Editing Under Pressure

“Where were you when Charlie Kirk was assassinated?” is Gen Z’s 9/11 now.

I was sitting at my favorite coffee shop, Fourscore Coffeehouse, in Roseville, California. I go there several days a week to edit and catch up with local friends. My sister texted me, “Charlie Kirk got shot!”

I opened X, and for the next hour, I was completely distracted from my work. I wish I had never seen the close-up video. It was so horrifying.

But as soon as the news confirmed that the shot to Charlie Kirk was fatal, Live Action asked that I make a memorial video PRONTO.

My friends were texting me asking if I had seen the news. I had to put my phone on DND to block out all distractions.

An edit like this is one of the most challenging editing tasks to take. You have no video to and voice line to work with, and no direction.

What I first did was find a clip of Charlie to use as the base structure of the video. I found a video of him giving advice to a 13-year-old girl about adulthood, which captured his character perfectly.

Next was the music. I have a playlist I’ve been adding to for over a year for Live Action edits. I found “Outro” by Emile Mosseri, which was cinematic and included the sound of a patriotic-sounding trumpet.

After this, most of my time was spent searching for clips for the edit. It was challenging since any time I’d search for wholesome or pro-life moments of Charlie, only the news of his assassination would come up. Thankfully, the Live Action staff was there to help me, and they were sending me clips of Charlie in his best moments.

When I curate clips to use for an edit, I use TikTok and YouTube. They have great search engines. I also use online downloaders to download videos without watermarks.

As I was almost finished with the edit, I found a clip of him at a conference with everyone chanting his name, “CHARLIE! CHARLIE! CHARLIE!” - I decided it would work perfectly to put that in the beginning, with the camera behind him, walking with his daughter on his shoulder.

6 hours later, I sent it to Live Action. Within an hour of posting, it already had 1 million views. In 48 hours, it had 40m views. It’s now sitting near 80m views across all platforms.

I was mentally exhausted. The creativity was drained out of me for the day. I’ve never felt so satisfied.

Whatever you do, strive to become exceptionally good at it. You never know when a moment like this for you to shine will come up.

Charlie Kirk was a great inspiration to young men like myself, and the past week, I’ve never felt so on fire to work for the Glory and Justice of the Lord.

Matthew 25:14-30