How to do video editing in laptop

Hello everyone and welcome back to our blog the small startup My name is Naveen Kumar, and while I am known for many things on the google but , something that you may or may not know about me is that I am the post-production for blog lecturer for the in our blog Town School of Photography. And part of my job is working as a professional video editor. Therefore, in today's blog, we're going to be giving you a little bit of insight into the wonderful world of video editing theory.

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While it is true that video editing is a technical vocation

Editing itself is actually less about tools and more about story. In order to become a more intentional editor, you need to start thinking critically about your shots, their order, when you choose to cut, and other factors that impact your storytelling. Today we will introduce you to some of the historical schools of thought regarding editing theory so you can start making more considered editing decisions.

This will include a bit about continuity editing as well as the theory of montage which delves a little bit into complexity or discontinuity editing. We're also going to touch on Walter Murch and his theory regarding the rule of six and finally we'll wrap things up by talking about deductive versus inductive storytelling. Firstly, let's dive into continuity editing. This should be your first consideration when cutting an edit. Continuity editing is part of editorial grammar. In other words, the rules that we use to structure an edit the way that we would structure a sentence. It seeks to maintain continuity so that the viewer is not taken out of the piece that you have constructed. While this might seem a little bit boring, it's very important that we understand these principles and how to use them

before we go ahead and break them in order to advance the plot or create dramatic effect.

What does continuity editing actually consist of though? There are five key considerations that an editor must keep in mind when attempting to maintain continuity in their video. The first of these considerations is eye line. The editor must always be aware of where their subject is looking so that they can ensure that the audience always knows what the subject is looking at or maintains the sense that they are making eye contact with another subject in the scene. This involves choosing your camera angles very carefully and always cutting between your shots in a way that makes sense. The second is eye trace. The editor is responsible for guiding the viewer's eye to the most important information on screen.

This influences how long your shots are and where objects of importance are positioned on the screen relative to shots before and and shots after. Essentially, the editor has to direct the viewer's eye through a sequence of shots so that they always end up looking at what is most important.

The third principle is matching action and cutting on action, two principles that are separate but go hand in hand with each other. The first ensures that there is continuity of action when cutting between two shots that capture the same action. This looks like finding an exact frame match for that action in both of those shots before you put them together.

When done incorrectly, it can either look like the action is stuttered or like it is lagging or even repeated depending on how many duplicate frames you have.

The second, cutting on action, sounds more complicated than it actually is, but really all it is is a technique that is used to smoothly transition from one shot to another when the same action is being captured and displayed over those two shots. and it plays out as simply as making sure that you cut while your subject is still in motion rather than before the motion has started or after it has ended. The fourth principle is continuity of objects.

The editor is responsible for paying attention to objects that are in their given shots so that things don't disappear and suddenly reappear when they're cutting between various takes. This is meant to be the responsibility of the person who is the script supervisor on set.

However, you as the editor are the final barrier against any continuity errors involving objects when it comes to putting together the video and you don't want to end up in a situation like Game of Thrones with that infamous Starbucks coffee mug. Finally, our fifth principle is the 180 degree rule. And no, that is not the same rule as the one involving shutter speed.

You want to learn more about shutter speed,

by the way, you can check out our amazingly in-depth video on that in the description below. Now, the 180 degree rule in terms of editing imagines that there is a line that runs down the middle of a scene. And how this plays out practically for you as an editor is you want to ensure that when you're cutting between various camera angles catching the same scene, that they all exist on the same side of the line.

Essentially, what you're trying to do is keep your viewer oriented in two-dimensional space and ensure that they're not teleporting back and forth across the line when you're cutting together a dialogue scene for example. Now this rule is one that is made to be broken particularly in instances where you want to disrupt, you want to show the viewer that something has changed, maybe a power dynamic has shifted. However in general when you're just capturing and editing together a conversation we want to seek to maintain that line so the viewer doesn't feel disoriented.

Now that we've dived a little bit into continuity editing,

let's unpack the theory of montage a bit. And in order to introduce this topic to you, I'm actually going to quote a definition of the theory of montage from a really great YouTube channel called Crash Course.

The theory of montage proposes that films derive their ultimate power and meaning through the way that the shots are cut together, their order, duration, repetition, and rhythm. What this means, essentially, is that you as the editor have the ability to imbue your video edit with significance based on these factors that includes things like how long or how short your shots are the order in which you put things together on your timeline when you're constructing your edits it includes things like repetition whether a shot is shown once shown twice whether actions are repeated or only shown once and then of course, rhythm, which is dictated by the pace of your edit. Montage editing is also sometimes referred to as complexity or discontinuity editing. These are umbrella terms for all editing theory and practice that seeks to create a relationship between two or more shots or draw attention to cuts in order to infer meaning.

