Hello! I’ve made a list of 4 editing prompts that teach how to edit. Prompts are great because they offer real world experience rather than learning through designated, specific techniques. It’s similar to cooking, where I learn more by trying out a new recipe than some isolated knife exercise that just teaches one thing. With a recipe, there’s problem solving baked into it (no pun intended). Plus, I get to eat it at the end, versus an exercise that leaves me with a giant pile of chopped onions.
Here are the 4 prompts:
#1 My name is _
Record yourself saying some version of the following sentence:
“Hi my name is ____, I like _____, I love ______, and I don’t like ______”
My daughter’s version was “I like mac and cheese, I don’t like smoke and I love my family”. Sure, it’s a random list, but after that, I added pictures of macaroni, a forest fire and a family photo.
This one teaches how to add B-roll to a video, where you’re adding pictures to help show what you’re talking about in the video.
#2 “Count to 10”
This one was fun - I recorded myself counting down from 10 to 1 slowly, and then I cut each number into a clip and rearranged it so that it’s a video of me counting up to 10. It’s a good skill to learn since I’ve made a lot of videos that involve clipping a long video and rearranging it.
#3 How to make PB&J
I always thought Youtube was the place for funny videos or movie trailers, but did you know that it’s still one of the highest ranked search engines for “how to” type things? A video that helps someone do or fix a specific thing can go far. So I’m using this as an excuse to practice making instructional videos, starting with something simple: a 2 ingredient sandwich. This is, at most, a 3 step process: get bread, add peanut butter, add jelly, and I happen to make a lot of PB&J’s, so I always have a “how to” subject matter at hand. This one helped me learn the art of recording different shots for each step of the process, and the difficult art of trying to record my hands and not make a sloppy sandwich at the same time.
#4 - Cause and Effect
The most important part of editing is the cut. One shot ends and immediately cuts to another, and our brains apply meaning (in film study circles, this is called the Kuleshov effect). I could spend hours talking about this. In this case, record a shot of someone opening something, then cut to a reveal of what’s inside, and then back to their reaction. For my example, I used a shot of a guy opening a mailbox, cut to the inside of the mailbox, and then back to shot #1 of the guy looking disappointed. This one only scratches the surface of editing, because what is shown in the middle shot “inside” and then the reaction shot after creates different meaning depending on what it is. If the inside shot of the mailbox was empty, and the guy’s reaction was sad, then he’s sad because not getting mail is disappointing.
But if the inside shot is full of money, and the guy is sad…well that’s a story I want to hear - does that guy not like money? Does the money mean something has to happen? Or did happen? Was it a mistake? I need to know!
Anyway, I hope these video prompts help - they helped me as an experiment to sharpen my skills, they were fun to do and I can safely say, it’s better than having a pile of chopped, unused onions.
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