Margaret Atwood Teaches Creative Writing - Masterclass review

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Length: ~4hrs, 23 lessons

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

My one-liner takeaway: You don’t have a compelling story until the pattern of normalcy is broken; something has to happen.

Margaret Atwood is responsible for giving the world The Handmaid’s Tale (now a hit show on Hulu) but also for other novels that force us to pause and think about our own world, despite being a writer of fiction. To successfully create these kinds of universes, she has to strike the balance between something that is too complicated and just complicated enough to be brilliant. For budding writers, she suggests that they study the structures used in classical stories (e.g., Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Arabian Nights, etc) in order to successfully create deviations from them. One example of a deviation is trying out different perspectives of a narrator through trial and error, even asking yourself whether the narrator should know more or less than the characters in the story. In terms of character development, she stresses the importance of keeping the reader engaged. A successful character is one that the reader (and perhaps even you) can’t anticipate the next moves.

She also gives some practical tips on what to think about if you’re interested in reaching a wide audience. The beginning of your story is the most important, and there’s a good chance you won’t know how to write the beginning until you’ve written most of the manuscript. While the reading of your story is linear, the writing process shouldn’t be. When talking about the conclusion of a story, she calls out that unlike in previous centuries, modern audiences are more accepting of open endings rather than having it all tied up in a bow. My favorite part about the course was her explanation of speculative fiction, which takes elements of the present and extends them out to the future. The horrors of the world in The Handmaid’s Tale, she notes, were all trends that she observed at the time of the writing. I hadn’t realized it, but this was a genre that I loved quite a lot (1984, Brave New World, etc) when I was in high school. While I wish I had gotten exposure to her work earlier, but I’m happy I ended the course with a few new books added to my reading list.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Margaret Atwood, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Ken Burns Teaches Documentary Filmmaking - Masterclass review

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Length: ~5hrs, 26 lessons

My rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Nothing else comes close to teaching you how to put together film like actually putting together a film.

I’ve taken more notes on this Masterclass than any other I’ve seen so far. Ken Burns uses the entire five hours effectively to share his theory around documentary film as well as the practical advice on the craft. He is a big proponent of getting in there and making something, rather than poring over books to figure out how to make the first step. Your first film will be your best teacher as he says. The course has plenty of case studies where he walk through various drafts of his past films, explaining why certain choices were made. In between these demonstrations, he provides thoughtful guidance like his warning that filmmakers should feel comfortable holding contradictory story lines, as the collective truth is always more telling than the singular truth. A successful documentary filmmaker’s role is not to find some kind of objectivity.

This kind of a nuanced approach to history allows Ken to connect the dry dates and names of history with an emotional narrative that brings the dead to life as he likes to say. He says that he uses the same framework and tools of storytelling that a feature film from Martin Scorsese would use for a blockbuster. I understand what he means by this. Despite the fact that the outcome is known (he is repackaging history), there’s still an arc that has suspense, drama, and leaves room for surprise. Ken goes into detail on a broad range of topics, covering pitching ideas, fundraising, scripting, scoring, interviewing, editing, researching, and more. It’s a great use of five hours especially if you’re a fan of his work and are curious to hear how the magic is made.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Ken, check out his course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Natalie Portman Teaches Acting - Masterclass review

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Length: ~2hr30min, 20 lessons

My rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Acting is an exercise in empathy, so being good at it requires you to be sensitive to your character, the crew, and the environment you’re in.

Natalie notes that her young start into acting allowed her to take on the perspective of a learner more naturally, given the lower expectations everyone had from what a child might know. She encourages us to take on the same perspective, absorbing information like a sponge. In order for her performance on camera to flow comfortably, she spends a lot of time researching, even citing YouTube as a reliable source of learning. She strongly emphasizes focusing on the psychological arc of the character, the dynamic between the other characters and yours, and how your character thinks the other characters are thinking of you. It’s apparent that while others may be playing one-dimensional checkers, Natalie’s playing three-dimensional chess. I later learned she has a degree in psychology from Harvard. Makes sense.

