Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo & Francisco Collazo

You’ve got your gear. You’ve accumulated some decent footage. Now, what to do with it?

Before you sit down to start editing, spend some time watching films–short or long, it doesn’t matter–with a critical eye. Now that you’ve been behind the camera, you’re likely to see the finished product in an entirely new way. The intel you take away from a couple hours scoping films will help you understand what details to attend to in the editing process.

Did you watch some films? Really?

Ok, you’re ready for the next step: editing your own footage.

The editing software you use will depend, to some extent, on the equipment you have. For instance, the footage you capture with a Flip camera can simply be downloaded to your computer, imported into Windows Movie Maker (which is pre-installed on most Windows PCs and laptops these days), edited, and then saved and uploaded to YouTube or another online video archive. The Canon HG10, on the other hand, comes with an editing program and (so far) we haven’t figured out a way to use any other program to edit the footage.

Regardless of the gear you’re using, any decent editing program should be accompanied by a manual or installed help function that will guide you through the editing tools in your particular software package or program.

While we’ll deal with publishing and promoting your videos in the final article in this series, you need to know that many online archives, such as YouTube, upload videos in segments of 10 minutes or less. Keep this in mind with editing; two or three minute videos are optimal for uploading and sharing. Besides, most visitors to your blog–even the most dedicated and intelligent ones–have a limited attention span and aren’t likely to spend much more time than that… even if your video is compelling or funny. (vis: La Corraleja, where a man gets gored and stomped by a bull. Compelling? Yes. Engaging? Apparently not, as it produced the lowest average time on our blog ever!)

Another question should inform your entire editing (and filming) process: What is the purpose of adding video to your blog? Will video be an adjunct to narrative or will it be a stand-alone main feature? The answer to this question will determine how you edit, whether you need informative subtitles, and what kinds of audio and/or still photo material you’ll need to gather in order to tell the story. It helps to answer this question before you even start filming (which is why we mentioned developing a storyboard in the last article).

Once you actually start editing, import a few clips into the editing program and use them as a means of getting accustomed to the editing tools and process. Start out knowing that editing takes time… more time than it took you to conceptualize and capture your footage. Let’s say you’ve got 20 minutes or more of footage and your plan is to produce a 2 minute video. Budget several hours–especially as you’re just starting out–to generate that final piece.

After you’ve finished editing, watch the video a few times. Are your transitions between clips smooth? If you’ve used titles, subtitles, or credits, make sure every word is spelled correctly. Have you added your name, blog URL, or some other means of contact to the final frame? How is the sound quality? Any online archive to which you upload your video will compress your file, impacting the quality of your final product considerably, so be sure that the video you’ve produced is the best quality it can be given the capacities of your gear and your editing program.

Stay tuned… tomorrow we’ll publish the final article in this series: how to publish and promote your video.

In the meantime, if you’d like to see a visit a few blogs that incorporate video, we recommend:

Emonome: Check out our friend Emon’s Central Park drummer video, which is in the top right corner of his blog.

Ian MacKenzie: You may already know that Ian’s the editor of Brave New Traveler, but you might not be aware that he’s also a new media producer. You can find lots of videos on his site.

Film editor photo: Filmingilman (Flickr creative commons)
Clock photo: Frankfarm (Flickr creative commons)