The midnight mayhem series is a group of currently 3 Begleri edits present on my Instagram @xjlgdc_ at the time of this post, I have uploaded the 3rd instalment of this series one year after the other two. This is something I wanted to revive for a long time now and thanks to quarantine I have had the opportunity.
A lot has changed since last year, from my editing style to my general skill level. This blog post is mostly a self reflection on my work but could also help others to understand my creative process and hopefully help them with there content.
Midnight Mayhem pt1
This edit was one of my very first when I started to have a respectable skill level in Begleri, some obvious downfalls are visible such as the over exposure on the dual clips at the start of the edit yet im stratified with it overall. Back then my editing style was full of overlays, broll and visibly zoomed out clips cropped into squares or rectangles, a style inspired by some of Braxton’s posts but also a fairly common editing technique in general. (example) < also inspired by that Braxton edit is that two-handed combo thats in my edit.
Midnight Mayhem pt2
Only a couple months later, this edit shows mostly the same style of editing as my first edit with some differences such as a intro and outro making it fall full circle. This is something that I love to do in my edits thanks to the auto play function on the instagram phone app, once the edit is done it seamlessly repeats itself. The intente behind my editing is to bring people places so things as simple as intro and outro helps to set the scene from the edit. I would highly recommend trying it out, without going too far it is a “Begleri” edit after all, a simple jacket off and jacket on like I did in this video is great. As for the content, most of my tricks at the time where inspired my Braxton and Keitxro_ both insanely talented slingers.
Midnight Mayhem pt3
The latest addition is by far my favourite for various reasons. Firstly the quality, pt1 and pt2 when shot using an iPhone 6s with the slo-mo and flash, whereas pt3 was shot with my new camera Sony a6300 and a massive outdoor light, one thing to note is that you don’t need an amazing camera to make good videos that iPhone 6s had many problems and didn’t have the best quality but It still turned out fine. Secondly song choice, often times I see edits with songs that don’t fit in properly not only in the Begleri community, my biggest tip would be to start by picking the song first even before planning your combo or recording as it’s important to have a clear idea of what you want the finished edit to look like and one of the most important parts is the music, for this one I picked an instrumental version of Ninety by Jaden Smith on SYRE. In addition a found a fun voice sample that fits perfectly from Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest. Thirdly editing, as I said before I love creating environments for each of my videos, in this one I not only made and intro and outro with the turning on and off of the light but also showed the environment I was in. Lastly combo quality, this edit has a raw clip of about 43 seconds of compact slinging with many different tricks, including my own creations and brand new tricks. Both slo-mo tricks are the two new ones that I wanted to highlight, yet most of the other tech tricks are problem mine too. In today’s meta tech or anti-flow tricks are very common amongst the community yet can be very hard to master, even some Begleri Gods are having trouble keeping up!
In the following weeks I will be making more tutorials on some of my favourite tech and anti-flow tricks and maybe some go to combos to help people fit there tech in combos and edits.
This has been my breakdown of my Midnight Mayhem series which I will definitely be continuing in the near future, I would really appreciate it if you could check out some of my other edits on my Instagram and I hope this helped to understand how I make my edits and inspires some to make there own.
Much love to the whole community,
Stay active,
Jeremy
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