Creators love brainstorming ideas.

It’s exciting when you think of the perfect hook and the perfect angle for a video.

Or the perfect format.

But some of the biggest posts I’ve ever had… I almost didn’t post at all.

Take one of my reels as an example, which got 83.7M views (over three years of watch time). Well, I thought it was too simple and dumb to post, but I’m glad I didn’t listen to that instinct.

That experience taught me creators are terrible judges of their own content.

Don’t take my word for it.

My team and I have spent the last week (again) going down the rabbit hole, analysing exactly what trends are currently stopping people mid-scroll.

Short form content data backs this up:

Most ideas aren’t unique. Someone else has already thought about something similar.

Which means the real difference isn’t your ideas.

What feels unoriginal or stupid to you might be exactly what your audience connects with—but you only find that out if you hit post.

Here are are four outliers from this past week, that only Film and Flow Premium members get full access to:

(Members also get access to my full resource vault which includes LUTs, overlays, my Cinematic Transitions Mini-Course and access to custom feedback.)

This week's pattern:

The content that won wasn't complex. It was visually interesting or immediately relatable. None of it needs you to have a big production budget or a perfectly worded hook to replicate the success of.

25.5M views, 1.1M likes, 5,523 comments, 42.3K saves, 23.8K shares.
Outlier Score: 149x typical posts

This is a video of someone building a sand castle on the beach, but you wouldn’t know that right away.

The on-screen text just describes exactly what they're doing, step by step, as they do it. No hook promising an outcome. No "wait until you see this." Just: here's what I'm doing—and you can’t help but to watch.

This goes against all of the gurus who say the hook must promise the outcome of the video. This video does the opposite. It doesn't tell you the outcome. It's basically just saying what he's doing.

But the visual hook is doing all the work.