Natalie’s course is full of extremely practical tips, even with a set of exercises that can be implemented by anyone who hopes to be a better actor. She’s extremely good at articulating complexity, and it feels like she’s speaking casually to a friend at times. One of my favorite moments is an actual demo in a fictional scene that Masterclass set up. She acts and breaks the fourth-wall occasionally to provide commentary on why she did something. The course really showed me that it’s not like the camera starts rolling and magic just happens with the people on set. There’s a whole lot of thought to every decision, an entire process for understanding your character’s mindset, how they may use props, and how they want to represent themselves inwardly vs outwardly. Acting can seem like a very abstract art form, but in this course Natalie helps provide a layer of almost scientific thought to the craft.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Natalie, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Dominique Ansel Teaches French Pastry Fundamentals - Masterclass review

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Length: ~3hr30min, 17 lessons

My rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Once you understand the fundamentals and master the precision, what makes baking fun are the opportunities for creativity.

I’ve known of Chef Dominique since my food blogging years and from walking past his SoHo bakery on my way to work, sometimes stopping in for a pastry whenever I needed the boost. I eventually noticed the multi-hour long lines snaking around the block and the super-stardom he enjoyed for bringing the cronut to the world. I found it all a pretty stupid fad. No food is worth waiting hours for in a city like New York (almost anything is delicious if you wait long enough), and it seemed most of the joy of a cronut was from telling your social media circle that you scored a box. I never let my cynicism carry over to how I felt about Dominique. I still think his DKA pastry (Dominique’s Kouign Amann) is one of his best. It just doesn’t have much of a hashtag-friendly name.

From the first lesson, it was clear that Dominique would be a great teacher. He doesn’t come off as flashy and seems quite humbled to be behind the camera. In the telling of his background, he attributes much of his success to taking risks and always leaning into the hard problem he’s presented with. The first pastry he teaches is how to make a madeleine. Despite how basic he makes the process feel, he brings a tremendous amount of passion in how he describes the steps and what makes for a perfect one. Throughout the course I felt like he was extremely patient with me, which is weird to say since I could pause him at my will. He fills those repetitive moments mixing dough with fun stories about his apprenticeship. One favorite moment is when he shows a contraption he jerry rigs together by combining a power drill with a hand-cranked apple peeler to help his staff create fruit tarts in the autumn. Another great moment is where he shares that every single day he has his team of chefs around the world send him cross-sectional photos of their croissants so he can maintain quality control. He shares a few of those photos and points out what improvements they could have made. There was nothing in the course that I felt I couldn’t make right after the video ended. It was a reminder that the attitude of an instructor makes a huge difference in how well you end up understanding something.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Dominique, check out his course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

St. Vincent Teaches Creativity and Songwriting - Masterclass review

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Length: ~2hrs, 16 lessons

My rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)

My one-liner takeaway: The ultimate goal of a songwriter is to serve the song, and the only way to do that is to be open to trying out all those ideas in your head.

I’ve listened to and enjoyed a few of St. Vincent songs, maybe just one or two. She’s a Grammy-winning solo artist and is very popular amongst the NPR-listener crowd. I might say she’s this generation’s David Bowie, but I don’t know enough about Bowie to make that assertion confidently. She starts off the class by saying anyone responsible for taking an idea to completion can benefit from this course. I wouldn’t go that far. Most of her course is her (sometimes brilliant) ramblings on her songwriting and editing process. It’s clear that it all makes sense in her head. She might struggle to find the words, and resolve to play a tune to make the point, finishing with a nod to the camera as if to say “there, you get it now too.” Some of her ramblings don’t land very well, like the firm assertion that happy songs are trash or other pretentious musings about the identities of St. Vincent and Annie Clark (her actual name).

Although I found much of the course awkward due to the lack of a structured thought process, there were some pieces of wisdom in there and it helps that the videos are regularly punctuated by her crooning vocals and masterful guitar picking. For example, for songwriting she gives the very practical advice that your song should have some epiphany, a realization for either the narrator or the listener. Another great tip was to play with an instrument you’re unfamiliar with to break out of a creative rut. Throughout the process of editing, she asks “does this serve the song?” and ruthlessly subtracts but isn’t shy to try something weird just for a sec to hear what it sounds like. Finally, another great point she makes that’s applicable to anyone is to be open to learning and putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation. She notes that the first time she worked with a choreographer, she resisted any attempts to do funky dance moves by insisting she couldn’t play at the same time. Eventually, she learned to love it and realized how emotionally powerful movement could be for her performances.

