We were lucky to catch up with Christian Mclaren recently and have shared our conversation below.

Christian , appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

I started my brand, McSizzle Edits, because I knew everyone has a camera these days. Every small business owner has a phone full of footage. They just don’t have the equipment and expertise to edit it into a shareable advertisement. That’s where my business comes in in. I take the amateur footage and polish it up professionally.

This cuts down drastically on the cost It makes it more accessible to small businesses with small margins. Because you’re not paying a videographer to come in rent their expensive equipment and and charge their high labor costs for their expertise.

Traditionally, the videography industry has largely forgotten about the small businesses because they don’t have the money to pay for the expensive gear and services. This is what my company is hoping to change is to make pro edits available to the everyday mom and pops.

The way I explain it is that people people who shoot social media videos on their phone get about 70% of the quality you would get from a professional videographer. The big difference comes in editing where your phone can only handle about 15% of what a professional editor can do with your footage.

Sure you can edit videos on your phone. Just like you can cook Thanksgiving dinner in a toaster oven. But you would rather have high powered, industry standard kitchen equipment.

As AI editing software gets more and more accessible, more people will be able to edit videos on their own. But there will always be a percentage of people who are not using the available technology and those are my clients..

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I rely on people to shoot the authentic moments that happen within their shops. As a professional shooter in the past, i found it challenging to capture authentic smiles and beautiful interactions when you storm a small shop with a camera crew. Everyone’s rushing around the whole time. The vibe is way off. On the other hand a small business owner who’s in the shop fifty hours a week has plenty of opportunities to whip out their phone and capture great footage when it’s happening in real life.

Ever since the pandemic, it’s been 100% acceptable to use cell phone footage for professional purposes. Now people view that as an asset because it actually comes off as more authentic and personal.

One thing people undervalue is the art of editing. People inherently understand what great cinematography is, or what great acting is. But people largely do not know what editing is.

One of my.
Favorite quotes is by Philip.Seymour Hoffman where he describes how the editing is where everything is actually put together:

“The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It’s like going to get all the ingredients together, and you’ve got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake – or not.”

The challenge for McSizzle Edits is to combine individual clipswith text and other graphics to make a professional ad.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I love mom and pop restaurants. For 4 years, I worked on a food show. And the best food comes from the places that have the least amount of money for video services. All of them money goes to buying fresh ingredients, paying their staff well and other essential services for their customers. I want to create an environment where these mom and pops can compete against the big chains with big ad budgets.

I look at small businesses as my favorite plants. They need to be watered or they will die. If you spend your money at a corporate chain, you are starving the small business of essential money that it needs to stay alive. I don’t want America to fall further down the path of complete corporatization. I’m sickened by how I see nothing but strip malls with corporate chains. All of our cute little downtowns are going up in smoke and this is a huge problem. I want to create in America where small businesses thrive.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I started my career as a camera operator. I love shooting. I’m a photographer at heart but now literally 100% of the population has a camera so there is a huge surplus of footage that needs to be spliced together before it is marketable.

I look at this mountain of footage in people’s camera rolls as an opportunity to pivot towards editing, to redefine the videography industry as one that can target people traditionally left out.

People used to pay a ton of money for 1 video that they put on the website. And it was gonna last for a number of years. There’s that has changed With social media. People want a fresh video when that’s 15 to 20 seconds long, and they want a new one every few days to keep their viewers on social media engaged and coming in to their shop.

That is why McSizzle Edits is priced to allow a mom and pop to return at least once a week for a new video.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Mcsizzle.com
• Instagram: mcsizzle.edits