Editing Tips for Dynamic, Engaging Video

The real magic of video creation doesn’t happen when you’re filming – it happens in post-production. The way that you edit a video can completely make or break the overall effect that it has on viewers and this is crucial to recognize before you start filming even.

Poor editing can make a video much less engaging and even unprofessional-seeming. Likewise, not considering your editing while you’re filming can end up wasting a lot of your time as you struggle with large amounts of footage and no plan.

Read on to discover some tips then that will considerably help with your video creation efforts…

Film Lots, Cut Lots

The first tip is to film a lot.

If you are creating b-roll (footage that you will use to bulk up your video), then you should always recognize that you need much more than you think you do.

Meanwhile, when filming regular video, it’s very important that you film a lot and leave pauses both before and after your content. In other words, make sure that you start filming and a little before you begin speaking. This will help to give you more room to cut and to edit and you’ll avoid losing audio or making your video look awkward with a sudden jump.

But while you’re going to be filming plenty of extra footage, it’s also important that you then cut out a lot of footage – and probably more than you think you need to. 

This way, you’ll avoid having long videos of people statically talking at the camera and your video will seem like it is constantly moving.

In fact, another tip is to make sure you never have any long periods where nothing is moving. You should always have the subject moving and talking or the camera moving. Still shots and gaps in between will only break the flow and the momentum!

Make Things Easy for Yourself

Editing video is a thankless task. The solution is to make life easy on yourself by approaching your video creation in a logical manner.

For example, one thing that can help is to break your video up into shorter clips and try moving around in the shot in each part. This makes it easy to identify at a glance when a take went well and to see where each clip ends. It also creates a more dynamic ‘jump cut’ style of filming and prevents it from feeling jarring when you go from one post to the next.

Another tip is to try clapping at the start of new takes. This makes it easy for you to see where the take ends and starts at a glance when looking at the audio track – because you can see the spike. Fun fact, this is why directors use ‘clappers’ – it’s to help the editing process later on!

Think ahead and have a plan of action when you approach your filming and your editing – that way it will be much easier for you to put together something amazing in record time!
