Pacing is one of the most important
things to get right for your edit but it's also a little tricky because
there's no formula I can give you and pacing really varies from project to
project so what I'm gonna do in this video is just share with you a bunch of
techniques that I've picked up over the years and that I use in every single one
of the videos I edit. We're gonna be talking about where to place your
individual cuts down to the frame that you cut on, but also looking at the
broader structure of your video, the length of different sequences within
your video to have a natural flow that keeps your viewer interested throughout
the entire thing and feels very natural. Before we jump into that, one of the
biggest misconceptions about pacing is that it's basically just the speed of
the cuts in your video and it's not. While the speed at which you cut can
impact your pacing, there's a lot more to it than that and a lot more subtleties
to be aware of. Pacing is even important before you start cutting clips at all.
For example, with music it's super important to choose the right track to
put behind your video so it fits with the mood and you can achieve the pace
you're going for. So for the intro to this video I chose to use two different
tracks, one of which was very slow and classical in style to reflect that older
kind of distant from the city feeling in Central Park, and then I also chose a
darker moodier hip-hop track to go with that darker more modern vibe in the
second half. If I were to keep the entire edit the same but just swap those two
tracks it wouldn't work at all. It would just feel off. So no matter how cool that track you
found for your video is, make sure before you throw it on the timeline that it
really fits with the pace and the mood of the video that you want to create. And
once you've done that we can get into actually cutting some clips up. One of
the biggest pieces of advice that I can give you for cutting your Clips is to
not always cut directly on the beat of the music. This gets really monotonous
after a while and it'll also encourage you sometimes to not cut in the right
place, because it's always best to cut in the spot in the clip that feels best for the
edit, and that might not necessarily fall on the beat. If you cut too early then
you're cutting off action and making that first shot feel incomplete or
interrupted by the next one, and if you cut too late
you're leaving empty air after the action has already taken place one good
technique is to cut on motion or impact. So for example, with this shot of the
helicopter blade rotating around I chose to cut right after it swept past the
camera and left the frame. This way it's not like I'm interrupting that motion
halfway through, but it's also not like I'm letting it happen and then leaving
an extra half second afterwards. So that way, by cutting at just the right time it
feels like that big motion is kind of carrying us through to the next shot. If
you're struggling to figure out where to place your cuts one thing I'd recommend
is actually watching your video without music or sound, and that might sound a
little ridiculous but I actually edited several sequences in the intro to this
video without having any sound. I just took my headphones off and edited based
entirely on what I was seeing, and this is a good way to prevent yourself from
being distracted by the music and the sound and just focus on the flow of the
visuals. Now of course sound is incredibly
important. It's 50% of your video, but this is just a good exercise for not
getting caught up in that monotonous beat of the music and really focusing on
what feels right. Another thing to be aware of when you're cutting Clips is to
avoid an abrupt change in speed or energy. For example if you have a
hyperlapse and then you place a static shot with no motion before or after that,
it's gonna be a pretty abrupt cut between those two clips. Whereas if you
put some other shots in between those two where you can kind of slow that
motion down gradually, then you have a much smoother sequence. For example
there's a subway sequence in the intro to this video where I needed to get from
a shot of the subway moving past the camera at full speed
to a shot where it's completely stopped and people are getting on. So how do you
do that? Well, I took a few different shots. I took
one where the subway was moving but you could see that it was coming into the
station and kind of slowing down but still moving quickly, and I put that
right after the shot of it going at full speed. And then after that clip I put
another shot where you can see it visibly slowing down almost to a stop.
That way instead of just cutting from the subway moving quickly to it not
moving at all, we have those two shots that allow you to see it gradually slow
to a halt. This way we're going from a high energy shot to a much lower energy
shot but we're not doing that abruptly and breaking the speed and the energy of
the video. We have that smooth flow throughout and the subway sequence is
also a great example of having kind of a smaller subsequence within your video.
Sequences like this are not only a great way to organize your edit narratively
but they're also a great way to tie together very fast cuts. They're
especially effective in that way when you tie the sequence together with
something like a sound design or a similar motion. So for example in the
helicopter sequence within the intro to this video, I have that helicopter rotor
sound behind all of the shots in that sequence which ties them all together
even though they're quite fast cuts. And then if we look at two other subsequences within the intro to this video- the horses and setting up the camera on
the bridge- then we can see that I've actually animated in a scale in effect
on all of those shots. So we have that motion pushing in throughout the entire
sequence which really just blends them together to feel like one shot. So when
you see that and you hear that same sound behind all of them or you see that
same motion, even though it's a bunch of different shots really fast, you kind of
internalize it as one fluid motion. That's why, especially when you have to
condense a ton of footage down into a short video, sub sequences like that are
absolutely essential for structuring your video.