If you’d like to hear it directly from St. Vincent, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Joe Holder Teaches Fitness and Wellness Fundamentals - Masterclass review

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Length: ~2hr30min, 12 lessons

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

My one-liner takeaway: A healthy life is about a lot more than just lifting weights and looking good.

I hadn’t heard of Joe Holder before this Masterclass. He’s a master trainer with Nike and an extremely wholesome and thoughtful guy. Throughout the videos he explains his philosophy for personal fitness and wellness. His holistic approach goes beyond the aesthetics and focuses on understanding your values. He does focus the bulk of the course on physical exercise paired with a primer on nutrition and an articulation of the importance and meaning of recovery. The course includes three half-hour long workout sessions focused on mobility, strength, and HIIT.

Joe explains much of what I’ve already known in simple terms for an audience that may not have nerded out on exercise theory. Unlike most trainers at gyms, he doesn’t introduce complicated movements or have the listener feel boxed in with diet restrictions. Instead he provides simple frameworks that are easy to remember and apply. One area that I’m glad he touched on was evangelizing the value of quantitative and qualitative data. I’ve found this to be one of the most game-changer adjustments to my routine. Here’s a template of my log on Airtable (you’ll have to make a free account). I would’ve loved an additional hour of non-workout content, but overall thrilled that this was made available.

If you’d like to hear it directly from Joe, check out his course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

David Axelrod and Karl Rove Teach Campaign Strategy and Messaging - Masterclass review

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Length: ~5hrs, 24 lessons

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

My one-liner takeaway: You can’t possibly get everyone’s vote, so be strategic about how you spend your time, funds, and energy.

It’s an unusual pairing, seeing Karl Rove and David Axelrod sharing a screen with a shared message. Rove and Axe were the masterminds behind the successful presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively. It’s immediately clear that they both have a deep respect for each other. Regardless of how they feel about each other’s political leanings, they emphasize that there’s much to learn from the other guy. The course breaks down the lengthy campaign cycle, the process nuances that go unnoticed by the public, and the emotional grind on the candidate and staffers. Rove and Axe take turns covering a broad and comprehensive set of factors and challenges a campaign will need to address: opposition research, debate prep, using media, target messaging, and more. Throughout the course they occasionally break away from the instruction manual and speak directly to the viewer, stressing the importance of getting involved with a campaign in any capacity.

Running a campaign involves being able to direct research, pivot decisively, communicate effectively, anticipate headwinds, conduct deep analysis, and having strong leadership. In many ways, it’s no different than running a large company, except with more pressure and an accelerated timeline. They broke away from the script near the end, when discussing the current state of politics. Both Rove and Axe acknowledged that the election of Trump had a negative impact on our democracy, but they seemed to blame the opposing party for the mess we’re in. It almost felt like watching talking heads on CNN. The course is quite thorough, but felt overly academic and textbook-like. It is dense subject matter and the do include several case studies to ground the rules and theories in reality.

If you’d like to hear it directly from David and Karl, check out their course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

Kelly Wearstler Teaches Interior Design - Masterclass review

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Length: ~2hrs, 17 lessons

My rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)

My one-liner takeaway: The choices you make designing a room help tell a story about the space, the intended use, the history, and its inhabitants.

I started the course with an appreciation for how good design can enhance the pleasure of a meal or even the reading of a book (see the hardcover copy of 1Q84). I hoped to understand the basics of designing my apartment space to maximize my enjoyment with the minimal amount of effort and dollars. I wanted to 80/20-rule the learnings from the course.

