Color correcting has an incredible power to give films a polished, cinematic look. The difference between a cool, blue-ish tone of a film vs. a classic, grainy film aesthetic can really set the tone, and help you tell your story.
But color correction can be overwhelming! There are a lot of confusing tools, and it takes research and practice to correct images with advanced precision. The good news is that there are more tools—and more affordable tools—for color grading and color correction out there than ever before.
It’s still a complex process, and if you have the budget to hire a professional colorist, you absolutely should! But this post is geared towards editors who are new to color correcting, and DIYing it. (If you’re new to editing generally, you should also check out our guide on how to edit video for beginners).
The terms Color Correction and Color Grading are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Color Correction is adjusting your footage to look natural and consistent from shot to shot. On the other hand, color grading is using color to set the tone or add a specific atmosphere and style into your project from beginning to end. First color correct and then color grade.
One practical use of Color Grading is “day for night” shooting a scene at day time and making it look like night in post production with the color grade among other techniques. Most simply, make the the scene a bit more dark and usually much more blue to accomplish this. One recent prominent example of this technique is the film Mad Max: Fury Road. You can read a break down of how they used color grading to achieve this in this FXGuide article. You can learn more about how they used color grading to highlight what was important in scenes for Fury Road in this interview with colorist Eric Whipp.
In this post, we’ll focus on color correcting, which lays the groundwork for color grading. Some projects may never involve color grading. For other projects, color grading is integral, but very dependent on the particular project and aesthetic goals of the creators. All tools that are used for color correction can also be used for color grading.
When to Start Color Correction
Color Correction should be one of the last parts of the editing process, alongside finalizing sound editing and mixing. Color correction is a long and involved process and it shouldn’t be done until your project has been picture locked. It’s a significant waste of time to adjust your footage before you’ve finalized what you are and aren’t using. Part of color correcting is getting your footage to look consistent from shot to shot, which you can’t do until you know all the shots you’re using in the project.
What is a Picture Profile?
When a camera records a scene, it collects data and translates that data into a viewable format. When it does this, it includes instructions on how to modify the data to try and more accurately recreate what you saw. That is a “picture profile”—the set of parameters that determine the characteristics of your footage. Popular picture profiles include ‘C-LOG/Cinestyle’ (Canon) or ‘S-Log’ (Sony). “RAW” is a popular option because it gives the most control over the image; but it also takes up space. Flat picture profiles are also popular, as they give ample flexibility to color and enhance your footage. You may also hear the term “log” which is a neutral profile.
Working with Flat Footage
In all likelihood your project was shot with a “flat” profile, which is to say that the director of photography set the camera so that the final image from the camera never has areas that are totally white or totally black. Everything tone in the image at most rides just below peaking at white or just above falling into being totally black. This gives the image you import into your video editing software a slightly washed out look. Everything is just a little bit gray. There’s not strong contrast in the image. You have details in the highlights and in the shadows.
Flat footage ultimately gives you the most options for working with your footage in post production. You push the contrast in the tones in either direction without losing much in your video image quality. This can give you more from the color in your final product as well.
As you spend long hours editing flat footage be aware that you may get used to how it looks. Over time the low contrast and washed out colors may seem normal. You look at it for so long that sometimes when you do your initial round of color correction, the results may seem extreme or strange when really you’re just bringing the tones to something more natural. Take a step back from the project briefly, if this happens to give yourself some perspective.
Trust Your Eyes, But Don’t Trust Your Monitor
Unless you’ve got a properly calibrated monitor, your results may vary working with color correction and getting the image to look natural. It can be difficult to trust your monitor in this case, because it may not be representing the color in a way that’s accurate for adjusting across other monitors and platforms the project may be seen on.
You may not be able to trust your monitor, but you can still trust your eyes by leveraging tools in the platforms designed to represent the image you’re working with in mathematical terms. These tools are video scopes.hey’ll show you a representation of your image on a chart and the strength of the light or particular colors, dependent on the tool you’re working with.
Working with Video Scopes
Across every major platform you may be using to edit your video you will find one consistent set of tools to work with when color correcting: video scopes. Broadly speaking you’ll have access to Waveform Scopes, The RGB Parade Scope, and the Vectorscope.
Waveform Scopes
There are two broad categories of Waveform Scopes: the standard waveform scope showing you a distribution of dark and light tones in your image and an RGB waveform scope representing overlays of Red, Green, and Blue color distribution of dark and light tones in the image.
A good place to start to balance the contrast and tone of your image is the standard waveform scope. It’s typically shown as a distribution of fine white dots across a black background forming what appear to be waves on the chart. Left to right on the chart is equal to left to right in the image, up is increased brightness, and down is decreased brightness. The scale is typically represented as both 0% to 100% and 0 to 255 colors. Black is 0 and white is 100/255. So the higher the peak, the brighter that part of the image. The lower the valley, the darker that part of the image.
Assuming your video was shot flat you’ll find that the distribution of your wave is mostly in the center of the chart. It won’t rise up to 100/255 or fall down to 0. You can use the waveform scope as a guide to help you with adjusting your flat footage to have a more natural contrast and tone. This can also help you see if your blacks are too black and hurting detail in the nearby tones or, similarly, if your white are too white.
