10 Editing Tips to Level Up Your Videos

Love it or hate it, editing is a crucial part of any video project. We can film the most beautiful images, but if we don’t edit them together to tell a story, then they end up just being a slideshow of pretty pictures. Today we’re going to cover ten tips to help you edit your next project!

Welcome to Smartphone Storytellers, where it’s my mission to give you the knowledge and skills you need to create visual stories using your Smartphone. Each week I share everything from the theory to the techniques needed to create compelling videos that share what is happening at your organization. So drop a like and hit subscribe to stay connected!

J & L Cuts

J and L cuts are your friend. What’s that, you ask? Let me show you! When you’re editing footage on top of an clip of someone speaking, you want to make sure your edits don’t fall on top of each other. A J or L cut describe the pattern the cuts make when you line them up. If you have a cut in your spoken word footage, you want the edit to your b-roll to fall either before or after that cut, making a J or L pattern. This helps you to smooth out edits and hide when you make a cut to your spoken word clips!

Let your Script Breathe

You don’t want your video to be wall to wall dialogue. You want to make sure there are breaks in your script to allow your viewer to process the information you’re sharing with them. That’s why it’s important to let the script breathe. Make sure you don’t edit out every extra space in the script, and use topic changes as opportunities to add in a bit of a break. Your music and b-roll footage will help to keep people interested as they process what they’ve heard so far.

Show, Don’t just Tell

I know the normal saying is “Show, don’t tell,” but often we still need to tell in our scripts. So anytime it’s possible, make sure you show the things you talk about. If your script talks about how your organization screen prints shirts, show b-roll footage of the screen printing process. Use the b-roll as a visual to illustrate the things you’re talking about. In addition to this, sometimes less is more. You don’t always need to describe the footage you’re talking about, you can instead use the music and the footage tell the story.

Tell Mini Stories

When you’re editing together your b-roll, tell mini stories. Anytime I capture b-roll, I try to think of how I can capture clips that will tell a story. I’ll get a wide shot to set the stage, then grab a medium shot to get a bit closer to the action, and then a tight shot to really capture the details. I don’t just get a single one of each of these shots, but I try to make sure I have at least one of each. Then when I’m in the edit, I cut these together to tell a story. A wide shot gives the viewer an idea of the location, then a medium helps them to see the people involved. Finally, the tight shot shows the details of the action taking place. I then follow this flow as needed to tell the overall story of the edit. It’s not a perfect formula - often I’ll jump around, but anytime it fits I edit together a mini story.

Use B-Roll to cover mistakes

When you have someone on camera delivering a script, unless you’re filming the first video involving martians, you’re most likely working with a human. And if that human is anything like me, they’re going to make mistakes. B-Roll gives you the opportunity to not only show what you’re talking about, but also edit out any hiccups that weaken your final video. There is a style of video that doesn’t use b-roll to cover up mistakes, but instead uses an effect called the jump cut. I use that method of editing frequently in my Youtube videos, instead covering up the cuts by “punching into” the shot, but if you want an edit that is smooth and flows together then you want to use b-roll to cover up your cuts.

Speaking of covering mistakes, it’d be a mistake to not hit like and subscribe so you’re connected to getting the best tips and tricks for telling stories using your Smartphone! That was a terrible segway, but hey, it’s not easy doing this each week!

Cut on Action

When you’re cutting together b-roll footage, you want to make it flow together as seamlessly as possible. One way to do this is to match action when possible. This means that you track the actions in one shot and make the next shot a “continuation” of those actions. For instance, if you have a shot of someone loading food into a box, your next tight shot would be the same motion, with their arm starting somewhere near the same spot. It’s not always going to match up perfectly, but this helps to make the b-roll scenes flow together similarly to a narrative video and help the viewer to keep track of the orientation of everything in the frame.

Use the Beat of the Music

Sometimes when we make cuts in our footage, it’s because the shot has outlived it’s usefulness and it’s time to move on. Often, though, we want to use the beat and momentum of the music to dictate our cuts. This helps you to use the energy of the music to create a natural flow to the scenes. On a faster song, you want to cut to every beat or every other beat when it makes sense. This lets the b-roll keep the energy level up that the music holds. Then maybe during a particularly dynamic moment, maybe you want to cut on every beat if you’ve been going slower. Similarly, if you use this method on a slower song then the visuals will match the mood and feeling of the music bed. That doesn’t mean you need to follow this formula for every cut - it’s just a good ground rule to work from.

Ask for Feedback

Feedback can be the hardest thing to receive, especially when it comes to any creative project that we’re invested in. We pour our blood and sweat into telling stories, and we naturally become quite attached to the work we create. This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it means we’re going to give it the deep level of care that the stories require, but it’s a curse because it means we end up so close to the story that we miss making some of the editing calls that we need to make. One way to get around this is to ask for feedback. You want to seek out the feedback of someone who isn’t as close to the story as you are. This way you can see what is connecting, distracting, and areas you need to tweak. This isn’t the only way to overcome editing trials, though…

Walk Away

You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, and know when to walk away. When you’re working on an edit, it can be easy to get caught up in the story, footage, music, and countless options for editing that it becomes difficult to figure out how to make it all come together. When I hit a wall with my edit, I find walking away from the edit helps me to clear my mind. And in true Kenny Rodgers fashion, I find that I overcome my best editing roadblocks when I go for a run. It helps me to focus on something else and get some distance from the edit. I can’t count the number of times I walked away from a problem I spent hours trying to overcome, only to stumble upon the perfect resolution when I wasn’t thinking of it.

Make Selects

Finally, one of the best things you can do in an edit is make selects. What’s a select? It’s a timeline of all of your best footage, and it helps you to stay organized after a shoot and quickly pull the footage you need. I’m going to dig deeper into the importance of making selects in my next video, exploring both the theory behind it as well as the technique I use to make sure I always have the best shots to quickly pull from, so stay tuned!

These ten tips will help you take your edits to the next level, and tell stories that connect! Make sure you come back to hear about why it’d be a huge mistake to not make selects of your footage. Now, I know it’s time to walk away from this edit, but It’s similarly important that you also gotta know when to hit like and subscribe, because that means you’ll have more helpful smartphone related production tips delivered right to your Youtube “for you” page. And that’s nothing you should run away from. I feel like this joke is getting out of hand, so I’m going to fold…but remember, it’s not the gear that matters, it’s the story!