Why be organised?

Being organised means energy is focused on creativity.

Remember, an editor uses creativity to manipulate images into a story designed to move viewers to emotion.

In editing, nothing stuns creativity quite like chaos. This is a sweeping statement backed up by years of experience in busy editing rooms.

With this in mind, the first thing I teach on this course is the power of organisation.

I think you will agree that the first part of a training course should be scintillating. It should be stuffed with mind blowing information that leaves you breathlessly wanting more.

Unfortunately, given the nature of editing, this section isn't one of those.

Organising footage is anal and, dare I say it, potentially boring in its extreme. It is a task usually given to the most junior assistant in a professional editing house. The professional editors do that for a very good reason — the youngster has to learn to be organised if he or she has any hope of ever making it in the big league.

So, cast yourself into the roll of the junior as you watch, absorb, and apply what I'm going to teach you. If you do this, like any professional editor with a diligent assistant, I can virtually guarantee you a rewarding, creative, mind blowing editing experience on every project you ever cut. I can certainly guarantee to minimise your frustration and a few bucket loads of sweat.

So ready for something dull? Good, because here goes . . .

Digital non-linear editing software is clever stuff. It seems to be super organised. It collects reams of media (video, audio, still photos, sound effects etc.) together in one place, and then seamlessly compiling the video according to the editor’s instructions.

As impressive as this looks, it is, in fact, not the case.

Instead, the software remembers where you put your media and then accesses it so smoothly that it appears as if it has collected it all together in one convenient location.

The trouble is, your media can be scattered over numerous sources, such as hard drives, CD-roms, and camera cards.

For example: imagine you created a movie using music from iTunes, stills stored on your photo card, and video footage on your hard drive. If, at some point, you delete that song on iTunes, or wipe your camera card, or change a folder name on your hard drive, your super clever editing software will be unable to locate the media. It will throw you up a message saying 'file missing' when trying to run your movie. That is not only frustrating, but embarrassing if you are trying to impress an audience with your craft.

Rule one of video editing: If your media is not stored in one properly labeled place, it cannot be accessed.

So the secret of good organisation is to put all the media, without exception, into a single folder (directory) in one central place.

• This must be done BEFORE the first edit project is created.
• I cannot stress the importance of this enough.
• Every piece of media, without exception, must be stored in an easily identified place on the hard drive.
• This is done BEFORE it is imported into the program project.

In the process of making things easy, computers will allow you to import music from applications like iTunes, or still images from iPhoto, directly into the project. This complicates things, so I strongly recommend you do not do it.

Take the media files that you wish to use in your project out of these applications by duplicating them, and then placing them into folders on the project hard drive.

This is explained and demonstrated in the instruction videos below.

The first deals with storing your media.

Even though making a film need not always be linear, it should have structure that is clearly understood and easy to follow. This means a beginning, middle and end.

The job of the beginning is to grab and hold your audience by making them care about the subject or characters.

As you can see from the stats below, you literally have seconds to achieve this:

• You have less than 30 seconds to capture an audience for a documentary style program.
• Terrestrial TV (the goggle-box): a documentary will be switched off within a minute or so.
• You have less than 10 seconds with a selling film.
• You have less than 5 seconds with a commercial, including TV commercials.
• A You-tube video also has about 5 seconds to shine before the viewer moves on.

Seconds, that’s all it takes to lose your viewer.

Even if your content is of huge interest to the entire planet, unless you give a hint of that value as quickly as possible, the planet will just not be interested. Your message will never see the audience it deserves. It is therefore VITAL to capture your audience in the first 10 or less seconds. Now you know this, you are already one step ahead of your competition.

So, how do you immediately grab them by the heart?

Simple. You tug on their emotions. Some examples would include:

• Build empathy, concern, or excitement for the person, place, or situation depicted in the movie.
• Help them recognise that you have something they need or want.

These are all emotions. If your viewer feels nothing, within a fairly limited time, they will leave.

Audio leads the way

The best way to make your audience feel is with AUDIO not video. This means you should:

• spend much more time and effort developing your soundtrack than your video. Neglect your soundtrack at your cost.
• Use LOTS of sound effects.
• Never remove the sound effects and expect the music to capture a mood. This is the single biggest mistake made by amateur (and sometimes pro) editors.
• Never remove the sound effects and expect the music to capture a feeling.
• Never remove the sound effects and expect the music to tell a story.
• It is the sound that makes your audience feel. Never forget this.

There are some tried and tested techniques you can use to keep your audience's interest. These are discussed in the following video. Briefly,

• Use teasers to create the promise of good things to come;
• Always leave them wanting more;
• Never let them down —fulfill all the promises in your teasers.

Earning the trust of the directors you work with are the most important relationships that you will have in your film career.

The first video covers the basic skills, music rights and library music.

This video teaches music editing techniques including back timing.

This video shows how to let the audio govern the storytelling.

Music montage editing. Easy to do. Difficult to do well.

It’s not uncommon for an inexperienced editor to use montage editing as an excuse for compiling a sequence of shots because he or she has no clear idea of making a story from the footage. This is wrong.

Montages are best used to tease the audience into wanting more. Editing on the beat, off beat, and other techniques are demonstrated in the following videos. Music choice for montage editing is the easiest to get wrong. The mood and tempo must fit comfortably with the image mood and content.

The next two videos teach you how to edit music montages.

Music montage editing techniques that apply to a wide range of video edits

This video is an example of some of my latest work for my own YouTube channel. I have combined music, rich sound effects, lots if live audio to enhance the feel and mood, even though the edit is driven by the music. I have used key changes to heighten the edits to some scenes, musical effects synchronized with action and humour to round it off to make sure the audience leaves feeling something. I made this film in January 2017.

