Video Editing: A First Attempt

I’ve been wanting to learn video editing for a while now because I kept feeling constrained by my lack of skills in that department whenever I’ve had to submit a video for an assignment (“Sorry guys, I’ll write the script instead?”) I was also interested because I’d heard many creators on YouTube mention they learned to edit by themselves, so I figured it couldn’t be that difficult.

My only obstacle was my unwillingness to invest in getting professional software like Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro – I wasn’t going to spend money on something I may not even use more than once. This led me to search “free video editing software” on Google and returned with the OpenShot Video Editor software. I downloaded it onto my desktop and searched for a LinkedIn Learning course on the software. Zilch.

Instead, I came across the course “HitFilm Express: Creating a Presentation Video” by Simon Jones. I thought, “Well, if there's an entire course on this particular software, it has to stand for something right?” I downloaded HitFilm Express onto my desktop and took the course. After the two hours or so, I felt confident enough to try and edit my own video.

I searched for some free stock videos and music and played around with the editing tools. At this point, I still had no idea what my video was going to be about – not the most efficient way to produce a video. Nonetheless, I looked through the stock videos I downloaded, and the idea for my video took shape. I spent the next five-plus hours editing my video, intermittently referring back to the LinkedIn Learning course videos. The final product ended up less than a minute long.

A screenshot of my video editing workspace on HitFilm Express

And that was my main takeaway from the whole experience: A tremendous amount of effort goes into editing even the shortest of videos (and it takes a disproportionately long time to export them out of the software). I’d say yes to editing more videos in a heartbeat though. I don’t mind the detail-oriented nature of video editing. In fact, I found it quite therapeutic to be fully absorbed in the editing process – I could’ve gone on for much longer if I didn’t have to eat and sleep.

Without further ado, let me present to you the first video I’ve ever edited, “Seagull Reacts To Animals At The Beach”.

My ultimate goal is to develop a video editing style. The visual media world is filled with talented video editors, but only a few have distinct styles of editing. Two such series come to mind – the “It’s Alive” series for Bon Appétit’s YouTube channel, edited by Matt Hunziker, and the Netflix show “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj” (also on YouTube), edited and animated by a whole team of people. Both series have highly recognisable styles of editing and motion graphics, the latter having won an Emmy for Outstanding Motion Design in 2019.

Yes, yes, it is highly unlikely I’ll ever reach that level of expertise when it comes to video editing, but a girl can daydream right? In the meantime, I’ll settle for simply being able to say, “I can do basic video editing!” the next time I have to do a video assignment.

Credits for the music in my video:

Emotional Piano Improvisation by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Sunshine Day by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com

New Life by JayJen & ASHUTOSH | https://soundcloud.com/jayjenmusic https://soundcloud.com/grandakt Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en_US

Hello Night by | e s c p | https://escp-music.bandcamp.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

All the above music was promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com