5 Things I Learned After 10,000 Hours Of Editing

10,000 hours is a lot of time to put into something it is a popular belief that in order to become an expert in anything you need to hit this 10,000 hour mark well I could probably say that I'm an expert in editing now I have learned so much things over these years and there's still so much to learn but after editing for more than 10,000 hours I found that there are five extremely important things that I wish I knew when I started and these things are probably stopping you from becoming a better editor number one you're not valuing your time we all know that editing is definitely not a quick process we have done many things to try to make you easier and faster but one of the most important things an editor needs to be good at is shortcuts this is a huge problem I've seen in the editing Community every editor uses shortcuts and we all know shortcuts are so godamn important but 90% of the editors I know are not using them correctly look at this panel in Premiere Pro normally you would have to right click to look at all these options and some of these even got subfolders to even more options imagine how much time you waste being in this panel if you use shortcuts you wouldn't even need to open this panel in the first place as a matter of fact you can learn so much shortcuts that you wouldn't even need to open any of the panels do not underestimate shortcuts shortcuts are like my meth I have two mouses one of them is strictly for Speed editing and the other Mouse has 12 programmable keys on them and then I have a keyboard with a few more macro keys and not too bad right that's nothing compared to this amazing stream deck for example if I press this plus three deciel icon it will add plus three DB to my audio instead of having to manually type it in God that's dumb or this close Gap one where it closes all gaps inside of my timeline if you don't have a shortcut for that one you would have to go all the way up to the sequence and find this one oh hell no and I don't have just one of these and not even two I got three of these things woah wo wo these things are pretty expensive what if I can't afford them great question you don't need these things if you just have a keyboard that's all you need to start making shortcuts this has saved me hundreds of hours and with this simple trick you'll be editing three times faster there's a lot of tutorials online but I have a method that will make you a shortcut Master let me show you start by making shortcuts for your most frequently used actions and as you edit more videos add more shortcuts but don't make too many shortcuts at once just learn maybe one or two at a time and each day just start adding another one it's that easy don't try to rush it and learn 20 in a day I did that don't do that and speaking of easy things number two editing is not as hard as people think let me explain you see in order to be an elite editor you need to have two key things first is going to be your technical knowledge and second is your creative knowledge most people tend to be a lot more creative than they are technical how do I know this it becomes obvious when you realize that most editors are always looking at tutorials they have the creativity to when to use it but they don't have the technical skills to actually make it this is this is why most editors find themselves stuck they have great ideas but they don't know enough about their software there is a fix to this though if you want to be better at your technical knowledge look at other creators and break down segments of their video and in those segments look at every small detail that you can find and start adding things bit by bit when you do this I want you to imagine how you would do it in your timeline this is one of the fastest and easiest ways to be more technical it's way better than just copying someone else's tutorial step by step yeah that method never really worked but this method actually gives you a deep understanding about how things work so so what about creative knowledge then how do we grow that I hear all the time that you need to be naturally creative to be an editor this is just completely false creativity isn't just having a light bulb moment it's about having a good chunk of knowledge on different topics imagine you know all these things about editing versus someone who only knows these each one of these things only make your video better so let's combine some of these things together hey look you just made my video this is what creativity truly is the more you know the more creative you're going to be therefore the less you know the less creative you are so if you don't know enough don't be afraid to learn new things learning is only going to make you a better editor and everything that you need to know is online but where online should you start looking this brings us to number three everything you need to know is on YouTube I always thought the biggest YouTube creators always had some sort of secret to their success some secret information that only the people at the top knew this is what Mr Beast has to say about this and what's even more interesting is I go on podcasts and I say everything I know it's all out there and a lot of people instead of just studying that and trying to absorb and apply it in their own way they're just like no it's just lock even Mr Beast says that everything he knows is already out there and more specifically YouTube YouTube is a gold mine for learning anything there is a world champion Javelin thrower who is known as Mr YouTube man he credits his success from learning the sport through YouTube I don't think I need to see anything else about that but if there was one thing that I really hate about YouTube it's got to be those annoying course sellers the truth is these gurus who sell you their courses are just damn Liars most of the information on these courses are things that you can learn in just a few days trust me I've tried a lot of courses never buy a course all the information you could possibly want is on YouTube already these creators really don't care about you or your goals they just want your money this is why you'll never see a tricky product's everything you need in 6 weeks course that for some stupid reason originally cost $100,000 but for a limited time it's down to only 5 grand like what everything you need to know about editing is already on YouTube and for free there is a slight problem with this though there's a little too much information out there and it could be hard to find actually helpful information I noticed there's only a few places where you can learn some of the best things one of those places are going to be podcast I can't even express how helpful podcasts are there are all you would ever need to become an expert I wish I had known that because when I first started I watched videos like these just stick to podcast I do this because they explain so much and they don't need to worry about making their video shorter the more information the better I'm going to leave some really helpful videos in the description ones I've actually watched and that helped me during my journey if you buy my course just kidding number four editing blindness editing blindness happens when you've been working on a video for so long that you start missing important mistakes you miss these mistakes because after looking at your video over and over you get used to how the video looks and feels let me give you a great example editors spend a lot of time making sure the storytelling visuals and flow of the video feels great now when we do this we often Overlook other parts of the editing process let's say that the music was too loud although that seems like an easy fix at that moment it's definitely not because you were so focused on the storytelling and visuals now when you look at your video again you don't even notice that for the whole video the music was too loud because of that viewers might struggle to hear what you're saying over the music just this alone can make your video flop this is something I've seen a lot of beginners do and sometimes even larger creators a lot of it boils down to people trying to be perfect in their videos stop trying so hard to be perfect it's okay if your graphics don't look like some Netflix documentary just don't make them look bad everyone thinks that people are looking at every single frame in their video and when they see something wrong and it got boring really quick and it got boring really quick really quick there was this one time I made a video where I accidentally blurred out some really important captions I panicked and texted him yo I messed up the captions he messaged me back saying that he already uploaded the video in my head I thought well I'm screwed but that was not the case for some apparent reason the video got one out of 10 in his video performance what's even funnier is that I checked the comments fully expecting people to be hating and there was a comment about the captions look at what they said I loved how he blurs out the numbers that's smart you got to be kidding me so now that we know that editing blindness can ruin your video what can you do to avoid it well have someone else look at your video the more people you have watch it the more mistakes you're going to see I always make sure at least 10 people look at my video before I post it or you can just do the easiest thing and just take a break taking a step away from editing can refresh your mind and will help you start seeing your work from fresh eyes again you shouldn't neglect taking breaks which brings us to our last Point number five don't overwork yourself you see editors have a very timec consuming job and it can be very stressful at times like when we can't find the right footage to put in your video or even worse when you can't find the right song it's easy for an Editor to overwork themselves and this can lead you to an editor's worst nightmare burnout burnout burnout burnout burnout burnout how do you prevent this from happening to you well you need to set realistic deadlines these massive timelines that I have didn't just take days these can take weeks so if someone only gives you 3 days to edit a 20-minute video full of Motion Graphics and crazy effects just get the hell out of there this is my process for editing videos your process may be different but what I do is figure out how long each one of these processes are going to take then just add all those together and slam it in an extra 1 to 2 days and that'll be a pretty accurate deadline damn I wish I knew all these things when I first started let me know in the comments if these five things really helped you I'll see you next time

Channel: Tricky Prolix

Views: 145,235

Keywords:

Id: 292l7NSsswY

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024