The RGB waveform scope is similar to the standard waveform scope but it allows you to see adjustments that are needed per color. So, if the reds are too bright, or the blues too dark, you can track specific adjustments to those tones.
The RGB Parade
The RGB Parade functions very much like the waveform scopes, but rather than being a single scope for the whole of your image it’s three waveform scopes, one for red tones, one for green tones, and one for blue tones. This can be particularly useful for getting a good sense of what color may be dominating a shot and which of these three colors may need to be adjusted.
Vectorscope
The Vectorscope looks very different from the other scopes. This scope is basically a representation of the strength of the colors on color wheel. If you are looking at a flat black image or flat white image the vector scope will only be a dot at the center of the wheel. If the image is red, then that will be a spike in the red section of the color wheel. The bigger the spike the more saturated the color.
The Vectorscope is great for identifying if you have a color cast because the camera wasn’t properly white balanced, or for more advanced users a great way to make sure you’ve got skin tones in the right range.
Different platforms have somewhat differing controls and options for your color., But you’ll generally always find curves, color wheels, and simple sliders controls for different attributes including overall exposure, highlights control, shadows control, and color saturation control. Learn about the controls for your platform of choice to work through the process that follows.
Crushing It
To get started with balancing your footage: crush it. That is take all the controls and turn everything down until your footage is totally black or close enough to it. You basically want to start at zero and start revealing the light until the image starts to look natural, and the scopes start to look balanced.
If you have global controls like an overall exposure control, bring this up just below the default setting to get started with properly making the fine adjustments to your exposure.
Reveal the Light
Then adjust the controls for blacks, shadows, and contrast. Adjust them and watch the bottom of your waveform scope. Move the controls until you bring the bottom of the waveform just up above 0. You’ll notice it was below 0, you can bring the blacks in your image down below 0, which is called “crushing the blacks,” and that will also bring the other dark tones in the image down, often also to black. For now we’re bringing everything up just above being totally black. We’ll be adjusting it more later.
Then you should adjust the controls for whites, highlights, and brightness up until you get the peaks just up to the edge of the 100/255 mark on the chart. This will also bring your shadows and blacks up and your image will likely look too bright. Go back and adjust your blacks, shadows, and/or contrast controls to bring the parts of the image that are supposed to be flat black down closer to zero while keeping the other dark parts of the image from losing detail.
Balancing the Light and the Dark
Once you work through these first steps go through and make fine adjustments to each setting. What you are generally looking for is adjusting the exposure so that as much as possible you’re retaining details in the highlights that aren’t supposed to be pure white and in the shadows that aren’t supposed to be pure black.
Depending on the ultimate destination of your project you might need to be concerned about keeping your work broadcast safe or legal. If you project is for the web, then you typically don’t have to worry about this. If it’s going out to broadcast, DVD, DCP, or a similar form of distribution this may be a concern. Larry Jordan breaks down what you need to do to keep your image legal in this post.
Working with LUTs
You may also want to try working withLUTs (which stands for look up table). A LUT or 3D LUT is a method using an array of numbers to map one color space–the way a device or program displays color information–to another.
Since we’re working with digital media all of the colors we’re capturing can be represented with numerical values. Those numerical values reproduce the color by being mapped to combinations of red, green, and blue color. A LUT can be used to change the color space captured by your camera to match the color space of another camera, a display, or even approximations of film stock. LUTs can be useful for streamlining the whole correction and grading process, but it’s not a magic wand that will just correct the footage. You’ll still need to make adjustments to get the best final results with your footage. Shutterstock has a useful tutorial on working with LUTs in color grading.
Get Those Natural Colors
Remember, color is the wavelengths of visible light a material reflects as interpreted by the eye. So, the conditions of your shoot always affect your color. You’re likely already familiar with this from white balancing your footage. Even if you white balanced the camera, you may still need to make adjustments in post.
Many editing platforms include a white balance tool in their color correction tools. Often it will include a sampling eyedropper. Use that to click on any part of the image that should register white and the tool should automatically adjust the color correction to compensate for the lighting conditions.
If you need to manually adjust this because you don’t have the sampling eyedropper, or you don’t have anything white in the video, then you’ll typically be manipulating two color controls. One will shift the colors between blue and orange to compensate for color temperature. If the image seems a bit blue, add more orange and vice versa. The other control will shift the colors between magenta and green. This is to compensate for fluorescent lights.
Once you are sure you’ve white balanced the image, check your saturation. Saturation is how intense the colors appear. No saturation is a grayscale image. High saturation tends to look very artificial as the colors are more intense than found in nature.
Shooting flat reduces color saturation as well as the contrast. Adjust the saturation back up in post to get more natural colors. You usually don’t need to add much. Only bringing saturation up by 10 or 20 should get you close depending on the footage.
Refining Your Color Correction
After you’ve balanced each clip, it may not quite feel cohesive. Some clips might fit together well. Others may have such a big change in tone that it’s distracting. Now you need to go through and adjust your color correction so that the tone is consistent and flows from one clip to the next.
