3 Editing Secrets I Wish I Knew Earlier

it is the golden word of YouTube Every editing decision is to optimize these so then we will be blessed by [Music] [Music] we've lost our way we've started using logic to find out what's best for the edit rather than exploring how emotional intelligence or creative expression can find out what's best for the edit but for whatever reason we started treating editing like it's a maths problem rather than using it as an opportunity for Creative expression so here are three things that I regret I didn't know sooner that would make me not just an editor but

an artist and the first one I call the Jurassic Park Theory your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn't start to think if they should just because I can add VFX doesn't mean I should add the effects just because I can add a song doesn't mean I should add a song just because I can add a clip of me slapping Logan doesn't mean that I should but we could all agree that joke's getting a little bit overdone do you see my point but sometimes we get so caught up on flexing

and how great we are as editors that we think adding a thousand VFX shots on a ton of transitions is good editing but just because you can add the effects and transitions should you is it actually serving a story is it telling me something about the character is it establishing a theme or are you just doing this so you can show off something on Twitter filmmaking is so incredibly exciting and of course it encourages us to think big but sometimes thinking big could actually hinder on whether that's best for the story sometimes the story calls

for small instead of big or less instead of more here's an example in this video we're hearing a thousand people's blindness I was tasked to edit Miss to be securing a thousand people's blindness and I needed to Showcase how people experienced blindness from all around the world that's the rule well that's obvious then let's just add a VFX animation of the earth and so we can all say hey that's cool right I mean well yeah it's cool it's pretty Advanced but when you look at it when you really look at it does that convey the

story as clearly as possible or could something more simple convey the story better so instead I found as many portrait shots as I could in our footage and created a match cut sequence of every single person's eyes and spread out the process that barrage of images really makes you feel the scale of the problem around the world compared to just showcasing a planet because I thought it looked cool can you convey what needs to be said with a simple cut or Cuts before you choose to go bigger going bigger should be your last result after

all the foundation of editing is just the juxtaposition of cuts if you can't master that then you can't master editing at all in my course I call this Theory conversational editing how one shot is in a conversation with the shots after it and that shot is in conversation with the next and so on throughout the entire piece now obviously that's a really difficult skill to master which is why I've put it in my course so you can try that out yourself now the next thing I wish I knew Murder Your Darlings but don't throw the

baby out with the bath water look I get it on YouTube we have to play the algorithm games any obvious way to game the algorithm is to make our videos as short and as fast as possible because you're worried that if you linger too long that maybe they won't like you so you over stimulate the audience you give them everything so what does that mean for the audiences is that they then get but sometimes giving them everything will actually give them nothing because that over trimming will end up cutting out the small moments I will

actually make it a story I learned that when we discussed that concept on my podcast the editing podcast subscribe by the way where Michelle Carrey in her documentary I train like an Olympic boxer she explained the most important moment in the entire video was a moment of silence at the end of this bar when I fail when I get knocked down what really stood out to me about this edit Ryan leaves in this really nice moment of just silence [Music] that silence was the moment where Tony realized she's gonna get back up and I think

I can train this person all the way to the end you know most YouTube editors would have cut that out and just moved on to the next thing it was a lesson in some of these moments of pause are the most interesting to watch in the entire thing that moment of silence which could be a very obvious moment to trim out in fact became one of the most important beats in the entire documentary but I bet you on a murderer darling's pass that would have been one of the first things that would have been cut

out but it is so worth keeping all of this is to say it's not a sin to trim but it is a sin to over trim sometimes silence speaks loudest body language can say so much more than dialogue and if the eyes are a window to the soul then sometimes holding on to eye movement will suck us into the piece so yes Mario Darlings but don't throw the baby out with the bathroom [Music] his the one thing I really really wish I knew sooner and it's how to transcend from not just being an editor but

being an artist and it's to take everything that you know and then forget it it's weird right but uh let me explain [Music] good morning g'day good afternoon good evening good morning g'day good afternoon good evening and good night I'm Eden Helia Smith when I first started editing obviously I didn't know what to do so I went to books mentors schools to learn how to be an editor all of these tools taught me the Practical fundamental ideas formats and styles of editing and I thought that was it that was the end game I'm off to

do great things I'm an amazing editor now woo and that was the issue everything that you can get from studying is practical knowledge that everyone else has access to so then my videos began to look like everyone else's because I had learned formulas and therefore my content became formulating what I was doing was not standing out and so if I had reached that end game that line what could I be doing next I chose to forget everything I know I stopped thinking with my mind and started exploring something else that no one else had access

to my heart some of the best editing I've ever done I cannot explain there's no formula but I can tell you what I was feeling when I edited it Hayden is alive barely barely yo the whole night was I worked with Logan Paul with 2016 all the way up to 2022 and during that time I think I can say that we grew up creatively together we developed our taste in filmmaking through the over 500 videos that we made together that time was incredibly personal for both of us I don't know if a lot of people

also realize the amount of Storytelling ability that we have done and are capable of doing you are the thing that no one knows about that is like vastly responsible for a lot of My Success thank you for that thank you for me Logan Paul wasn't just my boss he was my collaborator but do you notice that past tense was the natural time came where both me and Logan were heading into different life paths and we chose to acknowledge that and we started a project 99 Originals as one last hurray I needed to take the craziest

coolest photo I can every single day for the next 99 days that you're feeling for me I already explained why I cut it this way or what formula I used all I knew is that I wanted to say goodbye to Logan through editing I started editing with my heart [Music] is that I know play but they were in my subconscious I already learned the three act structure microbeats and punchline editing I did the rule are free there I did a call back there I used some bookend storytelling there everything that I was doing was in

my subconscious I didn't have to think about it I used storytelling formulas and techniques the same way that you would do walking you just do it and because it was already in my subconscious I was able to put all of my creative energy into editing with my heart and that's what I want to teach you in this course how to learn with your brain so you can think with your heart that's so cheesy but all right let me give you a specific example in the last video I ever edited for Logan Logan is in a

zero gravity plane surrounded by his Polaroids and to me those Polaroids looked like timelines [Music] and as Logan floated I imagined myself floating through all of the timelines that me and Logan made together and what that would feel like this odd sense of nostalgia and reverence of looking at your past work [Music] finally when the gravity kicks in the Polaroids and Logan come down and it feels that I too am putting down my time with Logan I have been trying for ages to express how this feels with words but there are no words there's no

way to express this in the English language but I can't express it through editing and that's what I want to teach you how you can express yourself through editing and edit like an artist the link to my course is in the description I hope to see you in there