I'm thinking there's a lot you could have done to improve both of those techniques.  Take the first one for example.  Why not just create one long plane with a cut segment through the middle, then twist the whole thing, instead of starting with two perpendicular planes, and welding the end points?  Seems like the end result of welding the points is the same as twisting one larger plane at the middle.  Also, it seems like the symmetry tool in Max has it's own built in pivot point. So instead of wasting time applying the symmetry, then moving the object's pivot every time, it seems you could have just added a few symmetry mods on top of each other, then moved their internal pivots to line things up.  Probably would have made the whole video about 10 minutes shorter, mate.