10 Must-Read Video Editing Articles
Keeping an eye on the industry and staying refreshed is a great way to improve your video editing game. These must-read video editing articles have something helpful for pros and amateurs alike.
Film and video professionals should constantly be devouring movies, commercials, music videos, books, and articles. They should be looking ahead at trends in the medium and looking back at where the medium has been. Media consumption is an important aspect of maintaining a flow of inspiration for your own work. With that in mind, here’s a collection of ten must-read articles for our readers living the video editing life.
1. Designing Lower Thirds Like a Pro
For video editors who find themselves working on a project that involves generating lower thirds graphics, here’s an article from Shutterstock that covers the basics. The article also covers color selection and typography and how those things impact the message you’re trying to convey. This is a great refresher for pro video editors and a great intro to lower thirds for new editors.
2. Professional Video Editing Tips and Techniques
PremiumBeat’s very own Caleb Ward crafted this all-inclusive mega-article about video editing tips and techniques. This article covers just about every professional tip or technique you need to know as a video editor, starting with picking the right software and hardware. It also touches on editing for story, editing language, editing speed, shortcuts, and distribution. By the end of the article, you should have a basic understanding of video editing.
3. Common Mistakes That Amateur Editors Make
Over at RocketStock, professional cinematographer, director, and editor Noam Kroll offers a list of common editing mistakes that rookie editors are prone to making in their earliest projects. Heed his advice and avoid the traps associated with cutting too little, overusing transitions, always opening with the master, and editing for dialogue.
4. Video Editing Tricks to Increase Your Editing Speed
Increasing your video editing speed sounds like a great thing — but it’s only great if the work being produced is still high-quality. Mike Wilkinson over at FStoppers knows this all too well. That’s why he wrote this great article that gives readers five tricks for better edits.
Some of the tricks he covers: knowing how to use a J cut, cleaning up dialogue, using natural segues, and even adding markers. These tips aren’t mind blowing, but they are essential techniques for anyone wanting to increase their editing speed without losing quality.
5. 10 Video Editing Tips From TED
This piece from the fine folks of TED gives you a real understanding of how to piece a narrative together. The article takes you step by step through the cutting process and features some great video examples from different TED Talks as a guide. While this breakdown is geared more toward the editing of a TED Talk, there are plenty of basic editing technique examples for video editors.
6. Editing Techniques to Make Scenes More Dramatic
Does the phrase “dramatic sync tempo decompression” mean anything to you? If not, you’ll find this No Film School article very eye-opening. Read along as Robert Hardy highlights the editing techniques of documentary editor Paddy Bird.
7. Editors Who Broke the System
PremiumBeat author Michael Maher wrote a great piece on the pioneering female editors who broke the Hollywood system. Their influence is undeniable and their stories are great sources of inspiration for anyone in the world of film and video editing.
8. Video Editing Organization
We’ve listed plenty of sources for video editing tips and techniques… but what about organization? Staying organized is paramount for video editors. With that in mind, here’s a great Videomaker article from Chris Gates that goes over five essential tips to help video editors stay organized and effective.
9. Improving Your Editing Techniques
Larry Jordan has been offering advice to filmmakers and video editors for years. In this piece, Jordan gives us a solid overview of professional editing techniques. Do yourself a favor and explore all of the embedded links within the article. There’s lots of good stuff in there.
10. Steps to Becoming a Hollywood Editor
Robert Lanford is a Los Angeles-based editor who has worked on major television shows like The Goldbergs, Decoded, and The Good Wife. In this blog post, Lanford goes over the steps an up-and-coming editor needs to take in order to make it as an editor in Hollywood.
Did we miss anything? Seen any good video editing articles lately? Share them in the comments below.
