image of an editing setup with MrBeast on the screen.
Dialogues, News, Primers

The MrBeast Cheating Controversy Shows Your Kids How Editing Tells the Story

UPDATE 8/6/2024, 3:48 PM EST: Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast, made a huge leap to Amazon Prime this month with his Beast Games, a YouTube-ified version of The Squid Games. But with great budgets – and liabilities – comes greater scrutiny, and the word from Beast Games participants is that conditions were unsafe. According to these reports, poor food and medication were controlled by the crew, and elements of the production allegedly felt unfair.

Donaldson’s team blamed the CrowdStrike failures and a number of other issues, and future productions show no signs of slowing down. Follow here for updates as the story develops.

MrBeast Told One Story; His Competitors Tell Another

Even challenges with clear winners and losers can be changed in the editing room. The allegations that Creator Rosanna Pansino has recently brought against MrBeast’s Creator Games 3 shows us an important lesson for kids to learn about YouTubers so they can view their favorite channels critically: sometimes a video is entertaining but does not present the reality of what happened.

In 2021, MrBeast and YouTube collaborated on Creator Games 3, where they engaged in a wild game of hide-and-seek in a stadium, with the winner getting one million dollars for their subscribers. The top three winners in the video were shown as Logan Paul, Larray, and Zach King, with King ultimately taking the prize.

Rosanna Pansino, a baking and lifestyle YouTuber, also competed, and she now claims that she placed in the top three and has proof on her cell phone. She was very proud of herself for placing so high but shocked and disappointed to learn that her achievement was edited out of the video altogether.

“Keeps it Real”– Unless His Friends Lose

Pansino alleges in the H3 podcast that once Mr.Beast’s pal Logan Paul was eliminated, Paul became one of the seekers and ultimately filmed to look like he placed in the top three. She further unveiled that Zach King technically broke the rules by hiding in the ceiling.

Now, I’ve expressed my mixed feelings on MrBeast here and here, and any regular reader of OutThink knows that I am no fan of Logan Paul. However, objectively, we can still use this situation as another example of how editing often dictates what YouTube viewers– including your child– will see as truth.

Dialogue: Editing Can’t Change Who Wins, Right?

The short answer is that editing can change anything and everything. The editing process is the final piece of storytelling.

Chil Kong, a producer at Nickelodeon, told Out Think in an email, “From the script to filming, every creative decision is set up for the moment we go into the editing room and tell the story you’ve been creating, building for the last year. Editing is taking all of those elements and finishing the story. It is often where stories go to find its truth. (emphasis mine)”

Introduce Your Kids to Russian Filmmaker Lev Kuleshov’s Effect

Documentary Editor Jason Decker also sent us a great description: “As editors, we can (and often do) change the perceived emotions of our subjects based on how we compare them against other shots. In scripted work, with actors’ performances, this is just a regular part of our job. In unscripted or documentary work, it brings into question certain ethical guidelines when one significantly changes the audience’s perception of emotion, or even of actual experience, from what actually happened. (emphasis mine)”

In fairness, MrBeast is certainly not the only creator who uses editing in this fashion. Decker described the Kuleshov Effect, which he says is the first rule the editors learn. “Named after the early Russian filmmaker who discovered it: Lev Kuleshov…[he found that] he could use the same shot of the face of a man with a non-descript expression, and depending on the shot that followed (Kuleshov used shots of a bowl of soup, a child in a coffin, and a beautiful woman), the audience would read different emotions into the man’s experience… even though it was the exact same shot of the man every time.”

Jason Hellerman offers up the perfect example of this effect in nofilmschool: the Pixar/Disney movie Inside Out, where “Everyone is constantly reacting to the way the girl feels and in different ways. This is not only a genius use of the Kuleshov effect on the plot, but also an incredibly deep read on audience perspective and complex characterization.”

For our extensive coverage of Inside Out 2, click here —>

Regular OutThink contributor Shelley Delayne recounts seeing the Kuleshov Effect in action. She was filming a scene with the entire cast and crew in hysterics, “but when screening the rough cut, the scene didn’t get so much as a tiny giggle. Totally flat. Then the editor went back in and added a couple of seconds to the scene — a shot of actress Tracy Elliot raising an eyebrow in reaction to the line of dialogue. Turns out, it was the *reaction* to the line that made it funny. And without the editor including it, the film audience didn’t get the punchline. The people on set had seen it, because it happened that way, but it’s the editor who controls what the audience sees out of what is filmed.”

More Editing Examples to Show Your Kids

Other examples you can use to show your kids that editing is just as important if not the most important, part of creating a YouTube video:

YouTube Challenge videos are no different than reality TV shows. If you watch LEGOMasters, for instance, it’s easy to tell who will win or lose each episode if you analyze the stories they tell about each contestant and when. If we suddenly get a sob story or meet a contestant’s family opening the door to hearing how much they love their family, there’s a strong chance that the contestant will win or lose that episode.

Show them the videos Zach King creates: he is an editing illusionist. Everything that is “magical” about his tricks are editing. He wouldn’t be a special guest at The Magic Castle, is what I’m saying. No shade to King, however, because his videos are truly well-crafted and fun.

If your child is interested in video games, especially how they’re created, the YouTube Channel Extra History explains it well! Note that one of the core examples of the Kuleshov Effect is how it can turn someone from grieving over a child, to hungry, to “dirty old man,” so adjust for your family as needed.

So Did MrBeast Cheat?

Even if the allegations are true, there was likely a contract in place that participants had to sign off on to be there, giving up control of the final product. Pansino has said that she is mostly upset because of how MrBeast always claims to be authentic and genuine, and that his challenges and giveaway are 100% real. That will likely be your child’s reaction as well.

It’s important to help your children become literate regarding editing and storytelling techniques as they get deeper into YouTube, and we haven’t even touched on AI deepfakes yet. The more they know about the storytelling process and understand that everything is edited in some way, the better they can evaluate for themselves whether something they see is truth or simply entertaining.

Read more: Shiloh & Bros: The Antidote to Obnoxious Gamers

Photo/Image Credit: Canva & Shutterstock

Read our Fair Use Disclaimer

Sources:

Discover more from I watch YouTube so you don't have to.

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Leave a Reply