures and all of that. And yeah, I'm not shocked that that was easily the most complex thing i probably should have told you that it was too hard to do no because that just sets the bar higher for more

things i know i'm remembering now like the the spreadsheet i had to send you of every car stop and how much they added and everything and yeah that definitely had to have been the hardest it wasn't a technically difficult like as far as like after effects like abilities that was not a technically difficult one but it was the gathering of data from like six different places which you guys did a great job of like providing but it was still just like you know the like person one car stops at like 9 30 a.m next car stops at like 9 45 a.m but it's like slightly up like geographically is like here versus there and then like the nut the extra layer of all of that was like the gas tank range and the or the gas tank it was a lot of information yeah yeah and on top of that with the batteries and everything and it was like i would get like um you know with one car stops

um at a gas station that doesn't mean that it's at zero it's like at a quarter tank so you have to like make sure the little meter things at like a quarter but then like the tesla stopped and it was like 10 miles remaining and i'm like well what is 10 miles on like a circle chart you know what i mean so it's like so that was like an interesting thing also um i wasn't there so like that level of like putting all the pieces together it was it was a challenge to wrap my head around at first but then like once we got halfway through it was like okay i get this it turned out pretty cool i'm excited about it that's awesome i love the way it turned out i honestly don't think there was a better way to explain what happened in a more

succinct information dense understandable way like i can tell people how the road trip went as me explaining it to the camera but you don't really get to visualize like the whole point of the video is figuring out how far behind you get based on the method of transportation and maybe it's just because i'm a visual learner but that was the best way for us to illustrate that that we possibly could have come up with for a youtube video well what was interesting is like for the viewers but also for ourselves even like i i didn't i knew how it was going to turn out how it was going to look but but you kind of glean new information from seeing it that way. It's pretty interesting. Yeah.

Well, we're planning on maybe doing another one. So maybe with the, you know, we have... Take a vacation that week. Yeah, electric trucks. We might do another version. Who knows? But I think there's some SQL potential from this one for sure. You should do electric trucks, but like all off-roading

oh god well don't give us too many ideas uh thanks for thanks for joining us on this retrospective and uh catch you next week for our future looks that's good all right we've got vin and brandon on at the same time, we've got a little quad camera setup going, which is, we don't use this very often, but here we are. We've got Vin and Brandon on because not only are you both insanely talented on your own, but sort of like a dynamic duo, sort of like Daft Punk, sort of collaborating and making the best possible thing.

Yeah, one of us explodes by the yeah have you both on at once take your pick um welcome to the waveform podcast first of all thank you so been here before they have been oh yes i think once or twice we've never done the camera no no for video you're right we've usually been on the other side but not not in front of the camera so yeah this is a camera thing So we're talking 2021 in this episode and some of our favorite prediction, or sorry, some of our favorite things we've worked on,

favorite parts of the year, stuff that was good or memorable about the past 365 days. Does anything come to mind? Does anything jump off the page for you guys? Oh, by the way, I'm supposed to describe your role in the MKkbhd studio which i want to condense it as much as possible to like cinematography masterminds because that includes uh set design that includes camera work that

includes b-roll that includes intros which is a whole another umbrella that includes motion graphics and color and sound design so it's a whole bunch of things that all end up making the videos you watch better anyway how's your year tiring yeah i would agree with that alone yeah it's i mean it's been it's been a fun year though i mean it's it's amazing how the pandemic has sort of made us kind of figure out how to make the at home in office thing more creative and, uh, more interesting. Um, because largely before this, we were traveling a lot for different types of videos and now we're here in the office a lot. Yeah. It's hard to feel inspired when you're not going anywhere exactly there's no influence but it is a it's a new office i mean we only got a month or two last

year like in this new space so like this is the first year we really had this all set up which for you two is like tons tons more shooting space and let alone a dedicated robot room which is yeah for you two which is definitely the most fun. I mean, that's been a game changer because, I mean, Studio B, which was our robot top-down kind of like sometimes set room. It was like very long and kind of awkwardly shaped. So like you could do some stuff, but not much. Now we have this whole entire room,

which is so fun because not only do we have a massive robot, which I know is kind of a, to be discussed later. But we also have just so much more room to play with colors, toys, props, so much more, you know,