One thing that’s important about this part of the process is that it’s not about getting the whole video uniform. It’s about getting each clip to fit with the one before and the one after. Sometimes that means brightening a clip a bit that has darker colors, though was already clear when balanced. Sometimes that means darkening a clip that has a light of light colors. Often it’s a little of both. The clips don’t need to match exactly. Just try and make sure the transition isn’t jarring. You may find as you do this that clips from a single source may look slightly different at different parts of the project depending on these adjustments. That’s okay. Remember your audience will be watching this beginning to end and not jumping from one part of the video to another to check to see if those clips match.
Stop and Come Back to it Later
One of the most important things you can do when color correcting your own project is walk away from it for at least a few hours. Go for a walk. Have lunch. Go to the gym. Carve up some squash and sweet potatoes so you can play Toto’s Africa. Just get your eyes away from the color correction for a little while. It’s very easy to get sucked into the details of color correcting your video and think everything looks fine, when in fact everything is a little blue, a little too bright, or a lot magenta. You won’t notice it if you’ve just been staring at it for hours, so you just have to walk away and come back later.
A Quick Color Grade Process
As stated, a color grade is different from color correction. Color correction balances the footage. Color grading adds style and reflects the intended tone of the piece. When doing the color for your own projects, and after you’ve finished color correcting, you may want to try your hand at color grading.
Most editing platforms with color correction tools also have presets for color grading. Sometimes they are separate effects. Sometimes they are presets in the color correction tools. For a quick color grade find one of the presets that works, apply it to all of your clips, and then go through and adjust the intensity of the preset or effect until it looks right for that clip.
Check out this primer on color grading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94OFKmHbyF4
We won’t go too in depth on color grading here, but if you want to dive deeper into color correction and grading you may want to study up on color theory.
Whether you’re just getting started as a videographer, or you’re a seasoned filmmaker looking to add editing to your skillset, video editing has never been more accessible. Still, learning how to edit video can be daunting. Video editing, like so many skills in filmmaking, requires a balance of technical skill with artistic vision.
To help those of you looking to dive into video editing, we’ve assembled this comprehensive guide. It’s geared towards beginners and addresses not just the basics on what you need to get started and resources to help you expand your skills, but also a little bit of the theory on the why and the how of what makes editing work. We’ll start with how to get started editing video, followed by how to think like an editor, then we’ll look at how to edit video, and finally we’ll look at how to finish video.
How to Get Started Editing Video
Before we focus on video editing programs, you’ll need to consider these questions:
What’s Your Project?
Have you shot a project you need to edit, or are you planning a project that you’re going to need to edit? Before you can edit video, you need video to edit. So, if you haven’t already, go shoot something. Anything. (I’d say we’ll wait, but that’s not really how text works.)
Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash
Different projects may require different video editing software and hardware. A video shot on your phone of your friends pulling off some rad skater moves that you want to add text to and upload to Facebook doesn’t require the same kind of software or hardware as a feature-length science fiction epic. We’re going focus on the middle ground, but, we’ll touch briefly on low-end opportunities and high-end requirements, too.
If you haven’t started your project just yet, we recommend visiting our Ultimate Guide to Pre-Production to help you get it off to a smooth start.
What’s Your Editing Platform?
Presumably, you own or have access to some form of computing device (otherwise, you’re probably having a hard time reading this blog). Rather than start your editing journey by shelling out for the highest end computer that can handle the top of the line editing software, we’ll take a look at what can be done with what you own.
The minimum requirements for the most basic of video editing software available for free for Windows or Mac based systems is 2GB of RAM, a 2GHz single core processor, and about 3GB of storage. If your desktop or laptop was released in the last five years, it likely has better specifications than these. These, again, are the minimum requirements for basic video editing software and even for that software, it’s not going to get you far. High-end video editing minimum requirements, for a 4K feature film for example, will likely need a system that has at least 32GB of RAM, a 4GHz quad core i7 processor, 8GB of storage, and a GPU with 8GB of VRAM.
What’s a safe middle ground?. You should be able to edit your short films, wedding videos, and soon to be award-winning documentaries comfortably on a machine with at least 8GB of RAM, a 2GHz dual core processor, 8GB of storage, and a GPU with 1GB of VRAM. You won’t have lightning fast editing, but you’ll get by just fine on this configuration for a lot of projects.
Of these specs the ones that really matter for you for having a smooth editing workflow are the RAM and the GPU’s VRAM. Editing software increasingly relies on these, and increasingly the GPU, to process the video you’re editing. The processor speed is important as well but doesn’t really factor in much until you’re exporting or transcoding video. The higher your RAM/VRAM the smoother your editing will go. The faster or more cores your processor has the faster your exports will go.
Shoot on your smartphone and want to edit on your phone too? If it was released in the last five years it’s likely it can run one of many free or inexpensive video editing apps available. The newer the smartphone, the better version of the app it can run and more smoothly.
What’s Your Video Editing Software?
You know what machine you’re editing on. So, what software should you choose to edit with? Our middle of the road minimum requirements cover your bases for very simple 4K video editing on a professional grade video editing software. That is to say, if you try to edit 4K video on a machine with those specs, it will be slow and frustrating, but possible.
