‘And the Academy Award for Best Film Editing goes to…’ Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. To become a world-ranking Film Editor you’ll need a lot of experience and a string of editing techniques under your belt.
From quick cut transitions to a comedic style, how you edit pictures together can make or break a film. Here are five video editing tips every filmmaker should know about.
1. Convey Action by Using Jump Cuts
When you’re watching a film or video it’s often not necessary to see every single part of a sequence to make a point. This can be particularly true for scenes with a lot of action in them.
You may not need or even have enough cutaways to get smoothly from one shot to another. This is when you can get creative. Take the example of the shower scene in the movie, ‘Psycho.’ Rapid jump cuts are used here.
This style of editing lets the director Alfred Hitchcock convey a brutal murder without showing all the blood and gore. He lets the viewer’s imagination fill in the gaps of what actually happened.
A video intro could be an effective place to use this technique. You can practice by using Adobe Spark intro maker.
2. Link Two Scenes Together with a Match Cut
A clever way to connect two scenes with different landscapes together is to use a match or graphic cut. This allows you to bring together two types of environment that can be polar opposites.
It’s a powerful technique. A good example of it is in the opening scene of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ We see a kind of early man throwing a bone into the air. As the bone moves there’s a match cut to a spaceship traveling in the same direction.
3. J and L Cuts
J cuts are a type of split edit. This means that you’ll begin hearing the audio for the following scene over the preceding sequence. It’s an effective way to tease the viewer about what’s about to happen in a film.
L cuts are similar but this time the audio from a preceding scene overlaps over the pictures of the following scene. Both cuts can improve the transition from one scene to another.
4. Why Montages Are Great Video Editing Tips
Montages are sequences that convey the passage of time. A most notable example is the combination of training sequences in the ‘Rocky’ movie. These convey the passing of time and also the transformation of the central character.
5. Use Music as an Editing Tool
Videos can be transformed by the way you use a track for music and by mixing it with the natural sound. A bleak or dull scene can be brought back to life by using audio edits and dissolves.
Using a music track in films can also join scenes together to make the transitions feel seamless.
Start Getting Creative
Becoming a great Film Editor means trying things out and learning which styles work. Our five video editing tips are examples of basic techniques you’ll need to know about.
Continue reading our art and culture section for more creative stories. Watch how a Dreamworks Animator uses insane special effects to turn his son into a powerful superhero.
