INQUIRY POST 2: VIDEO EDITING
Before moving on to the editing process, finding inspiration for how you want your edit to flow and feel can help a lot. Watching other’s work can give you a better idea and understanding of what works when editing and help you develop your own editing style. Social media sites like Instagram and YouTube are full of all types of edits and videos that have inspired me to take up learning how to video edit.
Here is some work that has inspired me
This first edit was created by HudsonFilms on Instagram. It features clips from the movie ‘Mid90s’ and was my first introduction to his content. I’ve been following him for about a year now and you can learn a lot just by watching some of his clips; specifically in this edit he uses the beats of the song with adding kick flip sfx that make some of the cuts and transitions feel more deliberate and flow smoothly with the music. It’s a small detail that adds a lot to the content as a whole and isn’t too difficult to do during editing.
This second one was made by my friend and guide for this whole filming and editing process. He’s been doing photography and videography for a while now, so I’ve been pretty fortunate to be able to work and learn from him. I take a lot of inspiration from his style of editing in terms of clip arrangement and clip duration between cuts. Something I’m trying to work towards is his style of colour grading. It’s definitely one of my favourite aspects of his edit; the colour and tone is consistent throughout the whole project and really completes the whole video.
Something that I learned from a video by Youtuber Gavin Herman that has made the process of how I want to structure and shape my content is to ask questions before editing. A few questions I like to ask myself are:
- Who am I making this for? What is the target audience?
- Why am I making this? For fun? Job or assignment?
- What do I want to achieve? Goals?
These are just a few that can help you jump start the creative process and give you some new ideas for your content. But it doesn’t have to be that deep; you can just do it for the fun of it.
This process of searching for inspiration and asking questions is something that works for me because it helps me visualize the final product and informs me about how to prepare for it. Answering questions can also help with the researching process when looking for inspiration as you can find people whose work matches the answer and who creates content similar to what you want to make, then you can watch their approach to creating and learn their techniques, styles, or tricks.