So, on our middle-of-the-road machine, what editing software can we use? Here’s a breakdown of the options:
Software/App
Platform Compatibility & Minimum System Requirements
Price
iMovie for iOS
iOS 11.2
Free
Adobe Premiere Clip
iOS 8.1 / Android 4.4
Free
iMovie
Mac – Minimum Requirements
Free
Windows Movie Maker/Photos App
PC – Minimum Requirements
Free
Davinci Resolve
Mac/PC/Linux – Middle-of-the-Road Requirements
Free
Avid Media Composer | First
Mac/PC – Middle-of-the-Road Requirements
Free
Final Cut Pro X
Mac – Middle-of-the-Road Requirements
$299 + tax
Adobe Premiere Rush
iOS 11, Mac/PC – Middle-of-the-Road Requirements
Starting at $9.99/month + tax
Adobe Premiere Pro (includes Premiere Rush)
Mac/PC – Middle-of-the-Road Requirements
Starting at $20.99/month + tax
Avid Media Composer
Mac/PC – Middle-of-the-Road Requirements
Starting at $19.99/month +tax
Davinci Resolve Studio
Mac/PC/Linux – Middle-of-the-Road Requirements
$299 + tax
A quick look at the above table should show you that our middle-of-the-road hardware configuration should run even industry standard high-end video editing software. If we’re editing on our phones, we don’t even need the newest phone to do it. You don’t need a top of the line machine to get started on your journey as an editor.
Once we start talking about editing software the questions inevitably come up: “which one is the best?” The answer to this is always: it depends on what you’re doing and what system you’re running the software on. Before you choose your software, it also matters what future you see for yourself as an editor. If you want to go work in a post-production house or on the editing team for a cable news show or become the favorite editor of your favorite director, find out which software they use and learn that. Many professionals favor Premiere (our personal favorite, and the most popular option for indie films and short form web videos) or Avid (a popular pick for higher-end productions and TV shows), but they are not the only video editing software being used. Final Cut Pro X is also popular. Others may be using Davinci Resolve, a newer entry into the field, which was previously just a color correction platform but BlackMagic Design is working to make it an all-in-one post production solution for editing, color, sound, motion graphics, and visual effects.
Not sure that is your path and just want to work on your own for now? Pick the software that fits your platform and financial capabilities.
The editing software that is the best is the same as the camera that is the best: the one you have with you. As we approach how to edit video here we’re going to avoid specifics of how any one software works and focus on the broader skills of editing that are applicable across the different software. Every one of them does these same things, but how they do them can be different. We won’t be looking at which button to press but which action you’re looking to take. User guides for the individual software you choose will help you find the exact button or keystroke to use.
How to Think Like an Editor
You’ve got your project and you are amped to jump in and edit this video. You are ready to start cutting and overlaying and inserting and crossfading and all of that other stuff, but do you know why you’re doing it? The biggest mistake that people make when they first start to edit is they don’t take the time to understand why they might cut or overlay or insert or crossfade now and not in ten frames or two minutes.
The first thing you have to do in learning how to edit video is learn how to think like an editor. Understand how editing works on the psychology of the audience so you understand why you’re making an edit when you do.
The Kuleshov Effect: How Editing Works At All
If I hold up for you a photo of a bowl of soup and then I hold up for you a close-up photo of a man’s face, what does that mean? Probably that I’ve cornered you and I’m showing you my vacation photos. I like soup. Well, what if in a film you see a bowl of soup and then a man’s face? Naturally, you assume these are connected. Perhaps it is his soup or at least soup he wants. Why should we think that at all, though? There’s no reason to draw a conclusion that these two things are related except that we saw them in sequence. This is known as The Kuleshov Effect.
The Kuleshov Effect was demonstrated by Soviet Filmmaker Lev Kuleshov in the 1910s. He showed the following reel to audiences, and they claimed that the actor’s expression changed with each pairing:
In fact, the actor’s expression never changes. It’s the same shot repeated. We assume not just relationships between shots but also emotional content based on the pairings of the shots. The idea here is that editing works because it plays on the basic psychology of human beings, we infer relationships between things that are presented to us in sequence. We see patterns and connections whether they exist or not. Editing relies on this basic feature of human psychology. Without it, no movie you watch would ever make sense.
The Kuleshov Effect can be summed up with 1+1=2.
For an additional fun example, please enjoy “The Keanu Effect.”
Eisenstein’s Five Methods of Montage: Telling the Story with Editing
So we now understand the basic principle of how editing works in the first place, but how do we use this to tell a story? This is where we turn to another Soviet filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein, and his “Five Methods of Montage.” Eisenstein is known for creating stunning, classic silent films like Battleship Potemkin, Strike, and October. He also wrote extensively on the editing process, or as he referred to it: montage.
One of Eisenstein’s many useful observations as a film theorist was his description of five methods of montage. He broke down five different ways that editing can be used to tell the story and the impact these methods have on the audience. These methods are known as metric, rhythmic, tonal, overtonal, and intellectual.