room for activities. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So so that that's probably for me my favorite room so far also top down room which is uh cool to have like its own space and like we bring new props into it all the time it's it's been really fun but yeah yeah i forgot that top down and robot room were the same room uh-huh i don't know we had to walk the entire building to get to it every time it was also like our furniture holding place so just like throw like all the couches in there right right good times so yeah a little more spread out a little more room it also gives me like the the mental throwback of like when i shot in my college apartment you know 10 by 10 room like you can only shoot for so long in that room

before you've seen every corner, every angle, every possible way the lights could look like that got exhausted very quickly. So you could create a 3d render in your head of that room from watching the videos. Yep. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Um, so yeah, what do you have a, let's go with like, do you have a favorite project that you worked on this year from 2021 videos? Yeah. I want to say AirTags, specifically the intro, because like, honestly, it doesn't look like much. It's a little circle and you have to make something magical out of it.

We saw the AirTags demo from Apple, their introduction for it, and the guy reaches down into the couch and falls into the couch. We were like, this would be so cool if we could somehow put the audience into the backpack and see the AirTag as if they were one of the props. The discovery moment for that perspective. And we shot that. So that was Komodo, right?

That was Komodo, yeah. So we put the Komodo in the backpack. We put a light in the backpack. We put the other props arranged in the backpack. How did you monitor? A banana for scale. A banana for scale in the backpack. I think there was probably a monitor connected into

the backpack but then outside so you could see in we had my phone oh that's what it was that's what it was so that was i i did really like that intro and that moment in the video was pretty sick what did you have a separate one a different one? I mean, I think the intro this year that was definitely the most exhausting but really rewarding was the iPad intro that we did. The M1. The M1. It was two days of questioning if any of it was going to work. Or if it even made sense.

Exactly. I feel like that happens the whole entire time when you're shooting these intros. It's like, yeah, this makes sense in theory, but once it actually hits the editor, who knows? Um, but that was, that was a lot of fun just because like Vin and I had been talking about it for, for so long. Like I remember being on an airplane and like drawing it up and being like, I think this makes sense. I sent it to you. And then we got back, we like hit the ground running. I came back with a track.

Exactly. The track definitely helped. I think that was like definitely the, the perfect example of like, like the relationship between us. Just like, yeah, like working very well,

like communication without communication in, in a certain respect. But yeah, it was like a full day of shooting. And then the next day was like purely edited and, uh, but it came together. That's a pretty quick turnaround.

Yeah. For, one of our favorite intros of all time. Exactly. And how did you guys do that again? Cause it was like the pencil drawing on the iPad, right? Yeah.

It was the magic pencil. I think it was like those four different lenses that we used for that whole entire intro Lowa was the MVP giving you that like super wide first-person device perspective. Yeah, so that was a Apple pencil strapped on to a wooden camera magic arm Mm-hmm, and I gaffed it to like the moment because it had a quarter-twenty at the end. And so that flat surface on the Apple Pencil was perfect for it to not wiggle around. And so I held the Komodo and just drew out on the iPad.

It looked like you were holding the pencil, but the pencil was just connected right in front of the lens. And the second-gen Apple Pencil has a flat edge, so that was the way that we held right in front of the lens. Yeah. And the second gen Apple pencil has a flat edge. So that was the way that we like held it in place and straight. I think that was also a really fun project because that was the first time that Tim sort of became instrumental when like entering the intro. I think that was the first one he worked on. So he like,

I basically gave him this very simple prompt, which was like, just like design me like a little, um, like motion graphic for like M one iPad pro. Yeah. That was just, it was a top down title.

And I'm expecting Tim to just like, I don't know, like spend five minutes on something and be like, okay, how's this? He spends like probably five hours. Just like crafted like a real original, like handwritten.

It was at that moment that I knew that Tim was the best person ever. So yeah, really fun intro though. Yeah, I think some of the craziest things when you look back at like even just trying to define online video production in general, like there are movies at a super high end. There are YouTube videos at the other end and then somewhere in between there's like spending 24 hours on a

12 second intro and I kind of like that in between it's a nice it's a nice little medium happy ground where I think we live right now which is a good time and these two have perfected it yeah this is where I can only imagine are going to go to bigger and better places in the future yeah With a couple extra toys

we've gotten recently. Wink, wink. Yeah, Colossus. We should just talk about Colossus for a second real quick. I think technically this counts as looking back to 2021.

Yeah, it came in 2021. So I'll just describe it. I'll just explain what it is. We've had Mia. I mean, first of all, we went out and shot with motorized precision and had no intention

of getting one of the robots until we used them and loved them. And then within two months, we had one. So Mia is a three foot by three foot industrial robot arm connected to a computer that talks to an Xbox controller and we can keyframe and build camera moves into it. And we didn't feel, I don't know, would you say you felt limited by it?