This is one of the reasons that it's actually referred to as discontinuity editing because in a sense while continuity editing seeks to make the cuts as invisible as possible to the viewer so that they are not paying attention to the edit and just watching the piece. This idea seeks to draw attention to those cuts so that the viewer is taking away some sort of significance or noticing when something has changed. There are five main types of montage that you can use in your edits, although don't be shy, you can definitely use more than one at the same time if you are so inclined. In fact, most films do exactly this. The first of these theories is known as intellectual montage. It can be defined as the juxtaposition of two otherwise unrelated images, which when brought together and put one after the other can create a third idea in your mind as the viewer.

You also might know it as the Kuleshov effect.

I could explain this principle in more detail to you, but why should I when we could have a true legend of cinema do exactly that for us. So let's roll this clip of none other than Alfred Hitchcock explaining the Kuleshov effect to us and the effect that it can create in your edits. Now we have a close-up. Then we show what he sees.

Let's assume he saw a woman holding a baby in her arms. Now we cut back to his reaction to what he sees. And he smiles. Now what is he as a character? He's a kindly man. He's sympathetic. Now, let's take the middle piece of film away, the woman with the child.

But leave his two pieces of film as they were. Now we'll put in a piece of film of a girl in a bikini. He looks. Girl in a bikini. He smiles. What is he now?

The dirty old man.

He's no longer the benign gentleman who loves babies. That's what film can do for you. Next up we have tonal montage, which is the combination of two or more shots that have similar tonal or thematic qualities to build on each other or reinforce the emotional or psychological meaning of a video edit. This sounds a little bit complicated, but actually it's as simple as the following. If you put together a bunch of shots of baby animals and young children, a meadow blooming with flowers, a sunrise, happy

life-giving colors like green, like yellow, you're immediately going to be thinking of something like new beginnings maybe, springtime, hope, the joy and the essence of life, all of these things. Whereas if you put together shots that had a completely different tonal or thematic quality, you would have different images evoked in your mind and different connotations would be coming through to you. Next up we have metric montage which occurs when shots are cut after a specified number of frames regardless of their contents or what is going on in that shot. And this is done because limiting duration like this is a really effective way to increase intensity and drama. Using metric montage in your video edit is an incredibly effective way to create the sense of chaos or pandemonium like

Time is just relentlessly marching on regardless of what is happening in your character's journey at that given point. It has been used to really great effect in a lot of films showcasing battle scenes or similarly intense and traumatic events.

Next up we have rhythmic montage which is probably my favorite type of montage if I had to pick one. With this technique, cuts in your edit are matched to music as it builds and swells and falls and rises and to its beats. It's matched to sound effects and to on-screen actions. It can be used to great effect to create an incredible sense of building and excitement and anticipation in your edit and this is why it is most commonly used in movie trailers. And now that I've mentioned that, you'll never be able to unsee it.

If you want to see a really incredible example of this used in a recent-ish movie trailer, you can go and check out the trailer for Dune.

One day, a legend will be born. All of civilization depends on it. The future, I can see it. I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. My Lord Duke.

here the fear is gone, only I will remain. Finally, we have overtonal montage, which combines metric, rhythmic, and tonal montage. Because of its complexity, overtonal montage is very difficult to illustrate in a single scene. You generally have to watch an entire film to get an idea of how everything ties together and is used to create this effect and imbue that piece with significance. However, I have been told that The Godfather Part 1 is

an excellent example of this, so go and check that film out if you want to get a better idea of how overtonal montage can be used to create meaning in an edit. Theory of montage over, let's dive a little bit into Walter Murch and The Rule of Six. But firstly, who is Walter Murch? Walter Murch is an Academy Award-winning editor, and he's best known for films such as Jarhead, The English Patient, Apocalypse Now, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Talented Mr. Ripley. And he wrote a book, or rather it was a seminar for editors that he gave that was turned into a book. And it's called In the Blink of an Eye. It's actually one of the most highly regarded pieces on editing and is filled with incredible nuggets of very practical and very technical advice rather than very overarching high-level theory, which can

sometimes be unnecessarily complicated and not practical enough for real-world editors who need some practical advice on how to make their edits work. The Rule of Six is one of Walter's principles from In the Blink of an Eye. If I remember correctly, it was actually a response to a question asked by one of the editors in the audience, and this particular editor wanted to know something along the lines of, how do I know if my cuts are effective in my edit? And Walter's response was that every cut that you make should satisfy six criteria but that these criteria aren't all equally as important as each other. Let's break it down a little bit more. First up, we have emotion with a 51% importance weighting.

