3 Mistakes I Used to Make when I first Started Editing Home Movies
I want to tell you what I was doing wrong when I first started editing home vidoes and why it was taking me forever. FOR. EVER.
First of all, I was getting bogged down in the details of the software, instead of just using the basic editing techniques that all editing platforms have. I was trying to learn the software and edit my video at the same time. Doesn’t make much sense really! How to import clips, trim clips, split clips, and export the movie. That’s basically all you need to know and it’s almost the same process on any software. But because I always hear how complicated editing video is, I guess I thought it needed to be more complicated than that.
So my first tip for your is don’t get bogged down with your editing software. Learn the basic techniques and create your home movie. There’s really no point in spending even 1 minute editing your home movies if you don’t actually finish the movie… so don’t bog yourself down with bells and whistles. It takes forever and usually doesn’t look that great.
The second mistake I was making was that I was trying to cram too much footage into one final video. You guys – no one wants to watch a 15 minute home movie. If you have enough awesome footage for a 15 minute movie, then you have enough for 3 five minute long movies. And 5 minute long movies are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay quicker and easier to edit than one epic 15 minute movie.
So tip #2: less is more. Aim for home movies that are between 3-5 minutes long. Break up your footage and edit one short movie at a time. This will keep your editing time down and you exporting and uploading time will be shorter as well.
The third mistake I want to tell you about is not organizing my clips in my videos into any kind of theme or story. I would throw my clips together without any kind of plan. And this goes along with making your movies just 3-5 minutes long, because how do you pack all your footage into 5 a five minute video? You have a plan for your clips and you let them tell a story. It’s easier to edit out pieces and parts of your clips to make your video shorter, when it’s clear what content goes along with your theme or your story, and what doesn’t.
So tip #3 is to make your home movies watchable, by doing what real movies do: tell a story or stick to a theme. Be organized and have a plan for your clip, and group your clips in an order that kind of flows… know what I mean?
These are just three of my biggest mistakes I made when I first adopted editing home videos as a hobby and a have a bunch more but in the interest of following my own advice and making THIS video short and sweet, I can’t possibly cover them all here. So added a bonus chapter to my book and I call the chapter “3 COMMON MISTAKES THAT MAKE HOME MOVIES LOOK CHEESY” – yeh. These are like amateur home movie mistakes 101.
Make sure you hop on my email list over at vidpromom.com so you can see how to get your hands on that bonus chapter as well as the book and the course that it’s part of. Just sign up below!!