Some questions I hope to answer: What is your level of skill with video editing? Is it an art or a science? How is your experience with editing? What is your process and what you hope to achieve with the editing of your various projects?
I LOVE VIDEO EDITING. I really do! I began video editing with The Ithacan in October of 2017, more or less as soon as I got to college, and I really had a knack for it. I stuck with it throughout these semesters, and am getting especially into it lately. I used to take HOURS editing, and now I am able to edit the same length video in 20 minutes. This morning I edited a video about a play happening on campus, and I had a really good time with it because I was able to mix up the interviews and not every video lends itself to do that. My editors know that I love editing videos with music, and I'm good at integrating music and interviews into something cohesive. They're probably my favorite videos to edit, because although interviews are lovely and informational, they're much different than music. Recently I have been assigned a lot of speechless videos that are a recap of photoshoots or something that was just capturing a behind the scenes event, where interviews aren't useful, and I love those because I can choose songs, and edit the footage to the beat or lyrics of the music. It's awesome, and makes really interesting videos that truly show off what I can do with my skills because those types of videos rely heavily on editing interference. I always stick to more or less the same blueprint when editing, and try to maintain a circular narrative. I also never edit out jokes that the characters make, even thought they sometimes get cut by my editors.
I was recently on the phone with my mom and I was talking to her about how I want to do more interviewing/shooting and less editing, and she was like, "yeah. editing is just like photocopying", and quickly I said, "Mother! No! Editing is so creative and important." I feel like that interaction pretty much wraps up my opinions on editing.
I want to compare my first video I edited for the Ithacan, with the most recently edited video I edited.
Recent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqwZBU-7XaE
Old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnqXP-wFPBg
First of all, with my older video, Director is misspelled. That's also a fault to my old editors because that should never have gone up with that prominent of a misspelling. Also, the interviews are very blocky, they feel heavy and it would have been SO much more interesting if I broke them up. I think as a new editor, there's such a fear to cut something that matters. Now, I am able to slash videos really well. Your refining skill to literally edit out bad dialogue and maintain all of it. My skill set with knowing what is important and what isn't has been ultra refined.
My recent video is awesome. I had fun with it, and loved what came out of it. They're very different video, the two, but I still think my rapid cuts towards the end were really fun, and I was able to utilize a sense of fun in the video itself via editing. In order to be able to convey and emotion with the tempo of your cuts, I think is awesome, and I love that I have that skill set now. In my previous video I was really unsure of how to dissect something to give it a good tempo, rhythm, and flow. I know how to do that now, and it came with practice. Something that I want to get better (faster) at is choosing music. It took me SO LONG to find an appropriate track that worked with the vibe of the video. I spent about an hour just on the music. But I'll get better! I have really good matched action in that video, and I just honor the footage more so than in my previous editing path.
I really feel like multimedia journalism is my calling, and it is a perfect balance between an interesting creative desk job and a mobile, interactive, social job. I wish I could talk to more people more often and specialized in both editing and shooting, but I also know I am just a sophomore and skills take time to develop.