These methods progress from more concrete with metric to more abstract with intellectual, but don’t make the mistake of assuming that this is a hierarchy of best to worst. Also important to note is that often you are not using merely one of these methods but combinations of them.
Metric Montage
Metric is the most concrete and for many the simplest method of editing to understand. It is essentially cutting based on timing. How long is a shot? Three seconds? Fifteen frames? The idea behind metric montage is that the cut is based on a determined length of time whether it’s a few frames or a few minutes. Each clip used may be the same length or progress to shorter or longer clips. With this method you can build a rhythm for your audience. You can also use it to build or release tension depending on if clips get shorter or longer.
Rhythmic Montage
Rhythmic montage is likely the most recognizable to the casual film viewer. Rhythmic montage is letting the movement and content of the shot determine when to cut. We most often see this in continuity editing in narrative film. If, for example, a person throws a ball in one shot and a second person catches it in a second shot, then when and how you cut from one shot to the next is determined by the rhythm of the content of the shots and the rhythm you’re establishing for the scene.
We know, because of the principle Kuleshov described, that the audience will interpret the ball as thrown from one person to the next. They will see it as the same ball. Whether the audience perceives the throw as fast, slow, short, or long will be determined by if we cut before the ball leaves the first frame or how long we wait after the ball leaves the frame. It will be determined by whether we cut to the second shot with the actual catch, as the ball is in the shot, or well before the ball enters the shot. This rhythm is determined by the content and our choice of when to cut with both shots.
Tonal Montage
Tonal montage is also driven by the content of the shots you’re cutting between. Rather than using the content to drive continuity showing action from multiple angles, tonal montage is matching the visual or auditory content of shots to connect two separate locations, people, or ideas. This is most often seen in match cuts.
Match cuts are matching the contents or movement in shots to visually connect them for the audience. In match cuts we may cut from a person leaping in one shot to landing in the next. An often cited match cut comes from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In 2001 the film skips thousands of years by cutting from the first tool of early man, a bone thrown into the air, to a satellite circling earth. The cut is connecting the past and the film’s present visually. It is also connecting the bone and satellite as tools.
Overtonal Montage
Overtonal montage is the use of metric, rhythmic, and/or tonal montage over a sequence to convey story. Rather than being about cutting just from one shot to the next overtonal is how multiple cuts are put together to convey meaning. Overtonal is the impression that is given by a scene, film, or sequence, by combining multiple cuts.
Overtonal is not a specific method but a how the different methods are combined. The way a sequence may shift from metric cuts to rhythmic or tonal or any other combination thereof has meaning for the audience. Using multiple fast metric cuts and then switching to rhythmic cuts can convey a fast paced start–or perhaps a routine start–which then slows down. Edgar Wright has used combinations of cuts like this in films like Shaun of the Dead to convey routine.
Intellectual Montage
Intellectual montage is the most abstract of Eisenstein’s methods. It is essentially cutting between two very different shots to convey a relationship that otherwise might not typically be directly inferred. Sometimes intellectual montage might still utilize the features of tonal montage but in a way that the relationship might be less immediately obvious.
Intellectual montage is drawing connections between the otherwise unconnected. One example is Willard’s execution of Kurtz as the scene cuts to the animal sacrifice in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Visually connecting these two separate but similar actions connects them conceptually also. Kurtz’s death is a sacrifice. In Roeg’s Walkabout the young aboriginal man slaughtering the animal found in the outback for himself and the lost children to eat intercut with footage from a city butcher shop is another example. The young aboriginal man may be seen as uncivilized by some for slaughtering the animal but he’s not doing anything different than what is done in an average butcher shop.
The five methods of montage could be summed up as 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=pants.
The literal sum of the parts is not necessarily the idea that the audience will walk away with. The methods of montage should be viewed less in how to cut from one shot to the next but how each of these methods of cutting from one shot to the next can be used together to convey a greater meaning.
Here is another explanation of Eisenstein’s methods with some examples:
Walter Murch’s Six Rules
Walter Murch is an American editor and sound designer whose book In the Blink of an Eye has become a very popular volume on video editing. Murch presented in his book six rules for cutting. They are six priorities to consider when making a cut. Essentially a good cut takes under consideration: emotion, story, rhythm, eye trace, 2D plane of screen, and 3D space. The order and the weight Murch says should be given to each is:
Emotion 51% – Is it true to the emotion of the moment?
Story 23% – Does it advanced the story?
Rhythm 10% – Does it occur at a moment that is rhythmically interesting and “right”?
Eye trace 7% – Does it acknowledge eye-trace (the concern with the location and movement of the audience’s focus of interest within the frame?
2D plane of screen 5% – Does it respect “planarity” (the grammar of three dimensions transposed by photography to two)?
3D space 4% – Does it respect three-dimensional continuity of the actual space of where people are in the room and in relation to one another?
