So Matt ....
(talking as a luddite ..), Your videos look like they've had some serious editing treatment. Tell me a bit about that ....
(I'd quite like to do some commentary videos but I'm so shite on a computer ....)
Hi Giles,
Yes - there was a lot of editing in the above video
I started with about 30hrs of footage and spent probably 40hrs editing it down to a 25 minute video for the people on the trip, choosing and editing music / sound tracks etc. I then spent another few hours editing that down to the 10 minute film above. All that said, some time was spent learning my way round the editing software (iMovie on my Mac in my case) but I picked it up pretty quickly - the equivalent on PC is Windows MovieMaker. At a basic level like I am working at at the moment, non-linear editing is pretty straightforward but I do have a background in IT and have been a part time sound / recording engineer for 30 years.
It seems counter intuitive to start with a load of footage and then throw 90% of it away but you have to be ruthless. You also develop a 4 to 5 second clock in your head - you rarely want more than 5 seconds between cuts. That also seems counter intuitive at first - all those long sequences in your raw footage are too long
But you get used to this too. The hard thing when you're just filming with one camera in a linear fashion (no reshooting sequences to get different viewpoints) is that you don't really have enough material for decent cut-aways - you just have to make do with what you've got.The next step up for me is a more professional software package but these will require an investment in time for me to get competent with. I intend to force myself do my next video on Lightworks - a high spec professional package that has been used to make many feature films but Lightworks doesn't make anything easy in the way that iMovie does - I'm sure it'll make my head hurt
In your situation, I'd decide what you want to achieve (some sort of plan for the story you want to tell is important, even if it's just in your head), sit down with a bunch of video and start chopping it around in your chosen software - it'll take a bit of work if you've never used this type of software but there are lots of tutorials and stuff on YouTube to help.
. This really sapps the battery on my go pro so I also switch it off once set up. GoPro battery doesn't last long on video, and only records in 20 minute files.
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