Why you need to edit before you shoot

Published on November 21, 2017

Cinematography & Filmmaking

Camera essentials, Edit before shooting, Tips and Tricks

When creating a short movie or feature film, you always make your edit in the form of a storyboard and script. You try to plan ahead as much as you can, so you can keep control of the situation. But what if you’re shooting an after movie for an event? You can’t plan anything, you have to take it as it comes because you can’t know what’s going to happen on the event. In this tutorial we explain a few camera essentials and how they can help you with preparing your edit before you make your footage.

One of the tips is something you also do with a storyboard, you decide which framings you’ll need to tell your story. Determine for yourself how you want to bring the action into your edit. A good tip is to play the end video in your mind, try to picture the framing. Do you want a long shot or a close up in the beginning and so on. This will let you work faster and will also result in less footage to go through in post-production.

When thinking about your edit while filming, you can also decide the order you want footage in. This can be very useful because you can already start with the details of your production and with this I mean transitions. If you know that two scenes will follow each other in your edit, you can do a in-camera transition. This will look better in the end result and save you time in the post-production. If want to learn some in-camera transition, check out our tutorial with 5 awesome transitions.

We got the idea for this tutorial when we were at the YouTubeSpace in Brussels. Jordy had to give a workshop about camera essentials. These we very basic tips and how to take control of your camera and to improve your filming. From this came the idea to edit before you film. A lot of people have problems with filming an event because you can’t plan anything, end up with to much footage and not enough variety in shots. If you want to learn more camera essential tips you can always check out our filming course (See below)

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