Ideally, every cut in a scene should serve all six of those criteria. Every cut should serve the emotions of the scene or that you’re seeking to inspire in the audience. Every cut should push the story forward. Every cut should maintain the rhythm of the scene. Every cut should follow the “eye trace,” where in the frame the eye is moving to, of the audience. Every cut should maintain the integrity of the 2D plane of the scene. If a car leaves out of the left side of the frame it should enter at the right side of the next frame. Every cut should maintain the integrity of the 3D space of the scene. The 180 degree rule should be adhered to and characters should maintain their positions relative to one another.
While every cut ideally should serve all six rules, when a cut doesn’t there is a hierarchy to deciding what to favor. Ideally, every cut will satisfy most of these six criteria. But that’s not always the case. So, in short, this list gives priority to the subjective over the objective. Emotion should be the first and most important consideration. When choosing when and how to cut are you maintaining the emotion of the scene? Are you building the emotion you want to elicit in the audience? If not, reconsider the cut.
Now that you have video editing software and a basic understanding of how to think like an editor when you approach your video let’s look at actually editing a video. In the broad scope there are five stages of post-production:
Media Management – Organizing the media for your project.
Assembly – The start of your edit, a loose initial construction of your video.
Rough Cut – The first full version of your edit, still very loose.
Fine Cut – A refined version of your edit, close to finished but still needing some polish.
Final Cut –The final version of the edit,
Media Management: Before You Edit Video
We’re not going to get started editing just yet. I know. You’re excited. You have this amazing project and you want to dive into editing. Before we get to the fun part of editing we have to take care of a little more business: media management.
Media management is a process of organizing your materials to make it easier to work with and easier to find when you need to bring it into your project. There are multiple methods for media management. Different teams may have different methods. Different individuals can have different methods. There are different ways to get organized. The important part isn’t so much how you organize, but that you are organized.
Since we’re just getting started with editing, let’s establish a couple of simple practices for you for your media management. First, your project should be on an external hard drive. On that drive you should have a folder for your project. Name the folder the name of the project. Within that folder I recommend a minimum of two sub-folders: video and audio.
Within the video folder you may further organize your videos depending on the type of project you have and how you shot. If you’re working on a documentary, you might organize footage by date or by subject. If you’re working on a narrative, you may organize by scene or again by date. What matter most is that you have a consistent method. I prefer to then review each video and rename each file based on the contents. For a documentary I might change the name of BRoll of a birthday party to BROLL_Birthday_Party.[file extension]. For a narrative project I am likely to rename based on the scene shot and take. So, scene 1 shot B take 5 I would rename 1B-5.[file extension]. This allows for you to find any of your footage at a glance.
Within the audio folder you may further organize your audio files. You may organize them the same as your video files. I again prefer to go through each file and rename it based on contents. With audio you may also be bringing in music, sound effects, or ambient sounds. I find it helpful to create sub-folders in the audio folder for that audio as well.
In addition to the video and audio folders you may find it useful to have folders for additional media needed for your project. Some projects you may use still images for and an images folder may be helpful. You may want a folder just for your project files for your video editing software. Some projects need more organization than others.
Now that you have everything organized on your drive, it’s time to import your footage into your chosen video editing software. With some platforms like Premiere, the software will only reference the footage in its location on your drive. Other platforms like Final Cut Pro X will import your footage into an archive or library file. Regardless of which platform you import your footage into you should take the time to replicate your folder structure in the software so it’s easy to find your media while you work.
I’m not going to dive into logging your footage just to keep it simple for this how to, but professional video editing software includes options for detailed tagging of your footage in the program. Check the link in the resources below for more on that.
Now that you’ve taken the time to do your media management and get all of your project media organized (which you totally didn’t skip, right? Right?) we can dive into the first steps of putting your edit together—the assembly. An assembly is the most rough and loosest version of the project. The assembly is a very messy stage. It doesn’t represent at all your final project. This is often when you’re still trying to figure out what it’s going to be and what works and what doesn’t.
As you start your assembly you should make sure you’re very familiar with your footage. You probably got somewhat familiar with it during the media management stage. During the assembly, a typical process is to watch all of footage, and add clips to a timeline that you like in roughly an order that might work for telling your story.
To add clips to a timeline you first need to create a timeline. A timeline is the canvas on which you are going to work on for telling your story. Depending on the software you chose a timeline might have a different name like sequence or project. The timeline has two important common settings you must pay attention to: frame size and frame rate.
Frame size is the height and width of the video. High definition video, for example, has a frame size of 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels tall. Your frame size should match the majority of the footage you shot for the best results. High definition 1920 by 1080 is the most common frame size today.
Frame rate is how many individual frames of footage are shown per second. It’s important in editing to keep in mind that video and film is not actually continuous motion but a series of individual images (frames) shown to us at a speed that our brain reads as continuous motion. The standard frame rate for film is 23.98 frames per second. This is sometimes rounded up to 24 frames per second. The standard frame rate for television in the United States is 29.97 frames per second. The reason for the difference has to do with that AC electricity in the United States cycles 60 times per second. Your timeline frame rate should match the majority of the footage you shot for the best results.