But if we want to talk about structure there's also a lot more to it than just
those short fast-paced sequences. We also have to talk about the broad structure
that encompasses the entire video. Now of course broad structure may not impact
flow and energy quite as much as those individual cuts between your clips, but
it's super important for keeping the viewer engaged throughout the entire
video and not breaking their attention with an awkward change in pace. Most
films or videos have different sections. So for example the intro of this video
has two sections: that lighter calmer sequence in the first half, and then that
darker moodier sequence in the second half. And I would always recommend
spacing these sequences out somewhat evenly. If the sequence is too short then
the viewer gets dragged on to the next one before they were even able to get
immersed in that first one, and if it's too long they get bored of seeing the
same thing over and over again and they lose attention in your video. That's why
I would recommend trying to keep them at a pretty consistent length throughout
the entire video. I usually try to go for at least 30 seconds but not longer than
60 for a given sequence. A really good way to keep track of this when you're
editing is to use solid layers or text layers on a layer above your clips, and
then you can basically just drag that layer to encompass the entire sequence
and it gives you a visual representation of how long that part of the video
actually is compared to the other. If we use my Faces of NYC video from last
year as an example, we can see that it has five very different sequences, but
they're each about 30 to 40 seconds long so you don't get particularly bored of
any one of them by the time it's over, but you also have just enough time to
get into it by the time you move on to the next one. Whereas if the first
sequence of the video is 20 seconds and then the next one is a minute and a half
and then the other three are all 20 seconds, it's a much more awkward video
to watch because you're getting very bored of that long sequence but then you
don't have enough time to even understand what's going on in the short
ones and it's just a mess. Once you've got that right, you also might
even want to take the opportunity to change the pace of your video in between
two of those sequences. A "pace transition" like this is a really good way to keep
the viewer engaged in what they're doing, but if you mess it up
it's also a huge opportunity to break that pace in a bad way and completely
lose your viewers' attention. To give you a really bad example of a pace
transition, what if you're watching a video and it's very slow and calm and
then all of a sudden it just cuts to like heavy metal? You're
gonna be thrown off by that because it's abrupt and it interrupts the pace. But
if you have a more subtle transition and it's done smoothly, you kind of build
slowly up to it and you're aware that a change is happening but it doesn't take
you out of the video, you're a little more accepting of it. You're like okay
we're changing things up here I like this. A good way to subtly change the
pace of your video is by doing what I would call taking a breather, so having a
moment where everything kind of builds up and then stops entirely and you have
kind of a moment of rest before you move on to that next sequence with a
different pace. So for example in the intro to this video after that first
sequence the song kind of builds up and then stops, and there's like maybe 10
seconds of very quiet like almost no music while that second track builds up,
and then we get into that second pace. And the key here is that you become
aware that the first sequence is ending before the second one starts, so you're
not just immediately transitioning to something new. You're aware that a change
is going to happen so you can broadly transition into it and be more accepting
of it. A change in pace should also be motivated by another change in your
video like location or music as we talked about before. So for example in
that intro edit we not only switch the music but switch from a very light grey
theme visually to a very dark grey theme visually, and we also switched from the
very central part kind of away from the city nature type vibe to a very like
heart to the city Times Square very modern feeling. Whereas if we transition
to that much faster darker pace but what you were seeing on screen was still
Central Park and the horses, that's just gonna be a little confusing because why
why did we transition to the same thing, you know? So don't do that. And finally
let's talk about perhaps the most important transition in your video, which
is the ending. It's important to wrap
everything up properly, because a bad ending in the video is basically like
taking this really long inhale and then you just don't exhale it. Very
unsatisfying, very awkward, very not ideal. And a super common mistake that
might result in you having that long inhale with no exhale feeling in the
ending of your video is just ending too abruptly, where the viewer has absolutely no idea that you're gonna end
the video- they don't see it coming at all, and then it just happens like you just ran out of footage, which probably a lot
of times is the case. What you could do instead is build up very noticeably to
the ending, or what I like to do with most of my videos is have a good amount
of time at the ending. So we have that last long shot that allows the video to
kind of slow down and end rather than just cutting off. I think I'm gonna get a
lot of comments about talking with my hands in this video, but that's alright.
But now that we've talked about the best way to end your video, I think it's time
to end this one. So I hope you've enjoyed it or especially learned something new
from it, and if you did and you do take some techniques from this and apply them
to your own workflow feel free to share that work online and send it to me. Tag
me in it and I'd love to see it. But that's all for today. If you enjoyed it,
feel free to show your support by leaving a like on the video, sharing it
with your friends, or even subscribing to my channel. I upload new filmmaking
tutorials every week or so ish. I've got some big projects coming out in the
next month or two that I'm incredibly excited to show you,
so subscribe for that. Keep creating and I'll see you in the next one.
