Keep Your Edits Classy - Tips For New Editors - DaVinci Resolve 17 Transitions Pack & Quick Tip

hey everybody i'm casey ferris i make videos on davinci resolve here on youtube today we're talking about how to keep your edits classy what i mean by that is how to make them not cringy because if you're new to editing there's kind of a tendency to make some decisions that once you're around for a while you realize are maybe not the classiest looking decisions so if you're brand new to editing hopefully you can learn from this instead of a few years down the road looking back and going ooh what was i doing little disclaimer this is just my opinion and all of this is depending on the type of project you're working on these are kind of general things but the things that i found to be true when it comes to making edits that are professional looking don't look amateur so number one tip is keeping a video as short as possible here's a video about a guy climbing and really it's less than 30 seconds long because it's just telling a little bit of a story it doesn't need to be longer than that it's just him getting all hooked up and climbing up the mountain and we have a bunch of different shots but it has a beginning middle and end and we aren't just sticking around for 100 hours if your video can be 30 seconds it's okay to make it 30 seconds it doesn't have to be a minute the only reason you change this is if you're trying to go for a specific feeling like if you want it to feel like man he's just really there for a long time you might want to extend one of those shots or if for instance you're trying to convey that somebody's having a really mundane boring day you might have a lot of really long shots in a sequence and kind of the opposite if you want something to feel really punchy and exciting you'd probably use a lot of short shots but there's usually a happy length for a video doesn't feel rushed but it doesn't feel boring either and that's kind of the mixture that you'll have to figure out but generally i find trying to keep things as short as possible is the best way to do it tip number two is to use transitions sparingly i feel like i'd be doing a disservice if our company ground control put out a set of transitions and i didn't mention this next thing in resolve you'll find there are a ton of really crazy transitions you can use and they're really cool and again depending on the type of project you're working on they might be good or bad but the thing with transitions is that they look really flashy you're really only going to want to use transitions for something that's supposed to look flashy something like a high-energy promo or something that pumps along with music maybe it's a montage of a few different moments that you really want to spice up and kind of get thrown at the screen in a really dynamic way these aren't generally really good for something like a video like this like a documentary video or a film and the reason for that is that it takes you out of the moment it's a lot less about the fancy editing and it's more about the story and so once you add fancy editing to the story it kind of just becomes distracting and instead of somebody listening to the story it's like why did that why did that spin that's really weird i would say this is like the number one way to tell if somebody hasn't done a lot of editing is if there's a bunch of transitions in a video that shouldn't have a bunch of transitions if you do have to have a transition in something like this i would recommend a cross dissolve which in resolve you can right click and add one but even then when you cross dissolve something it's for a specific reason you don't want to cross dissolve every shot or even most of your shots this is something that's usually used to denote the passage of time and so it makes sense if he were walking across a desert for hours and hours and hours and you wanted to show how hot it was and think so you faded and the next shot is the really hot sun if you want to make something feel dreamy if you want it to be disorienting that's when you would use something like this but almost every transition i would say in most videos especially documentaries especially films is a cut it's just a normal cut like this because it doesn't distract from the story next tip i have is using simple text and graphics this is especially true if you're not a super great graphic designer or anything like at the end of this we have the most basic text ever outside it's like inside but more windy and the reason i chose this is that it kind of looks like one of those motivational posters you know so i thought that was kind of funny but again just like transitions you don't necessarily want you know 3d spinning text that comes in and shoots particles out and everything because it's distracting if it's something like the title of a movie that you know there's this huge build up for and it's about a robot that crawls out of a volcano you know you might want to have 3d text that looks like it's made out of metal that slams down onto another piece of metal and sparks come out that would make sense but a lot of the time especially if it's like for a commercial or for a documentary or something you're not going to want anything like that something simple like this is a lot more effective even if the side of you that really likes cool graphics and likes to see 3d words and sparks and everything just craves something a little more exciting simple is almost always better when it comes to graphics the fourth tip and i see this a lot is don't overdo the color correction generally when we first learn about color correction or editing or first open resolve and realize there's a color page you tend to want to get crazy right and you put a big contrast curve on stuff and you make it really warm and make the shadows really cool you know and you really want those crushed blacks and so you end up with something like this and the problem is this looks kind of cool as one shot but just like our other tips like why are you making this with the kind of greenish undertones other than you remember that the matrix was a really cool movie which is usually where where i end up but how does it serve the story if this guy's climbing up this mountain because he wants to get away and you know enjoy himself and conquer something this might not be the best color grade and again that can be because this is distracting so what might be better is to have a more subtle color grade a little bit of a contrast curve here maybe maybe just a little bit of warmth in the gamma a little bit more saturation and so now we're just accentuating that this is a sunny day and he's really excited to go climbing and now all these shots look nice but they're not so distracting it just looks good and most of the time your color should just enhance a well-photographed shot and if you do like the more extreme looks it's a good idea to do some research on how those kind of inform the viewer what does something like a cooler cast feel like to somebody who's watching your movie really all of these tips come down to what is appropriate for the story because any time that you make a video you're really making a story and if you've ever watched a documentary on pixar you know that story is key so there are some tips to keep it classy if you want a little more insight on basic editing we have a free training right here oh baby it's so good if you haven't used resolve that much definitely recommend checking that out if you want more videos on resolve make sure to subscribe that would be really cool because then we could hang out and it would be nice and i don't know maybe i'll bring a juice box you know maybe i'll bring orange slices to the soccer game that we went to probably

Channel: Casey Faris

Views: 19,659

Keywords: Keep Your Edits Classy - Tips For New Editors - DaVinci Resolve 17 Transitions Pack & Quick Tip, how to edit video, editing YT videos, davinci resolve 17, tips, beginner, new editors, classy editing, tutorial, resolve 17, davinci resolve tutorials for beginners, video editing software free, davinci resolve 17 free tutorial for beginners, davinci resolve tutorial for beginners

Id: 3UW7BRdgVKg

Length: 7min 0sec (420 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021