Once you have created a timeline matching the majority of the settings for your footage you can start adding clips you like to the timeline. You can create a clip from one of your videos in the timeline using a method referred to as three-point editing. This process involves selecting one of your videos in your project, and selecting a segment of it to add to your timeline using what are known as in-points and out-points. It’s important to keep in mind that with video editing you are manipulating time. With your in-point and out-point you are defining a selection of time from the video. The in-point is the start of the selection. The out-point is the end of the selection.
Once you’ve set an in-point and out-point for a part of the video you would like to use you can then add it to your timeline. To add to your timeline you need to be aware of when the playhead is on your timeline. That playhead when you’re editing defines at what point in the timeline you will be adding a clip. The typical method for adding once you’ve defined the start and end of the clip is to use the insert function of the video editing software.
Insert clips into your timeline in a loose order of how you think they’ll fit together. Don’t worry about it making sense. Don’t worry about having redundancies or repeated moments. The assembly is all about figuring out what you have and the rough shape of how it goes together.
Once you have an assembly, you can start to refine it. One good practice to get into is make a copy of the timeline you used to create your assembly. This preserves the work of putting together your assembly in case you need to go back to something you might remove during the rough cut process. The rough cut is about getting closer to the feel of your final product. It still will be very loose at this point.
Once you’ve added the clips you expect to use to your timeline you’ll start to reorganize and trim your clips. Within the timeline you can move a clip to any point. You can click and drag a clip and reorder all of them. Different software have different functions for this. Trim tools are available in various editing software. There are some variations to trim tools but in the end they all accomplish the same thing: shortening or lengthening a clip in the timeline.
For the rough cut, re-organize clips in the timeline to fit the story you’re trying to tell. Go back and review the hierarchy defined by Walter Murch. Start thinking about that hierarchy at this point as the video starts to take shape. The rough cut won’t quite feel like what you want your final video to look like yet, but you’ll start to see some glimmer of the final product now.
You may want to show this rough cut to a few trusted colleagues or friends to get some thoughts about the direction of the video. As this is the rough cut, try to ignore issues of sound or color. You won’t deal with those until much much later in the process.
Once you settle on your rough cut and settle on the general approach to the video you can start to refine it into a fine cut. As with the assembly, duplicate the rough cut timeline and rename the duplicate to fine cut. The fine cut will be a much more solid version of your video. The broad strokes of the story will be set, but some individual moments may still need a lot of work.
With the fine cut you may start to add more detail elements to the timeline. As you refine your cut and settle on getting the edit closer to the final product with the trim tools you may want to start adding elements like titles, lower-thirds, or other graphics. These are elements that start to come into play with the fine cut.
While you still shouldn’t be very concerned about the sound and color with the fine cut, if you’re going to show the fine cut to people to get their input you may want to do a little light work on those. Adjust volume levels so dialogue is audible. Add some temporary music. Add maybe a simple color preset to footage, if it’s available in the software you use. You’ll polish these later, but they can help people watching and giving you feedback a better sense of what your vision for the final product is.
Final Cut: Let’s Just Be Done Editing This Video Already
The final cut is well, what it sounds like. When it comes to the process of video editing, it’s not always a straight line from assembly to your final cut, however. In fact, sometimes you get all the way to a fine cut and then realize you need to take a step back and rethink the edit. As you consider the process of how to edit video you should understand that, generally, there are three triggers that define the cut as the “final cut:”
Running out of time – There’s a deadline that has to be met.
Running out of money – Whoever is spending money on the project doesn’t want to anymore.
Running out of patience – You just can’t with this video anymore. You just can’t.
Again, create a duplicate timeline to work on your final cut.
Depending on how big or complex your project is you may finish your video on your own in your video editing software, or you may need to coordinate with a sound editor and/or a color grader to finish the project.
If you need to coordinate with the sound editor and/or color grader this final cut is what we call “picture lock.” Picture lock is when you’ve committed that you have completed editing the video of the project and won’t be making further edits. The picture is locked. This is done because color and sound are dependent on timing of the project and you can’t coordinate that properly if the times keep changing. Even if you’re doing your sound and color in the software yourself you should stick to the concept of “picture lock.” It will save you time and frustration later.
More on sound editing and color correction and grading below.
Once you’ve finalized your edit you can export your video and share it through whatever means you like. Common settings for an export is to export an h.264 MP4 with a variable bitrate with a target of 10-15Mbps. Use the same frame size and frame rate as your timeline for the best results.
Sound editing is a whole discipline on its own beyond video editing. There are significant number of skills wrapped up in sound editing. At its most basic, sound editing involves refining audio recorded on shoot days and adding new audio, whether that’s music, ambience, or sound effects, to the project. Here are a few tips for accomplishing a simple sound edit.
One of the first things you should do as you prepare for your sound edit is go through your timeline and reduce the amount of audio used from the shoot days.
Once you’ve cut up your audio from the shoot, add roomtone recorded on the day to replace the silent moments and ease us from one dialogue clip to the next. If you neglected to record roomtone, lay down an appropriate ambient audio track under the whole scene or sequence.
After you add roomtone, if needed, you can start to add in sound effects and foley. This can be a fun part. Finding and timing just the right sound for a door closing, a foot step, a beer can, a slap, or a faucet can be satisfying and as these sounds come into play the scenes and sequences of your video will start to come more alive.