I don't know if that's the right word to use. Yes. Super limited. But it was really, like once you start using it, you immediately became aware of a bunch of other things that you also wanted to be able to do.

There's a bunch of pieces of tech like that. But essentially now, the one that we've finally upgraded to and started sharing on the studio channel is a six foot by six foot, I believe, robot arm of the same thing called Colossus, colloquially known as Mama Mia, because Mia was smaller and this one's bigger. And that now moves both smoother, faster, and further, harder, better, faster, and stronger than before. So that's the new tool in the studio,

and we've begun orchestrating shots around it. We could probably even talk about what we're shooting today, which is our first full-orbit shot, which is kind of sick. It's actually more than 360, right? It's a little over. It's like 410 degrees, actually, just because we're going from one side fully to the other side. Get with it, Marquette.

Almost 420. Almost 420. We didn't want to go as meme-y quite yet. But we couldn't even dream of an Orbit shot on Mio. We could barely go from the power button on a smartphone to the volume rocker. That was the thing with Mio for me, though.

As much as you could get fast moves out of it, there was also a lot of post-production that was necessary to get a lot of the jittering out. It was also like interrupting the shots that we figured we could pull off. I feel like we probably scrapped a couple shots too because of just how shaky they were. I'm thinking about that one charging intro,

the wireless charging intro that we tried to shoot. It was like... That whole video was scrapped. Yeah. It all started on a bad note because of the intro just being so shaky. It was just, yeah. And it was just one move too, like a simple up. Yeah.

Yeah. So the MIA robot, it's an older piece of hardware, but it's belt-driven on the inside, which essentially had it click every couple of steps, and that little bit of click was amplified at the end of the arm, which is where the camera is. And Mamma Mia does have some new, I don't know if it's hydraulic, but it's not belt-driven.

It's much smoother, and that reduces a lot of the pain after we shoot of smoothing things out because it's already kind of incredibly smooth once we shoot it. So that's pretty cool to see. Yeah, I really enjoyed shooting with the robot, and I think we're going to do a lot more. I don't want to overuse it. I always say this.

I don't want to use the robot for every video, but I do like it. I mean, it's for the podcast. It's been even easier to make moves on this, so it's going to be used more and with these two I was just thinking like you guys probably have old ideas you could probably bring back

that we couldn't do with Mia. Definitely. I haven't thought of that but it'll have some fun stuff. I'm pumped for 2022. I've been having so much fun on this and then when these two tell me what to do

it just gets even more fun. Sick. But before we end we're asking everyone what their favorite piece of tech was for 2021. Who wants to go first? I feel like we have the same answer. It could be the same answer

to most of them. Wait, go ahead. Tell us what it is. MacBook Pro 14 inch? Yeah. Oh, 14. Specifically. Yes. Okay. Interesting. That looks different. I'm going to go with Raptor. The Raptors.

You have to explain now. So why 14 over 16? Just being able to one-hand it and carry it around. Docking and the power, it's very close to the 16 when you're editing in Final Cut, and you're editing red raw. And so I wanted the absolute best Final Cut and you're editing Red Raw. I wanted the absolute best Final Cut machine and the

smallest possible take around form factor. That's what it is. It's much more portable. I went with the 16 personally just because of my extra editing real estate. But every time I hold the 14, I'm like, this is great. This is really nice.

Okay. V-Raptor. V-Raptor. So we've been shooting Monstro for a couple years now. Maybe the longest we've ever gone with a single sensor and body combo. You like Raptor. I do. I mean, I personally just find it really cool to see technology come down so significantly in price too. True.

Oh, yeah. It's literally half the cost of Monstro. I think even more than that like oh yeah once you add like attachments to monstro it's also just the fact that like like i've had to deal with dsmc2 for a long time and and seeing so many like parts detach and like having to readjust things because everything is meant to be swappable um seeing a body like this that's very much all in one where there's less moving parts less stuff can go wrong it's just making

things a lot easier and a lot more reliable and also autofocus is kind of promising I'm rooting for it because it's got some headroom it's got to get a little better but the fact that it has it at all is I would never dream of shooting anything aut of focus with monstra so agreed and i also like the image straight out of raptor really a lot oh yeah the colors seem just a little better a little

