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My first proper edit. What can I improve on?

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Deleted member 875897

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IMO towards the ending the syncing got a bit shoddy but any opinions?
 
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SmeggyBanjo

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would you do a montage video for me by any chance? got some crazy clips on bo3 i'd like editing properly.
 
Azsry

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There are several things you should work on to get the basics of editing down:

1. Syncing. The cinematics were synced up okay to the song, but when the clips started the shots were very randomly placed and didn't actually follow the song. Plan out where you're going to have each shot before working on the clip itself by placing markers on the beats. It will help you a lot in the long run.

2. Pacing. This ties in slightly with syncing, but more so to do with what parts of the clip you want to show in the final product. Your edit shows a lot of unnecessary footage, such as placing Tactical Insertions or sprinting. Viewers very often don't need to see this, as the focus of the edit is the kill chain or cool movement (for trickshots). There are also sections where the clip suddenly goes from 100% to 3000% speed to reach the next part, and conversely from 100% to 5% at the end of a clip. Cutting in correspondence to song beats and placing death cinematics for the most recent shot is a very common way to avoid such a situation. You can also attempt to blend the player's movement together with a transition, though the success rate of this method highly depends on what the player does in the clip and how much interpolation the viewer would have to do to understand what happened (or didn't happen, in the case that the player dawdles a bit before going for the next kill) in the cut.

Pacing is most often done through 'Velocity' or 'Time Remapping', terms used by Sony Vegas and Adobe After Effects respectively. The main objective of using these features is to make the edit feel like it is being driven by the song, so beats will make the edit move forward while the intermission in between is often slowed down. It gives the edit a very pumpy, involved feel with the song where momentum is conserved between cuts. I can see you tried to do this in the intro cinematics, but in the clip section, there are a lot of parts where the clip was playing fast and it cut to a cinematic that was hardly moving. This is a red flag for 90% of editors, the other 10% doing it knowingly and intentionally.

3. Colour Correction/Colour Grading. CC's should be tasteful to fit the mood of the song and never overdone. What CC works depends on the genre and theme of the edit, so I'd highly advise against using presets as much as possible. It's fine to use them to learn how certain looks were made, but remixing them to fit the song will prove more useful.

Generally, CC's should not:
  • Over-contrast the footage;
  • Use strong vignettes that affect the footage significantly;
  • Alter skin tones;
  • Apply too much of a single colour (this ties in with altering skin tones, as too much of one colour will quite often modify skin tones as well).
...but they should:
  • Contribute to the atmosphere of the edit;
  • Fit the mood of the song;
  • Attempt to modify the Dynamic Range of the footage to fit the song, either by giving the colours more of a 'popped', 'punched' or 'bleached' feel.
4. Cinematics. Cinematics are generally used to bridge between clips - especially death and player running cinematics. They are rarely ever used for intros because they don't make any contextual sense. Map cinematics or closeups of players are more suitable for these situations

5. Gun Sounds. While not always required, gun sounds (and sound effects in general) will give your edits a more refined feel. They should: not be intrusive on the song; always be on beats and; be isolated to what's important in a clip (i.e. gun shots, grenade pin pulls etc).

6. Effects. For some people, effects don't have much bearing on an edit, but to others it occupies quite a large portion of what it means to make an edit. Regardless, effects should be used sparingly to avoid 'overediting' a clip, where what could have been a nice clip turns into a mosh of effects that no one can follow. Your first cinematics had very erratic shaking, which didn't fit the song or place in the edit. Avoid using default shake settings and try to achieve a more realistic feeling with any shake that you do end up using.

7. Completeness. This is not always a requirement with edits, but it always feels nicer if an edit can start and wrap itself up nicely. Not doing so will quite often make viewers go "Is that it?" after the edit finishes. Having a clear intro and ending can clear these doubts and also give you a chance to make one big final punch for the ending to make people feel awestruck while the ending plays and the song finishes off. The main indicator of completeness is the song also reaching a softer part of the track rather than just fading out the song after you think you're done.

--

Obviously these are just basic tips, and are in no way comprehensive, but do take these in mind when editing. Having 3 years experience and seeing trends come and go, I can say that these few fundamentals have always stayed around, so there's no harm in learning them.

/walloftext
 
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Deleted member 875897

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jeee. Thanks, post of the month!
I made another and posted it just before I saw your reply, what do you think?:
 
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Azsry

Azsry

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jeee. Thanks, post of the month!
I made another and posted it just before I saw your reply, what do you think?:

Your use of cinematics has improved, but I'd still work on CC, as it makes some scenes way too dark; pacing, as the video doesn't flow nicely between shots and between clips; and syncing. The first few shots were synced up, but then after that the shots weren't synced to anything. It helps to use gun sounds to explicitly mark out which beat the shot is meant to follow and are necessary most of the time, so you may as well use them :')

I don't want to blow my own horn, but take a look at an edit I uploaded yesterday as an example. It follows most of the principles I posted above, though I must admit it wasn't up to par with my previous edits:


Pay close attention to how the visuals feel driven by the audio. This is how your edit should be so that it matches the song (the song isn't going to change to fit your video :tongue:). I also try to blend my cinematics together by keyframing position and scale to make the ending of one cinematic feel like it leads into the next - especially with camera angles and speed.

Good luck!
 
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