Once your scenes and sequences start to have that more natural feelm you can start to underscore the emotional content with music. A score written specifically for a project is always going to sound best, but if you can’t afford that, there are many sources for existing music that you can use for cheap or free. (See our guide to free or inexpensive resources).
In general, you’ll be manipulating the volume of these different types of audio to mix them to sound natural. Your dialogue audio should be reading at between -3db and -18db on the audio meters in your editor. -3db should be as loud as it gets with a shout and -18db should be as quiet as it gets with a whisper. You’re aiming for your dialogue audio to be right around -10db most of the time. This isn’t exact but it’s a good range and rule of thumb to keep in mind for dialogue that will be intelligible across multiple viewing platforms. Adjust sound effects and ambience to be much quieter and make sure they never compete with the dialogue.
Two notes of caution on audio. First, your sound should only ever reach 0db on the scale for the loudest sounds like a door slam or a laugh. Even then try to keep it below 0db or “peaking.” Second, you should not trust your ears with the audio levels. Just because you can hear it on your fancy editing headphones doesn’t mean a viewer will hear it on their laptop speakers or earbuds. Trust the audio levels meter. The range for dialogue above is safe across most devices.
Color Correction and Color Grading: How to Refine the Look of Your Video
When it comes to the look of the video, manipulating the color can do a lot to help with the tone and how viewers react to a video. Emphasizing cooler colors like blues and greens can bring a sense of calm. Emphasizing warmer colors like orange and red can imbue a sense of danger. Desaturating color can give a sense that you’ve made a Batman film.
There is a distinction between color correction and color grading, though they are often used interchangeably. Color correction is adjusting the color settings to get the picture to look natural and consistent from shot to shot within a scene or sequence. Color grading is adding a look to the footage to set the tone of a scene or suggest an emotion to the audience.
When working with color for your video, the first thing you should do is color correction. Make sure all the footage looks natural and consistent from shot to shot. Then go through and think about how the audience should feel in the scene. Should it be a dark and dramatic scene or a bright and fun scene? The color is going to help cue the audience for that.
A word of caution on color: you can very quickly find yourself pushing color too far and ending up with a scene that seems normal because of the time you’ve been spending looking at it, but that later will look very strange. It’s important as you work to consistently compare what you’ve done to the original footage. Take regular breaks. Otherwise you can end up with something that looks very strange
This is just a primer on how to edit video. The topic is very broad and complicated. Every project has different needs and challenges. From what’s here hopefully you can get started regardless of the platform you’ve chosen.
If you have an editing project that needs more computing power than you own right now, KitSplitters have post-production gear available including computers, external GPUs, RED Rockets, and more.
It has been a minute since I’ve updated this site. Between keeping Meme and 4MileCircus up to date I tend to forget to keep this one up. So, here is a quick look at my three projects for 2018.
Meme
Meme is, of course, the biggest project on my plate for 2018 as it is my first feature. Post-production wrapped at the beginning of the year and in January we held a very successful cast & crew screening. This was then followed by the joys of the film festival submission process. As of the writing of this post Meme has been accepted to three festivals: The Underground FilmFest, The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, and Cucalorus.
Meme has already screened at The Art of Brooklyn in June and they awarded the film Best Feature. It was a lovely festival and I tried to go to as many screenings that week as I was able to. The staff and volunteers were great. I’m looking forward to going back to it again, whether I’m screening or not, next year.
Meme will be screening on November 10th and 11th at Cucalorus in Wilmington, North Carolina. I’m currently preparing to head there for the long weekend. I’ve heard wonderful things about the festival and I’m excited to experience it for myself.
“Meme masquerades as a common relationship drama, when in fact it presents a fascinating existential commentary that is perfectly tied up in a full circle approach”
Tasha Danzig, Spoiler Free Movie Sleuth
More news on Meme will be coming for 2019. In the meantime, here is the latest trailer:
Rubber Ducky
Rubber Ducky is a short film I wrote and directed in 2017 during Meme post-production. I completed post-production for Rubber Ducky while waiting to hear back from festivals on Meme. I am currently submitting it to festivals. It had it’s premiere at the August screening of Congested Cat’s IndieWorks. Rubber Ducky is a fun odd little film I hope to share more widely soon. Here is the teaser for Rubber Ducky:
It’s Normal
I started writing It’s Normal after the 2017 presidential inauguration. I shared the draft with Nicole Solomon, my business partner at 4MileCircus and she was very eager to make it. I worked with her on revising the script and she took on directing duties. The film is at its core about the normalization of fascism, but it uses vampires instead. We shot it in the spring of 2018 and finished a cut of the film just in time to premiere at the Ax Wound Film Festival November 10th. As I’ll be with Meme at Cucalorus in North Carolina, I won’t be at Ax Wound for the film’s premiere, but Nicole will be in attendance. I’m looking forward to hearing about the audience’s reaction to the film.
While 2018 isn’t over it is about the time to start working on 2019. There will be updated reels and more screenings and we’re looking forward to releasing all three of these films through platforms that will allow anyone and everyone to watch them. More updates to come.
