🎥 Hot Ones

“I’m Sean Evans and you’re watching Hot Ones - it’s the show with hot questions and even hotter wings."

Hot Ones raised the bar for web series. The show just concluded its 19th season and has accumulated 10s of millions of views, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon.

If you’re unfamiliar, Hot Ones is a YouTube series in which celebrities are interviewed while eating increasingly spicy hot wings.

The show’s format provides a unique, casual atmosphere for interviews that seem to help the celebrities relax and open up. Sean and his team also do an immense amount of prep for each guest.

Most of Sean’s interviewees exclaim through coughs and beads of sweat that “they’ve never been asked that before,” or “WOW you really do your research!”

So aside from the slightly masochistic entertainment factor, what makes Hot Ones stand out?

Internet-First Edits

If you watch any sort of daytime or late-night talk show, the format is pretty standard. Smiling, jovial host, familiar set, maybe a live band?

But the bones of these shows are rooted in traditional television.

Moments turn into memes accidentally on traditional interview shows, created by viewers after the fact.

Because Hot Ones was built for the internet, the editing team incorporates memes into the show itself.

If someone has a particularly dramatic reaction to a wing, the editors will do a slow zoom, or a red-tinted overlay to emphasize the heat.

The real magic of Hot Ones however, is in the sound effects.

Low, punctuating bass notes, high-pitched humming, and reverberating echoes all help to illustrate the pain of the wings.

Rarely does one wing go by without at least one sound effect. It keeps you engaged, and heightens the comedy of the situation.

The show also has a stellar lineup of music that’s almost always rolling under the interview - the intensity and drama increases with the spiciness of the wings as well.

As you’re creating your own content, try focusing on the sound effects rather than the visuals. If you could only rely on sound effects, how would your pacing change?

How can you elevate the story?

Have an Elite Week,

Hannah

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