Tips for beginners: Help your budding filmmaker edit his first short film

Do you have a budding filmmaker at home? Quite a large cross section of youngsters today wants to take up film making as a profession and they start quite early on as an amateur, thanks to the easy availability of affordable DSLR cameras and high-definition smartphones.  

Making a short film is considered to be a good stepping stone as it adds on to the portfolio, while allowing hands-on experience. Well, creating a video footage and giving it the shape of a short film with intelligent edit techniques are two different things altogether. If your aspiring ‘director’ has already shot his first short, he may feel a little overwhelmed with the technical nuances of editing. Well, easy-to-use video editing apps are aplenty in our tech-driven world. But they may not always be the solution. Here are some editing tips for him to follow.  

Watch video editing tutorials 
For a beginner, watching video tutorials available on YouTube can be helpful. Your budding 'director' may also refer to websites such as Video Copilot, Skillshare, and Red Giant Tutorials that provide a lot of specific tutorials to assist your youngster in making the film look better. While doing so, encourage your aspiring filmmaker to further look out for the functionality and menu settings offered across different versions of software shown in these video tutorials. 

Motivate him to learn editing terms 
Working in the film and video editing industry with other video editors and clients necessitates the knowledge of at least a few basic terms related to this work. Help the youngster familiarise himself with a few terms used such as jump cuts, montage, cutting on action.  

Figure out the film’s elements 
The first step should be to help your youngster identify the chief elements of the footages he has shot. Also, nudge him to think of the final message that he wants to convey with this film.  Discuss elements like the backdrop, pace, colour tone. All these need to be decided based on the message that needs to be conveyed. 

Select the right software 

This is a crucial step in editing a short film or video. Help your budding filmmaker choose what would work for him and his editing style, rather than the latest, fancy video editing software available in the market. Apart from doing basic video edits, features like usability and the digital interface should be considered as well. After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro and Lightworks are some popular film editing software. 

Master the art of colour correction 
Colour correction takes care of the different images used in a film footage. It balances their colours so that the final images look even to the human eye. Through a basic idea of colour correction, your aspiring filmmaker will know which parts of the frame the viewer's eyes would get drawn to and what would actually look visually appealing in the final run. 

Choose the right music 
Well, a film is not just about visuals, but also music. Once the shooting is complete, you may help your teenager select the right kind of music to go along with the theme of the film and the different scenes therein. It will add to the overall voice and appeal of his portfolio. 

Trust your inner voice 
Nothing beats going ahead with your gut feeling while editing a short film. This might not sound too convincing initially. However, your youngster’s own intuition can guide him best during the edit process. Software and tools can certainly ease the job of editing, but the human touch can only come from a mind that observes and believes what will look good in the frame.