The Edit Delivers Your Story

Do you know what the most used transitional cut there is in film? It’s something that editors use all the time and most of us don’t realize how much it’s used. Have you guessed it? It’s the Film Cut. The Cut is the most simple video editing technique around. This allows the viewer to get through the sequence of the scene, one after the other. I’ve been editing videos since 2018 and it’s only recently that I realized how underrated this simple editing technique was. I used to think that to be a great editor and to create the coolest videos I need to know how to incorporate all those fancy transitions. I even used to edit by just taking as much video clips as I could on location and then going through them and picking out the best clips and slapping them on editing software and putting in the transitions in between. But to my surprise you can still deliver a great and even impactful video with simply knowing how and where to cut.

Back in the year 1896 the first Jump cut was discovered by George Méliès. It came by accident when his camera was rolling and started to jam out of nowhere. Hitting his camera, his camera stopped recording for a minute and then started recording again. And upon looking back on his film, he noticed the jump of scenes. As the years went on filmmakers used this simple technique to tell stories, which leads us to the present.

I found out after all these years just how beautiful simply knowing where and how to cut videos together can be. If you ask me, “How do you know where to cut?” My answer is simply asking yourself this question. What am I trying to tell the audience? This will help you as an editor run through your RAW clips that you’ve put together and see how to deliver the stories from each scene to the next. From there, you will know exactly where to cut.

An example, from the main character hearing a knock on the door, to their hands on the knob, then slowly twisting it open, then revealing their shocked facial expression and hearing the line “it’s you…” to cut. Black screen. You end the scene right there, leaving the viewer feeling curious as to who it was. Coming up with the story that you are trying to tell when editing is so much more powerful just putting the clips you took together and adding in those cool transitions. I used to edit that way in my early years of editing but found out there was more editing than that.

I realized this as I took on the challenge to edit my first music video and one of the best comments I got from my editing mentor was every scene put in had intention and each cut allowed the story of the music video to shine through without the video feeling too slow. What helped me edit the MV too was having done some research on the locations of the video and the props used. Knowing how I was going to deliver and tell the story of the artist, gave me an advantage to know where to cut. I’ve seen many music videos out there that barely use any fancy transitional cuts but still get the message of the story across. It’s not the fancy transitions, it’s all about how you deliver the story you’re trying to tell.