Kelly’s course is maybe 10% applicable to people like me, while the rest focuses on how to be a professional interior designer. I found a lot of it un-relatable as all of her clients have multi-million dollar spaces and likely gush at the idea of having bizarre art furniture for the sole purpose of showing off to other rich friends how their one-of-a-kind light fixture was designed by so-and-so. Despite my disappointment, I found the class enjoyable. Kelly does a great job articulating her process in a short period of time and goes out into the field to explain why and how a certain choice works and what effect it has on the viewer. She’s spot on and sometimes it feels like she’s reading my mind. If I was an aspiring interior designer, I’d get a lot of inspiration in the lessons ranging from the use of color, patterns, light, the legacy of a space, and gathering ideas from other art forms. For the layman like me, understanding what the heck she means by “the colors in the room should have a dialogue” and creating a singular focal point with a hierarchy of statements was oddly practical and enlightening. I left feeling that the course could have been twice as long and there’s a lucrative opportunity for someone (or Kelly) to teach an ‘interior design for the common person.’

If you’d like to hear it directly from Kelly, check out her course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

RuPaul Teaches Self-Expression and Authenticity - Masterclass review

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Length: ~2hrs, 16 lessons

My rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)

My one-liner takeaway: Choosing to present yourself as you truly are can create moments of magic.

RuPaul’s Masterclass is bursting with messages of self-love, confidence, and joy. The course kicks off by wiping the slate clean, with Ru noting “we’re all born naked and the rest is drag.” While the material is targeted toward helping future queens be their fullest selves, I found much of it to be relatable to a broader audience. Ru’s words have powerful emotional resonance, whether the subject is how to deal with childhood trauma, transforming fear and insecurity, or adapting to failure. Even though every line is delivered with impact, this was one of the most joyous of all the classes I’ve taken. Ru’s distinct and beautiful laughter permeates throughout all of the lessons. There isn’t any pretension in the presentation, and there’s even a moment where Ru gets tearful when sharing the journey to sobriety with the help of therapy and friends.

A tremendous amount of material is covered in just two hours. Ru also invites David Petruschin (Raven) to go into specifics about applying makeup and making the transformation happen. I found it all fascinating, since this was far from the world that I move through. There were some practical tips on how to pose for a camera that are applicable to all viewers. Ru would love it if all men would please stop putting their hands in their pockets, and offers tips on what you could do with them instead. If you forget the advice, just remember when in doubt “chin down, long neck, chest out, shoulders back.”

If you’d like to hear it directly from Ru, check out Ru’s course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.

David Lynch Teaches Creativity and Film - Masterclass review

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Length: ~3hrs, 13 lessons

My rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)

My one-liner takeaway: David Lynch is creative on a level few people will ever feel comfortable reaching for.

David Lynch has been described to me as a ‘filmmaker’s filmmaker’ and the adjective ‘Lynchian’ has become a part of our vernacular, rising to the same eponymous ranks as ‘Kafkaesque’ or ‘Proustian.’ All of this is a result of David’s unique style of storytelling that draws in adoring film buffs who float among us with an inflated sense of sophistication. From the start of the course, he swims in metaphors to try and articulate concepts and it is immediately clear that he thinks about the world very differently than the rest of us. In between sips of coffee and puffs cigarette smoke, he shares some practical advice for how he approaches a project (casting, lighting, sound) using examples from some of his iconic works like Eraserhead. However, most of his lessons is so abstracted that it’s almost useless. David is an intuitive creator and doesn’t articulate well how to replicate his creative process. It just happens.

He does provide a bonus chapter where he encourages the audience to practice transcendental meditation, which would allow us to experience unbounded intelligence and happiness' by allowing our mind to travel through states of matter. There are very real tortured genius vibes emanating from David Lynch, and if he wasn’t so successful we’d all dismiss him as a crazy person. I wasn’t sure what to make of him, but I found it all pretty fascinating. It seems like he’s speaking a language only he understands. I still remember the feeling I had after finishing Mulholland Drive, realizing that I had never seen a movie quite like it. David Lynch is a rare soul, and despite his obscure perspective he doesn’t come off in this class as the aloof and brooding type that you’d expect.

If you’d like to hear it directly from David, check out his course here. As of now there are over 100 instructors to learn from, with more being added every week!

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This review is part of a larger series, where I try learning from every single course within the catalog. Find my full list here.