Cutting educator Roger Molina is known not only for his engaging teaching style, but for his captivating stop-motion video tutorials that are ingenious in their simplicity. Some have gone viral, while others have won awards — like the recent 2024 Hairbrained Award for Dry Cut Video of the Year.
It’s a powerful, effective teaching medium — and it all came to him in a dream.
No, really. “I got lucky!” Molina laughs. “I had a dream. Literally.”
The breakthrough happened after Molina — a member of Sam Villa’s ArTeam — spent years struggling to figure out effective ways to teach cutting methods online. “I was meditating and praying and searching for that answer for three days straight,” he recalls.
Then came a vivid dream that laid out the stop-motion demonstration technique. Equally important in the dream was a vision for how Molina would have to change his approach to creating video tutorials.
Molina woke up knowing what he needed to do differently. “I’d always been mad, burning my hands and cutting my fingers, and frustrated,” he says, “and in my dream I saw that’s the wrong way.
“I saw a 90s-style photoshoot where the guy was like “Yes baby, more wind! Throw the shoes! Take the glasses off! Throw em, baby!” he says in his best Austin Powers imitation. “The secret was in the passion the dream showed.
“I literally made myself dance,” Molina recalls. “I was listening to music full volume while I recorded them. I needed to change my state — to be in that state of mind. That was the beginning of it.”
Though his previous Instagram tutorials got modest reactions, once he posted his first stop-motion video created with his new approach, it quickly racked up more than 11K likes.
A Sam Villa ArTeam member, Roger is influenced constantly by his mentor, who raves about Molina’s teaching medium. “He’s come up with a way of visually teaching,” Villa says. “where people look at it and they go, oh yeeeah! I can see where he’s taking that.”
“We were walking the show floor (at the International Beauty Show) and one lady stopped him and said, “Roger, you have to know something. I’m dyslexic. Your videos have taught me to cut hair. I now understand everything.”
Molina says the comments and messages he receives in response to his videos have blown him away. “People tell me things I would never even have imagined,” he says.
“Things like, I’m not allowed to work in my country. I’m not allowed to train in my country, and you’ve allowed me to learn haircutting from home.”
“It is amazing stuff and it happens so often, and I lean into it. I love it.”
Roger Molina is teaching four cutting classes at the International Beauty Show-Las Vegas in June 2024.