January 28, 2026
UPDATE
Behind Kyle Hanagami’s :br(l):viral dance creations edited :br(l):with Ultimate Lower Professional
New clever options roll out right this moment with Apple Creator Studio
Director and choreographer Kyle Hanagami doesn’t sometimes watch his outdated dance movies. However there may be one exception: a dimly lit stage efficiency that options eight pairs of dancers controlling glowing orbs of sunshine as they glide via Hanagami’s emotional choreography. “It’s a chunk of my coronary heart that I left on the web,” he says, describing his 2017 YouTube video set to Adele’s “Love within the Darkish.”
Hanagami not often seems onscreen on this video, and that’s the best way he likes it. Regardless of his larger-than-life social media presence — over 7 million followers throughout YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram — Hanagami prefers to remain behind the scenes. “I’ve a little bit of stage fright,” he says.
However his presence is deeply felt via his collaborators’ motion. Right now, Hanagami’s choreography credit embody eight years of labor with world Ok-pop sensation BLACKPINK and the 2024 film Imply Ladies. His first massive gig was serving as supervising choreographer for Jennifer Lopez’s Las Vegas residency in 2016, and he’s at the moment choreographing Disney’s stage adaptation of Zootopia.
Self-taught on iMovie, Hanagami transitioned to Ultimate Lower Professional in 2009, discovering that skilled instruments might give him full inventive management over how his work was skilled.
“I’ve all the time been an early adopter of know-how,” Hanagami says. “Ultimate Lower Professional allowed me to consider extra than simply what I noticed within the digital camera.” He credit the app with serving to to pave the best way for his profession as a choreographer, equipping him with the manufacturing chops and social media savvy to translate his craft right into a beloved model.
It wasn’t all the time this fashion. Hanagami enrolled at UC Berkeley as a pre-med scholar. One natural chemistry class later, he switched majors — and was searching for one thing extra when he stumbled upon his first dance crew. “We’d rehearse exterior with a growth field and use the home windows as mirrors,” he says. “I simply fell in love with dance. It actually took me someplace. It wasn’t intentional.”
Hanagami’s on-line ascension wasn’t intentional both. A dancer enrolled in his early dance lessons in San Francisco posted the primary movies of Hanagami dancing on-line. As soon as Hanagami noticed the demand for his choreography, he started taking part in round within the dance studio and recording his personal lessons.
“I didn’t have a digital camera crew. I used to be simply utilizing my digital point-and-shoot digital camera,” Hanagami says. “Now individuals have a lot extra accessible to them with iPhone. They’ve a cinema-quality digital camera within the palm of their hand.”
When he first began utilizing Ultimate Lower Professional on his MacBook, he shortly noticed how the software program would stage up his work, quick. Over time, important updates to Ultimate Lower Professional have helped alleviate the “grunt work” that sometimes comes with modifying, giving Hanagami again much-needed time to create. Quick AI options like Magnetic Masks permit Hanagami to make fast changes as a substitute of rotoscoping body by body, and Sensible Conform shaves off time when he’s filming in panorama however must make a social media reduce.
New options rolling out right this moment in Ultimate Lower Professional and with Apple Creator Studio — the groundbreaking assortment of inventive apps designed to place studio-grade energy into the palms of everybody — will solely additional improve the flexibility of creatives like Hanagami to comprehend their creative imaginative and prescient. Logic Professional makes music manufacturing simpler than ever. Now, artists can supercharge their workflows with clever instruments, like Stem Splitter and Mastering Assistant, permitting them to give attention to their inventive course of. Pixelmator Professional makes it straightforward to edit pictures and create hanging graphics throughout Mac and iPad, enabling anybody to effortlessly customise vector designs or typography.
“I choreograph to music so deliberately, so with the ability to edit with that very same intentionality is so vital,” he says. Utilizing an AI mannequin from Logic Professional, Beat Detection — accessible right this moment in Ultimate Lower Professional — permits Hanagami to immediately analyze any music observe and show a Beat Grid, so he can create fast-paced movies that shortly and visually align his cuts to the music. “After I have to loop a observe for my class movies, I’m capable of line it up a lot quicker with Beat Detection as a substitute of manually wanting on the waveforms and inching it over.”
For Hanagami, these instruments have had a direct impact on his inventive output. Forward of Imply Ladies manufacturing, he shot the primary sequence on his iPhone to make sure that eyelines and angles labored with out being weighed down by heavy digital camera tools. As soon as the choreography was in place, Hanagami was capable of transfer ahead simply with a transparent visible of the top outcome, and present the studio an instance from the set.
“Modifying goes hand in hand with what I do,” Hanagami says. “In case you’re all the time considering from the attitude of a static perspective, you’re going to be restricted within the vary of potentialities. Understanding the chances of what a digital camera and software program can do lets you assume greater.”
Within the studio, Hanagami experiments with Stay Multicam utilizing Ultimate Lower Digital camera and Ultimate Lower Professional for iPad in an effort to seize quite a lot of angles without delay, as seen in his members-only dance tutorials on YouTube. “It’s tremendous straightforward,” he says. “You possibly can actually hook up every thing and have it sync for you so that you don’t need to sync it after the actual fact. After which you’ll be able to simply click on via and edit it by tapping.”
For Hanagami, Apple’s ecosystem isn’t only a assortment of instruments — it’s tightly built-in into each step of his workflow. From sketching on iPad, filming on iPhone, modifying in Ultimate Lower Professional on Mac and iPad, and sharing throughout platforms, every gadget is integral for each step of his course of.
“Having my iPhone with me always has been the most important sport changer,” he continues. “As quickly as inspiration hits, I’m able to movie, and that has allowed me to only be on my toes always. When you’ve got such a loopy life, it’s actually vital to seek out issues which you can depend on. And I discover that each among the many merchandise that I exploit, but additionally the those that I work with.”
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Apple
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Apple
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