better a little extra dynamic range it's a good time all right well i think that's a good place to end it we also have to talk about our own but thank you vin and brandon for joining us on the 2021 retrospective thank you see you next week yeah you'll be on next week too all right so that's the whole team yeah just us left we haven't given our favorite stuff of the year yet so i think we might as well close it out with that do you have a favorite item or maybe favorite tech or project i do and actually my favorite project and my favorite piece of tech of the year are the same thing so you know nice short little answer to get you on to christmas a little soon sounds like a

pop quiz kind of favorite favorite item of tech and favorite video to work on the same i'll let me preface this by saying it was the most fun video we worked on this year i think so that should give it away a little bit what was that uh fpv drone by dji nice super super fun video flying that thing was insane um podcast listeners who remember know I crashed it so you know that's a pretty awesome experience you're the only one who's technically had that experience no one else it was it was it was terrifying I was the only one who crashed it I think we kind of wrapped up the video around that. So not anyone else got the chance.

But we still do have them. And we were just talking before about how we should probably race them at some point. Yeah. Maybe not me, but. I think it should be a, we need like to structure it in some way to make it good fun to watch. But we definitely should build some sort of obstacle course and race them through it. It's a perfect studio video. Yeah. We got the goggles and everything. It's just, yeah, that is one of my favorite pieces of tech of the year

I put that in my favorite tech of the year video, which is probably coming out there at the same time in this video So yeah, it's probably the most different thing. We really got to experience I mean we do cars and stuff like that, but that we've done drones But this was just like drones on a more fun level and it was just a blast to work on so i have a couple random awards i want to give out okay i've just made up some awards just now that i i think pertain to the year are the trophies on uh overnight shipping it should be we should have trophies for these all right number one i'm going to give out is the most seamless video shoot of the year award and we i give out this award because every year we have plans

for how a video should go and then inevitably something gets, some wrench gets thrown into it, basically. Whether it's travel or arranging the device or the thing we're making a video on or actually shooting it or maybe a robot shot takes way too long. There's always something.

There's always something. So I'm giving the Most Seamless Video shoot award to the rivian r1t that one because we shot with a phone we shot it with a phone but not only that like okay we've had a couple cars here that we want to shoot videos of and inevitably there's some wrenches like remember when the hummer was here we had both of the hummers here and they were like don't breathe on this too hard or it'll melt like we had some precautions to take I think when we had the e-tron we didn't even get to make a video about

we've had a couple other cars here the Rivian they brought it here for us to check out for a day and a half so we basically had an exclusive I lived with the car and they literally encouraged me to push it around they were like hey you see that hill over there? Go drive up it.

Come on, drive it. Try to break it. And they really wanted me to like try all these things with the truck, which was fun. And then on top of all that, yeah, we shot this whole thing in ProRes on an iPhone 13 Pro Max and the edit was smooth and seamless. I mean, the whole thing went as good

as it could have possibly gone. So the truck was cool. The product was cool. And the video was cool. The product was cool. And the video was cool. It was great. That was awesome. So I'm giving that award. Most unexpected backlash award.

Oh. Of a video. I don't know. How did you just come up with this? I have one that just came to mind that I remember. Is it? It's not blind smartphone, right? That always has like some, a bunch of people telling us how to run it. Of course. Of course. It wasn't remember. It's not Blind Smartphone, right? That always has a bunch of people telling us how to run it.

Of course, of course. It wasn't that, though. It's not that. It was the Tesla Bot Explained video. Oh, I guess I'm not surprised. That one was always fun because I gave my relatively pointed opinion, which is that human-shaped robots are not efficient at all and don't really have a place in our world where i do believe in specific task enabled robots that look nothing like humans

yeah or just like automation in general yeah and the entire uh i guess elon musk fan community or just general supporters of anything they ever announce, especially Tesla. I mean, people are like literally worship that stock, came at me and they were like, no, this is the way, this is, Tesla bought us the future. It's gotta be humanoid.

It's got everything you said is right. So, you know, what do I know? I'm just a critic. I check out tech products and I give what I feel based on what I've seen, but we'll have to see. Maybe I'll be wrong, but I'm giving my unexpected backlash. I'm more upset that I didn't think of that.

