Storytelling with the Eyes of the Artist

For the last 4 years as a freelance videographer, it’s part of my job to take my client’s vision, may it be from the videos they send me or the videos I’ve taken; my job is to bring it to life by putting it together and editing it. So the last 2 years I’ve taken it upon myself to enhance my editing skills. I joined an editing Masterclass by Jordan Orme, a professional music video editor from LA. During the masterclass we were tasked to apply the skills we learned from his lectures and edit a 15 second Nike commercial and a music video. Throughout creating the videos I was able to pick a few things that I have found to be important when editing and bringing your videos to life.

The first one is, what story are you trying to tell? When you begin creating your video you need to draw up its purpose. The purpose or the message of the video is very important. Knowing this helps you as an editor in making the decisions on the clips and scenes that should go in, into the video. The challenge about creating a commercial and a music video is that there’s a limited amount of time for you to tell the story and bring out the message, so every shot should count. Which leads me to the second point.

Every shot is a chance to tell a story. During the masterclass when my instructor had the chance to review my music video, he was very impressed as each clip that came out seemed that it was put there intentionally. I was honestly surprised he noticed, as I did my best to pick the best clips for each lyric of the song. Going through all the raw clips I tried to picture the main product as well as dig deeper into what the cinematographer and director captured. I wanted to do my best to understand why scenes like that were taken.

This leads me to the last point; Get into the eyes of the Director. As an editor, especially one who does work online, you don’t have the guidance of a director, so what I did to try to get into the mind of the artist and director as well as to see the message of the song, I did some research. I took note of the different locations of the video clips and from there I was able to understand the intention of the shots. It helped me understand the message that the song was trying to convey. You can apply this in creating a commercial as well. These 3 points are things I have come to take with me when I begin creating my videos. Telling a story is much more than just getting right into the climax and showing everyone the best shots. It’s about slowly building up to the best parts and finding ways to make the viewers feel as they watch your videos. Once you’ve mastered these 3 points you’ll be able to convey your clients story and really see their view point.