And here are some questions that you can ask yourself while you are editing to know if your cuts are making sense emotionally. Are your cuts working for the right emotional tone or feel for what you are going for overall. How will this cut affect the audience emotionally at this moment? Next up, Walter gave a 23% weighting of importance to story. And the question that you can ask yourself while you are editing is, does the cut, transition, or edit advance the story in a meaningful way? If it doesn't, you're probably better off not making a cut or not using that transition at that given point. Next up we have rhythm, with a weighting of 10% importance. And the question that you can ask yourself in this instance is, is the cut making rhythmic sense to support the emotion of the story at this point in time?

Remembering of course that rhythm is pace, in other words, how long or how short, how fast or how slow your shots and that sequence of shots are. we have eye trace with a weighting of 7% in importance. You'll remember eye trace from our earlier discussion about continuity editing. And the questions that you can ask yourself in this instance include, where is the eye of the audience likely to be looking before I make this cut? How does this cut affect the movement of the audience's focus? Second from last with a 5% weighting of importance we have 2d plane of screen and this refers to the 180 degree rule that we discussed when we spoke about continuity editing questions that you can ask yourself in this instance are does the cut maintain the line and if the intention is to cross the line is it effective in other words is it noticeable enough for the audience to pay attention and lastly with a 4%

importance weighting we have 3d space this basically refers to the entire process of ensuring that your viewer is oriented in the 3d space that is being portrayed as 2d on the screen and the question that you can ask yourself in this particular scenario is did the cut establish the subject's physical space well enough so the audience understands how they arrived where they are now? Hey, if you're enjoying this video so far, here's a friendly little reminder to hit that like button. It might seem like a really small thing to do, but honestly, it is so helpful for us over here on the youtube side of things at orms because it lets us know that you're enjoying this type of content and that you want to see more content exactly like this.

So if that's something you want from us, hit that like button. It helps us out a lot. Right, so up until this point, we have really discussed things that come into play later on in your edits. But what about the beginning? How do you start your video off in a way that draws the viewer in while giving them enough context to kind of figure out what is going on? And this is where the theory of deductive and inductive openings comes in really handy. Deductive openings are more classic and more traditional in cinema. They were kind of born out of the fact that when motion pictures were originally being produced back in the day. Viewers were not as visually literate as we are now because of the amount of visual media that we consume on a daily basis and therefore these original viewers had to be navigated through a space very carefully in order to get the context that they needed before they landed up very close to what was going on in a scene.

Inductive openings are a slightly more modern addition to cinema because we are visually literate enough these days to kind of start with a close-up and then gradually move out to a wide shot that reveals that context. They can also be a little bit harder to pull off because your viewer needs to be navigated quite carefully through that space and that transition. The best way to kind of illustrate how these are used in cinema is for us to actually do a little tiny case study on two examples, one of a deductive opening and another of an inductive opening. And for the deductive opening we're going to actually look at the opening of a film called Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It's an amazing film by the incredible Taika Waititi.

So the opening sequence of this film starts with this expansive soaring drone shot that kind of captures the wilderness and it's incredibly appropriate in this particular film considering the relationship between the people in the movie to this vast open expanse of outdoors. It then cuts to a closer shot of a car driving along the road before moving in for these very intimate close-ups that kind of examine what is going on inside the car and they use that to kind of introduce these characters to us that are going to be key players in this movie. Then for the inductive opening let's look at this film called Brick which is one of my favorite movies and it's by an absolutely incredible director called Rian Johnson.

Now Brick fades up to reveal the main character's feet in a close-up and then transitions to another close-up of his face and we can see from these shots that he's obviously looking at something and examining it quite intently but we don't know what it is and that's one of the reasons that an inductive opening is so so effective is it has the sense of mystery and allure that kind of just pulls you in because we don't have that full context yet. It's only when we smash cut to that wide shot that we actually see what he is looking at which in this case happens to be the lifeless body of his girlfriend. Hopefully now after looking at these two examples of a deductive and an inductive opening you have a better idea of what they are and when they would be appropriate to use in a given video edit.

Comments on videos are a really great place to kind of sound out your opinions And trust me, we want to hear all of your opinions on all the things. But most importantly, we want to know if there is a movie that features any of the types of montage that we have discussed in today's video that you found really effective and really powerful. So get down there, get typing, and let us know. We'll try and respond to as many of your comments as we possibly can. Well everyone, that was our brief introduction to editing theory. I really hope that these principles are something that you can take with you into your next video edit in order to enrich the viewers experience of your story.

I understand that we've definitely covered all of this at a sort of overview level and if you find yourself fascinated by this incredibly interesting topic, we've linked a bunch of incredible resources in the description of the video that you can go and check out. Until next time, cheers!