Video editing 101
All you need to know to get started
This tutorial will focus on Premiere Pro, but the techniques apply to all editing programs.
1. What is editing?
Editing is
- The art of telling a story and conveying information like a good storyteller.
Editing is not
- Special effects.
- Making 3D graphics.
- Making cartoon or infographic looking videos.
- After effects or Maya.
Focus on the message
Editing is all about storytelling, well... not really because there's always a bunch of techno babel involved, so be prepared to deal with that:
Dealing with technical problems
Even tough editing isn't special effects, you'd be constantly interact with your video on a very technical way, editing is an art but it's also technically evolved.
In it's most basic state, editing is all about the cut.
When to cut, what to show after a cut, how often should you cut, what shots are more worthy to cut to.
2. How to cut & different types of cuts
What's a cut?
Imagine if a comic were a movie, the cut is what happens in between the panels
Panel 1: murderer yells "now you die" while victims screams "no! no!"
In between panels: CUT
Panel 2: cut to the city while the theme song plays.
Cuts matter
How often you cut will impact the feel of a scene
If you decide not to cut, by holding onto the shot it loses focus & feels like the audience is supposed to "take in" the atmosphere.
But if you decide to cut to every little detail, now the scene feels like every bit of dislodge may be important for the story.
Cuts can flow or not.
One shot leads to another: Darth Vader says "I am your father" and Luke reacts to it by yelling out "NO!".
It makes scene because one logically follows the other.
Or they can be a non sequitur, plain nonsense.
Now the audience is forced to interpret this mess, our desire to understand stories forces us to make connections.
Maybe this is a hallucination scene or these shots will make sense in the long run.
A movie only makes sense as a whole, the individual shots are not as important as the whole.
This is why this nonsense can tell a coherent story, because the magic is in combining these images together and not in the images themselves.
What happens in between
What does this shots say about this man?
He is hungry, we stare at the soup, then we cut to his reaction.
We can put 2 and 2 together:
We stare at the soup because he is staring at it, because he looks hungry, once shot logically follows the other right?
That's the magic of editing, we can create meaning out of piecing shots together.
This shot of a man looking at the camera can take different meaning if we cut from some different context.
It can mean whatever you want.
The man is hungry
The man is in greif
The man feels lust
Cut them up and reorder them, have some fun!
The soup is poisonous and it causes great pain to the point of screaming out.
One shot totally follows the next
The next shot makes no sence
One shot totally follows the next
The next shot makes no sence
But what happens in the grey areas?
Different types of cuts
A
B
C
A: Character looks at a jumping pole and says "what can possibly go wrong?"
B: He attempts to make the jump and tragically falls.
C: Cut to an ambulance.
A
B
C
A: Character looks at a jumping pole and says "what can possibly go wrong?"
B: He attempts to make the jump and tragically falls.
C: Cut to an ambulance.
HARD CUT
A
B
C
By spiking shot B we can create an impact-full and unexpected scene.
The "faster rhythm" turns it into a joke
A
B
C