SOCIAL FRIDAY’S VIDEO EDITING GUIDE

You’ve documented all your event with your smartphone or video camera? Great! Now you need to work with that material. Let us give you some advice you can use while in the “cutting room” so you can edit videos like a pro.

The Tool The Cut The Sound “Choose your Editor Wisely!” “Trim the Fat!” “… to the rhythm, to the rhythm!”

Freeware Editing is not about lining up your Contrasting image and sound Do you look for something simple different takes just like you recorded hardly works. Try to harmonize that only allows you to throw a few it. No one wants to waste time audio and video. watching an empty scene before the together and then add some By the way: Make sure that the action happens. Seconds can feel text? iMovie or the Windows Movie rights to the music have been like minutes. Trim the beginning and Maker will work just fine. cleared. The easiest way is to use the end of a take to focus on the licensed music from sources such as Prosumer important bits. Then put the short- There are a lot of prosumer editors AudioJungle, Premium Beat or ened takes in a meaningful order. like X, AudioBlocks. Elements or Vegas Movie Studio that But remember to keep it short and all do a good job. sweet. 120 seconds is the maximum length. Professional If you’re ambitious and looking for a lot more control, will do the trick.

Avoid these Common Mistakes

Inconsistent Fonts Jump Cuts Cutting Speech Crazy Transitions Don’t use different fonts, different Don’t create jump cuts by just Don’t interrupt someone’s words, a Don’t do page curls, flips and other font sizes and different font colors removing frames out of one single song or other audio with a hard cut. crazy transitions. Stick with the and avoid colors that distract the take – unless you want to highlight Wait for the end or a pause before classics: Simple cuts, maybe a fade, viewer from the content. Try to your protagonist’s ability to cutting to the next sound bite. If you an occasional whip pan (camera maintain a consistent graphic look teleport. When you cut, rather cut need to trim down a line, make sure pans so quickly that the picture throughout your entire video. to a whole other take or angle. You that your cut takes place in the blurs into indistinct streaks). might as well keep the soundtrack space between the words. They’re so prevalent in movies and from that initial take. TV shows because they work.

Fine, but Who’s Got the Time? You don’t have time to do your own video editing? No problem, we know someone who has and is an absolute pro. For a fee of USD 600 we create a professional clip of 60 to 120 seconds (see example) – all you have to do is send us the footage.

[email protected] @SocialFridayActivity

www.socialfriday.org @SocialFridayActivity