I've come to the point where I wish I could mute anyone with dollar sign TSLA in their bio on Twitter because it's just like there's just so much blind defending. There's so many things that are fantastic about Tesla, but there's plenty of things about every company to critique about. And those fanboys just seem to be on another level recently it's which is a great transition to my uh best performing videos award okay i have a best i mean that helps you probably have a really good hint now but uh oh i have two actually best performing video with the most views and best performing video with the most ratings which best performing video with the most ratings,

which are two different videos this year. So the best performing, best performing, which one do you want to guess? I think I can guess the best ratings and it's because the video is about ratings is my guess. Okay. Yep. Yeah. So the best rated video came out a month before the end of the year. It's my dear YouTube video,

which was just talking about how they got rid of the dislike button and how that's not a great idea. It has 500,000 likes. Wow. It's absurd. It's half a million people. Is that more likes than PS5? I feel like PS5 is our like kind of benchmark. That's sort of the benchmark.

Or the Samsung Fold's first ones were pretty crazy numbers. But those didn't even have that many engagements. No, yeah. PS5 was wild. Let me look at PS5. PlayStation 5 unboxing, I'm assuming, is the big one. Opening that up. That has 577,000 likes.

So that's more? Yeah. I mean, this is top five of all time we're looking at right now. That's crazy. Really good performing videos. But by views views the most uh highly performing video was actually my tesla model s plaid impressions video when we got it about four months ago that video has 10 million views in four months um so speaking of like

rabid tesla fans they're they're on it they're on it i mean i fully intend to like actually review the car i've had it for a while now i've put gosh maybe 20 000 miles on it. I mean, I fully intend to like actually review the car. I've had it for a while now. I've put, gosh, maybe 20,000 miles on it. Have you put 20,000 on that already? I think so. So I've really enjoyed it, but full review is definitely in the works. But those are some random awards I wanted to give for 2021. Awesome.

It was a good time. I think that's about it for this year. We have one more episode we're gonna put out next week which is wait wait i wanted to interrupt go for it i have a question that's not on the list for you guys okay what was the best and worst thing about doubling the team this year best and worst thing about doubling the team that's a that's a really i actually have a great uh numerical anecdote for that um i'm scared of this. No, I set the goal roughly for 100 videos.

Okay, that's usually our goal. For the year. And last year, I think we had something like 113, like something crazy like that, where it was like, oh, wow. Not only are we making better videos, but we're making more videos. Huge success.

Can't believe we're getting this good. Let's do even better this year. And this year, I look back, and we're right around 91 videos right now and i first saw that number and i was like dang i think you know spending extra time on like team management and project management and things like that actually brought the output down the videos are really good yeah but the output went down but then i realized there was that but there's also all the studio channel videos, all of the podcasts, and all the podcast clips.

And I think combining all of that, it's probably at somewhere like 160 videos. And I'm really proud of all of what we've done from building the team this year. So that's both my upside and downside, is I have to reframe success a little bit because we sort of unlock doors that didn't exist before by having more on the team. I mean, if you think we're going to come like coming out of 2021, only nine videos shy of

a hundred, whereas a hundred has been like the most we've ever really hit before. I think we just went over it maybe last year, but then launching podcast video and launching studio, like that's wildly successful. That's awesome. I honestly thought we were going to be a little lower than that. Seeing we still made it out of that, that's awesome. It's a good time. I think the best things have just been like, it's been nice to have workloads off on different people

and being able to make everything more efficient. Working as a team is super fun. And working as a team together just outputs better quality in general. I really think the channel's done that this year. I'm super proud of the podcast. I'm super proud of the studio channel. And then the main channel is just getting better. I can't think of a worse.

That's, that's like honestly hard. I'm not even joking. I can't think of. I also put you guys on the spot. Yeah, a little on the spot. I gave all you guys plenty of time. That wasn't pre-approved. We don't have any other things.

No, yeah. I think 2022, you'll see a lot more of the same types of ambition. And January might be kind of underrated. Like there's kind of a lot happening in January. I'll say worst. I don't think I'm Mac's favorite at the office anymore because there's so many people that pay a ton of attention to him all the time. Is it attention or food?

It's food. No, attention too. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Mac is a lover of all and I get jealous sometimes. So that's the worst part about having a bigger team. Fair.

Well said. Well, catch you guys in a week. Next week, we're talking 2022 predictions, hopes, dreams, foresight, crystal 2022 predictions hopes dreams foresight crystal ball crystal ball yeah all that stuff it's coming up wavelength we'll catch you guys we'll catch you guys in that video and then see you next year peace waveform was produced by adam alina we are partnered with vox media and our intro outro music was created by Vain Sil.