From the course: Video Editing Fundamentals

Basic editing: Laying the foundation

From the course: Video Editing Fundamentals

Basic editing: Laying the foundation

- Once you've organized your assets, it's time to start planning your edit. How will you structure the footage into scenes, sequences and story? Depending on the project, this plan can vary widely. If you're editing a narrative project, you've obviously got a very real starting place, the script. The script provides a groundwork for the dialogue and main action needed to create the scene, but it is largely up to the editor to choose the best shots, analyze the best takes and organize them in a way to produce the strongest emotional impact and to shape the timing and pacing to give the scene life. There are a lot of choices throughout this process. You see, in the world of narrative editing, a scene is shot many different times from many different angles. Wide shots provide context and show the relationship of characters within their environment and between each other. Medium shots are often the standard shots that editors use to tell much of the story. Closeup shots allow editors to focus on detail or increase emotion. There's lots of other types of shots too, each of which offers different information and emotion for the viewer. And it's the editor's job to expertly combine each of these elements to tell a compelling story all while weighing each shot's content, performance and emotion. During this process, there's a lot of experimentation as the editor tries different things, tweaking the edit until the scene shines. Now, if you're editing an unscripted program, like a documentary or a reality program, it's quite a bit different. Instead of following a script and having access to a large variety of redundant shots to tell the story, you often need to find the story within the footage. It's about viewing all of the footage, logging and tagging it with the appropriate qualitative metadata and figuring out what sound bites and compelling moments best tell the story. Identifying the core components to build the foundation for an unscripted video can be challenging, but it is so rewarding. When the pieces come together to create a compelling narrative, it can feel like magic. But please know this is an imperfect and messy process. It's about trying out two sound bites together to see how they flow, and then adding a third and a fourth, removing parts that don't work out and experimenting with the order. It's a lot of trial and error, but finding those perfect moments makes it all worthwhile. Once you've built the foundation from all of the available building blocks, you then flesh it out with additional visual elements, like video B roll and still images, as well as oral elements like music and sound effects. Again, this all involves a lot of experimentation as the editor juxtaposes different visuals with different sound bites until they get to the desired result. Personally, I find all of this an incredibly exciting and gratifying practice, and it's so unique for every editor that tackles it. Chances are, if you give the exact same footage to 100 different editors, you'll end up with 100 very different films. And that's an awesome testament to the power of video editing.

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