Director and choreographer Kyle Hanagami doesn't typically watch his old dance videos. But there is one exception: a dimly lit stage performance that features eight pairs of dancers controlling glowing orbs of light as they glide through Hanagami's emotional choreography. "It's a piece of my heart that I left on the internet," he says, describing his 2017 YouTube video set to Adele's "Love in the Dark."
Hanagami rarely appears onscreen in this video, and that's the way he likes it. Despite his larger-than-life social media presence - over 7 million followers across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram - Hanagami prefers to stay behind the scenes. "I have a bit of stage fright," he says.
But his presence is deeply felt through his collaborators' movement. Today, Hanagami's choreography credits include eight years of work with global K-pop sensation BLACKPINK and the 2024 movie Mean Girls. His first big gig was serving as supervising choreographer for Jennifer Lopez's Las Vegas residency in 2016, and he is currently choreographing Disney's stage adaptation of Zootopia.
Self-taught on iMovie, Hanagami transitioned to Final Cut Pro in 2009, discovering that professional tools could give him full creative control over how his work was experienced.
"I've always been an early adopter of technology," Hanagami says. "Final Cut Pro allowed me to think about more than just what I saw in the camera." He credits the app with helping to pave the way for his career as a choreographer, equipping him with the production chops and social media savvy to translate his craft into a beloved brand.
It wasn't always this way. Hanagami enrolled at UC Berkeley as a pre-med student. One organic chemistry class later, he switched majors - and was looking for something more when he stumbled upon his first dance crew. "We would rehearse outside with a boom box and use the windows as mirrors," he says. "I just fell in love with dance. It really took me somewhere. It wasn't intentional."
Hanagami's online ascension wasn't intentional either. A dancer enrolled in his early dance classes in San Francisco posted the first videos of Hanagami dancing online. Once Hanagami saw the demand for his choreography, he began playing around in the dance studio and recording his own classes.
"I did not have a camera crew. I was just using my digital point-and-shoot camera," Hanagami says. "Now people have so much more available to them with iPhone. They have a cinema-quality camera in the palm of their hand."
When he first started using Final Cut Pro on his MacBook, he quickly saw how the software would level up his work, fast. Over the years, significant updates to Final Cut Pro have helped alleviate the "grunt work" that typically comes with editing, giving Hanagami back much-needed time to create. Fast AI features like Magnetic Mask allow Hanagami to make quick adjustments instead of rotoscoping frame by frame, and Smart Conform shaves off time when he is filming in landscape but needs to make a social media cut.
I choreograph to music so intentionally,
so being able to edit with that same intentionality is so important.
Kyle Hanagami, choreographer
New features rolling out today in Final Cut Pro and with Apple Creator Studio - the groundbreaking collection of creative apps designed to put studio-grade power into the hands of everyone - will only further enhance the ability of creatives like Hanagami to realize their artistic vision. Logic Pro makes music production easier than ever. Now, artists can supercharge their workflows with intelligent tools, like Stem Splitter and Mastering Assistant, allowing them to focus on their creative process. Pixelmator Pro makes it easy to edit images and create striking graphics across Mac and iPad, enabling anyone to effortlessly customize vector designs or typography.
"I choreograph to music so intentionally, so being able to edit with that same intentionality is so important," he says. Using an AI model from Logic Pro, Beat Detection - available today in Final Cut Pro - allows Hanagami to instantly analyze any music track and display a Beat Grid, so he can create fast-paced videos that quickly and visually align his cuts to the music. "When I need to loop a track for my class videos, I'm able to line it up so much faster with Beat Detection instead of manually looking at the waveforms and inching it over."
For Hanagami, these tools have had a direct effect on his creative output. Ahead of Mean Girls production, he shot the first sequence on his iPhone to ensure that eyelines and angles worked without being weighed down by heavy camera equipment. Once the choreography was in place, Hanagami was able to move forward easily with a clear visual of the end result, and show the studio an example from the set.
"Editing goes hand in hand with what I do," Hanagami says. "If you're always thinking from the perspective of a static point of view, you're going to be limited in the range of possibilities. Understanding the possibilities of what a camera and software can do allows you to think bigger."
In the studio, Hanagami experiments with Live Multicam using Final Cut Camera and Final Cut Pro for iPad in order to capture a variety of angles at once, as seen in his members-only dance tutorials on YouTube. "It's super easy," he says. "You can literally hook up everything and have it sync for you so you don't have to sync it after the fact. And then you can just click through and edit it by tapping."
For Hanagami, Apple's ecosystem isn't just a collection of tools - it's tightly integrated into every step of his workflow. From sketching on iPad, filming on iPhone, editing in Final Cut Pro on Mac and iPad, and sharing across platforms, each device is integral for every step of his process.
"Having my iPhone with me at all times has been the biggest game changer," he continues. "As soon as inspiration hits, I'm ready to film, and that has allowed me to just be on my toes at all times. When you have such a crazy life, it's really important to find things that you can rely on. And I find that both among the products that I use, but also the people that I work with."