A task using a Hollywood example, of selecting the right music for the right emotion.

Using various techniques in one music picture to music edit, to prevent a feeling of repetition.

There are many ways to structure a story. Here are some techniques, with the components shown on the time-line.

No story telling structure is the same. This is a basic story telling technique, that works well for simple story telling. It teaches the intro, pace and use of a combination of commentary, narration and music.

COMBINING FOOTAGE FROM VARIOUS CAMERAS

A-Roll and B-Roll footage, and GoPros

• A-Roll footage is your primary footage from your main camera used for telling the story.
• B-Roll footage backs up the A-Roll content to aid storytelling.
• GoPro cameras are best used as production value enhancers. Examples include the brilliant view of a landscape from a drone, the view from the driver’s perspective, or the submerged view of the boat’s hull in the water. These are perspectives that are not normal to the eye.
• Long GoPro shots are not good for storytelling. Only use the best for few seconds, no more, unless the action changes and the storytelling is intense. No matter how spectacular, long drawn out shot with no strong storyline purpose are boring to most viewers. Use the best few seconds only, or cut back to another section to break the monotony.
• Mostly, unless recorded with an external microphone, audio from GoPros is inadequate. Don’t use audio from the GoPro’s microphone if avoidable as the quality is very poor. Audio to enhance the images is vital, so be prepared to build an effects track in your edit.

The 4-second rule is a techniques (taught in our Shooting for Storytelling Course). This is how such a shot is typically used in an edit.

TRANSITIONS BETWEEN SHOTS

An editor uses cuts, dissolves or wipes to move the viewer from one shot to another. These are called transition linking shots. They are not intended to communicate content or messages. Ideally, they should not even be noticed. If they are noticed, then mostly, they have failed in their job and should be reconsidered.

• Dissolves are used to blend two shots, often to make the cut invisible or gentle to the eye. If a dissolve is not gentle to the eye, it is probably failing in its duty.
• Be careful of wipes as they are mostly gimmicky. I have used them on occasions where the transition felt right, but I proceed with caution with all wipes. Once or twice I have used clock-wipes to suggest passage of time, but there was a very specific need to do this, otherwise I would have chosen something else.
• Most of your editing transitions will consist of cuts. Good cutting should be invisible. Cutting video and audio together will make the cuts hard. Blending the audio across the cuts will smooth them out and should become a regular habit.
• Gimmicky transitions like blocks, slides, spins, cubes, stretches, etc. are only suitable for the trash can. In short, NEVER use them for anything except to demonstrate how amateurs sometimes ruin their movies.

I recommenced that you work with your edit suite and experiment with the transitions available to you. You will find very few that don’t shout, ‘Look! I’m a clever transition!’

SEQUENCE TRANSITIONS

An editor uses sequence transition shots to move the viewer from one scene or sequence to another. Every transition linking sequences sends a message to the viewer. These messages can be subtle, like a change of location, change of day, or a new scene altogether. The marvelous thing about these transitions is that they communicate these things by dong almost nothing. But because the transition says so much about the content or story, they comuinicate more than meets the eye.

• Fade to black and fade up from black. These works in an unobtrusive way to go to a new scene, new day, or new thought. Be careful where these are used because they can easily be interpreted the wrong way. If used in the middle of a scene, the viewer will consider this like starting a new chapter in a book within an existing chapter.
• Fade to white and fade up from white. These work in a more noticeable way and suggest a change in thought, in addition to a change in scene. They are a more modern alternative to the fade to black-fade up from black. But be aware of over-using it as they are more obvious to the viewer.
• If the content within the transition is important to the story, a visible transition should not be used as it will break the viewer's focus from the information contained within the sequence.

Some techniques used combining sound and effects. Here are three examples that demonstrate that sound effects with music, is far more powerful than music alone.

An extraordinary film that demonstrates the power of sound effects. Sound effects are more effective at storytelling than the video elements of your video. This will help you to never forget that! Watch it if you can.

Beware. Sensitive viewers may not enjoy watching this video.

More examples of music and sound effects. Music and freeze frames, narration and music.

Narration ideas. Examples of narration in the present tense. Also, lighthearted narration can lift the story and give it a feel of being in the present.

It's always better to show, rather than tell. If you say something, either trough narration of commentary, that must be matched by the images, cutting pace and feel of the video. If they differ, the audience won't know how to feel about the story.

Still images can be used disguised and seamless with the video images, or, in this example, they can be presented as still images for their own sake. In this case, they were so beautiful they were to be displayed as the fine are of still photography, within this, a episode in a TV series.

A very common mistake when making a video, particularly a short-form type, is to maintain one unchanging pace throughout. This is a sure way to send the audience into dreamland. Vary the pace, and use the techniques shown to do this. It keeps the content interesting. This is particularly valuable for subjects that are a little dull, and need spicing up a bit.

A live edit showing the usefulness of wild recorded sound.

The right software for editing video is vital as many are just not good enough, even for the first time beginner. Be especially aware of free software, especially if it is labelled 'Professional'. In some cases, not only is it unsuitable for professionals, its also no good for beginners. Words are just labels to attract buyers.The video editing software industry is huge, and for a reason: good software costs a lot to produce. Poor editing software will lead to frustration, and if you are just starting your editing career, start with a chance of success by avoiding cheap editing software. It just isn't worth it.

Thank you so much for doing my course. I hope it was valuable learning for you.