Editing Rules of videos and home movies.
A lot of amateur filmmakers make the following mistakes:
- The overall videos are much too long to keep the viewer engaged.
- Individual scenes are too long.
- Scenes that are not of good quality are included because, well the filmmaker has them.
- Too many similar shots, or shots of the same object or person are included.
- The wrong type of music is added to the video.
- Too many effects are added, well again, because the filmmaker has them.
- Scenes and shots are not clear to understand by the viewer.
The following Rules or Guidelines should be considered when editing a production:
- Be ruthless in cutting your clips. Don't use blurry, shaky, out of focus, crooked clips.
- Keep your clips between 1 and 5 seconds.
- Vary your clips between wide, medium, close-up in your production.
- Avoid jump cuts.
- Use transitions sparingly, unless used for special effects.
- Using a transition between each scene is boring and annoying only used by beginners.
- Research the background music thoroughly befitting to your vision.
- If possible, cut your scenes to the beat of the music.
- Add sound effects to highlight a scene. You find plenty on the internet.
- Add titles and credits to finish off your production.
What a lot of editors (including professionals) do, is edit their films, then leave them for a few days, or even weeks, then come back and watch them again. Chances are, they find segments, that don't look right, even though the did when they edited them. These segments can then be fixed.
