Learning to Edit

I think the process of editing my first video has taught me more about filming than editing.

When I started my filming experiment, I didn’t set out with a story to tell. We walked around the park, I filmed things that caught my attention, and I said whatever came to mind. I made it up as I went along. When the time came to edit all those film snippets into a video, this was the biggest hurdle. I had a disparate collection of film snippets from around the park, and no idea what I wanted to do with them.

My biggest lesson from this process? Know where you are going before you begin.

Once I had figured out what I was going to do with my film snippets, the actual process of putting them together wasn’t too bad. Graham gave me a crash course in using iMovie before I got started, which sped things up.

It took me an afternoon to edit the video together. It was fiddly and time-consuming, rather than difficult. I felt I could have spent forever tweaking and adjusting things.

The result

The result of my filming and editing experiment is a very short video of Lyon’s Parc Feyssine.

You won’t see me in it. The majority my snippets either had me in them, or me speaking over them, but in the end, I couldn’t get past the cringe factor. So, the final video is shots of the park with the background noise of other visitors and some energetic song birds.

I don’t think the video is particularly interesting, but it is nice to come away with something. And, it is a point to improve from.