In this article of money-making, I will explain to you how to earn money by video editing.
With the rise of cheap and fast internet, the consumption of video content has gone sky-high.
By showing a video, you can easily communicate your views in a better manner than text or images.
So this tends to the rise of video editors in the market.
Video editing is fun if you’re creative and you enjoy what you do.
Editors can turn boring footage into exciting ones, by applying appropriate cuts in the video, putting soundtrack, background music, etc., or VFX.
From where do I learn video editing?
There tonnes of free and paid resources available on the internet for video editing. You can watch videos, if you get stuck there are amazing forums for video editing you can post your queries there.
One of the platforms would be Reddit, you can post
If you want the technical do’s and don’t’s of editing :
I would recommend you to check out videos of Daniel Scott. He is an ADOBE CERTIFIED graphics designer. You can take his paid courses which would be enough for you.
If you don’t want to delve much into the technical side just a little bit of basics would do and you want to know the creative side of editing. I mean how movies are edited in the movie industry.
Then I would recommend you to have FILMEDITING PRO course.
This is a good editing course for beginners. It would teach you how to work professionally, how to use your mind creatively in editing plus technical things.
For beginners, I would recommend this course.
You can check their course on their website.
(NOTE: This is NOT a sponsored article)
Where to start for video editing and how to earn an income out of it?
For the early phases, you can start by editing small footage of which you like. You can make meme-type videos for fun and mention your name in them.
or
The best way would be to start your own Youtube channel. It could be of any topic you like, if the channel grows you can earn from the ads.
If your channel doesn’t grow then you can keep the videos as your past work to show to your clients if someone approaches you
for video editing.
You can also email some of the new YouTubers that you can do the editing for them.
Try freelance platforms too. Make your accounts on freelancing platforms such as Fiverr, Upwork, PeoplePerHour, Guru, etc.
You can also set up Google ads informing about your services, this can be a good thing as google ads show an ad to relevant people.
Q. How can people approach me for video editing?
Ans. You can make a freelancer profile on all the freelancing websites as a freelance video editor. You can also make a small website of yourself what services you would like to offer as a video editor.
You can also approach local businesses, schools, for making and editing their videos.
You can also do wedding editing with a small company that handles wedding shoots.
You can make explainer videos for products of companies.
You can also earn by making educational explainer videos for some teaching institutions.
You can ask for payment per project or you can ask for payment per hour. For the initial stages, I would recommend that you should ask for payment per project.
At the initial stages try to give the client as many as revisions they want.
Now let’s talk about the toolkit that is required for video editing.
Professional video editors use a variety of softwares.
1) Final Cut Pro
A default video editing application in Apple’s Mac operating system. It has a nice user interface, very easy to understand.
2) Adobe Premiere Pro
A windows based video editing software. It is widely used by most YouTubers and some filmmakers nowadays. It can be used with a little bit of VFX too if you integrate Adobe After Effects in it. It is a paid software, though 1 monthly trial can be downloaded from the website.
3) Da Vinchi Resolve
So, this 3 software can be learned for editing videos. Many tutorial videos regarding these are available on the internet.
After the software comes the basic skills a video editor should have, which are :
1) Choosing the best shot
The director or the client may give you many footage of their camera shots but you have to sort them according to your use.
Filter out the shots which have blurry or not having proper audio, dialogue errors, pause errors. Do not delete them. Keep them in a folder known as NG SHOTS ( NOT GOOD SHOTS). Later in editing sometimes small clips from these shots can be useful.
When editing for the movie or small web series, if there are numerous collections of raw shots for a particular scene then usually the last shot are generally the OK ones.
2) Know the story of the video
You need to have a storyline to edit the video for a movie or a short film.
For explainer videos, you should have the proper information in front of you before you start the editing.
3) Organizing your timeline and bin
No matter what video editor you use always learn to organize your work or your working timeline with proper labels, folders, etc.
This would save a lot of time and patience.
Like for example in Adobe Premiere Pro, there are colorful labels for each type of inputs in the timeline. You have a separate color for video footage, separate color for audio, separate color for sound effects, etc., etc.
Also, learn to organize your import bin. Where you import the media. Create your sequence and keep them in a separate folder so if by chance you shut down your sequence you can start again from that folder.
4) Learn to create proxies
( this applies if you are using adobe premiere pro)
Proxies are great relief when you are using adobe premiere pro.
You can understand proxy by simply knowing that it creates small files less than the raw ones to work on the timeline. This makes the live playback rendering on the timeline very smooth without getting the timeline stuck at one point.
While rendering videos, proxies would automatically be turned off and would render in the original resolution.
4) Color grading
To correct the color of your videos by balancing the color or by giving a special look.
For video editing, you will need a decent pc whether it is a laptop or a desktop.
In the pc market, there are many laptops or branded desktops that you can buy for video editing.
But for a true experience, and as a video editor, you should always design/ customize or assemble your pc.
This way you can get the best configurations suitable to your budget and the amount of heavy work you would do in the nearby future.
The general specs any video editing machine should have, nowadays are
at least 16 GB of RAM
( if you’re on a tight budget and you’re not editing a 4K footage then you can also go for 8GB of RAM).
processor – intel – i5, i7, i9
(with latest generations)
graphics card- adobe recommended video cards having at least 4GB OF VRAM.
An IPS PANEL wide monitor (colors look better in an IPS Panel)
Nvme SSD (for root drive)
NOTE: This SSD thing is optimal, but the pc premiere would perform much better if the root drive is on an SSD.
SSD (Solid-state drive) is fall-proof since there is no spinning disk in the SSD. Plus the file transfers are way too good.
So for starting a carrier as a video editor has immense OPPORTUNITIES. You will just have to be a little more creative and skill to operate those video editing software.
Video editing takes a lot of patience and creativity. But if you enjoy, you would make some good videos and earn a living out of them.
Thank you for reading.
For any queries or suggestions regarding this article, please let us know in the comments section.
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