Film Making Quick Start 3 - Editing
The Final Step
When it comes to editing, Resolve has a free version, that I hear works quite well. I’ve used Adobe most of my life, and so I’ll speak as if about Premiere Pro, but most of this will apply to all other editing apps.
Import your video and audio. Modern software will begin transcribing the camera and mic audio as soon as it is imported. Search the transcripts for “Banana, Banana, Banana” and cut at the end of these. Use the big clap from earlier to align the waveform of both audios, the centers of the audio peaks should match up almost exactly. Mismatched audio and visuals kill films, because everyone can detect something is wrong, but may not be able to say exactly what it is.
In your first pass, cut out everything that you don’t want in the final film, and place all the footage you do want, in a rough order of how they should appear.
On your second pass, cut out all the breaths and fumbles that add nothing to the film.
On your third pass, try to overlap audio, so that audio from the next scene starts just before the video from the last scene ends.
Now add graphics to your film. PNGs are your best friend if you want transparent Images. If you want things to move, keyframes are much simpler than they look, you can learn how to use them in a single tutorial. When putting text on the screen, the rule of thumb is that you can read it 3 times before it disappears. Text that shows up for less time than that, is too fast, and not all audience members will catch it.
B-roll is important. It may seem a shame to overlay footage onto the footage you have shot. After all, it took so much effort to get it looking this nice. No one cares. No one wants to look at you, even if you are stunningly attractive. Unless you are making porn, in which case, don’t include any b-roll. If you are not making porn, include b-roll.
If you are uploading this to YouTube, don’t worry too much about copyright (This is not legal advice, I am not a lawyer). No one will come after you for downloading random YT videos, or films, and cutting them up, to overlay on top of your film. Filming your own b-roll can be quite rewarding if you have to time for it, and often you can find thing in your camera roll that can be used as b-roll. Just overlay them, and see what message it adds to the video. The audience can be generous in the way they interpret the b-roll used.
Adding music to your film can be a total hack for making it engaging. Sometimes you’re watch back an edit, and falling asleep as you do, but then add some deep ambient music, and it becomes an easy watch. If you ever want to make money from this film, then you should worry about copyright. I recommend Artlist if you’re willing to pay for high quality music licenses. If you don’t want to pay, YouTube provides many copyright free music tracks that you can find with an easy search. Or, if you want a very specific feel, you can AI generate your own instrumental music tracks for some great effect.
This is the final post in this series. Now go forth; make art.
