Speaker 1: Today I'm gonna show you how I started video editing completely from scratch as a noob and worked my way up to become a pro. So if you watch till the end, chances are you'll learn what took me 7 years in just 7 minutes. Well, so when I started out 7 years ago, there were tutorials out there to learn the technicalities of video editing but there were none to guide me through the entire process leading up to becoming a pro. So this video is going to be that. So the date was 15th October 2016. The day when I made my first ever edit and posted it to YouTube. And this is what it looked like. I know, it's stress. So will your video be when you start out. So how do you improve at this stage? Well, you need to strengthen your base as a video editor. You know what allows Burj Khalifa to be the tallest building in the world? It's the strong foundation that lies underneath. And that prevents it from falling off. Similarly, as a beginner, you need to develop your foundation and strengthen your base in order to be a good video editor in the future. Now comes the question, how do you strengthen your base? After posting that first video, I realized how much I was lagging behind. And the only way to learn for me was to create more videos. So I posted one more video, and one more, and one more. And I kept editing and posting my own videos. These first 10 edits of my life really helped me to learn the basics and develop my skills. Well, I'm not really a fan of giving advice but if there's one thing you could take away from my experience, it would be just get going and learn the basics. There's mainly 3 video editing softwares that's widely used by pros. Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Final Cut Pro. And you can't really go wrong with any of them. Regardless of whichever one you choose, I've linked a few tutorials in the description. Go through them, understand your software of choice, and most importantly, get your first 10 edits across. But something that I should have learned at an early stage and I ignored at that time would be shortcut keys. Shortcut keys not only make you a faster editor, but it also saves you a ton of time. Here are a few shortcut keys for Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and Final Cut Pro. After I got my first 10 edits across, I started showing a liking for travel videos. And I remember I was mind-blown looking at these crazy transitions. I used to spend hours looking at tutorials, learning and copying these transitions in my own videos. Although I'm not into those kind of edits nowadays, that is what essentially helped me to develop my skills. Anyways, for me, it was those trendy travel videos, but for you, it can be anything. The b-roll sequence that you see online on your TikTok or Reels, a trailer of a movie, a effect used in a music video, anything that interests you, look at tutorials and try to replicate it. And that will ultimately help you to be better at using your editing software. But wait, as a beginner, where would you get all the clips to practice editing? Well, for me, I used to shoot my own clips on my phone, which used to be very low quality and also take up a lot of time. But luckily nowadays, you can start right away with high quality footage, which is where today's sponsor can help you out. Storyblocks is a video production platform that offers a massive library of over a million stock footage, templates, music, sound effects, images, and more. So what does it mean for you? Well, as a beginner, you don't need to stress out about finding resources to edit a video. Everything you need in order to create a video is present right here at an affordable subscription. This is useful not only for beginners, but also for the amateurs, pros, content creators, filmmakers, any type of creative. For example, in the filming of this video, where I showed my video editing career, there were many parts where I couldn't get B-rolls off. Guess what I did? I used stock footage from Storyblocks. If I had downloaded stock footage from other sites, I would have to pay for each clip. And in Storyblocks, everything's covered in just one subscription. It's high quality. You have unlimited downloads. It has an individual license as well as a business license. So it's an incredibly useful tool. Link is in the description if you want to go and check it out. Thank you so much Storyblocks for sponsoring this video. By the time I had made my first 20 edits, I had developed a decent sense of the technicalities of editing, meaning I could edit a visually good looking video. And I had edited quite a few travel videos with cool transitions and music. But my edits essentially lacked something. There was no emotion and I failed to deliver a feeling. That's mainly because I was not looking at editing as storytelling. I failed to understand the psychological aspects of editing. And I was merely looking at it as a technical task. If you are a video editor, you essentially have to think like a filmmaker, regardless of whichever genre of video editing you are into. And the most basic film editing technique that is widely used by editors is the Kuleshov effect. The Kuleshov effect is the idea that two shots in a sequence make more meaning than a single shot by itself. For example, here's a shot of my friend looking at something with neutral expressions. Let me show you how we can derive different meanings using just this shot and one more shot. Here's a shot of my friend and then cut to a shot of a glass of water. And again, let's cut back to the shot of my friend. Now, as the viewer, tell me what meaning can you make out of this? It definitely depicts that he is feeling thirsty, right? Now, let's replace the second shot with a video of someone's grave. Now, my question for you is the same. What meaning can you make out of this sequence? This might mean that he is feeling sad because of loss of a loved one, right? Similarly, we as video editors can make different meanings out of our shots just by placing two shots in a sequence in combination with each other. Now, this was just one example, but there are a ton of other techniques used in film editing. Look at editing breakdowns of movies, look at interviews of editors, listen to podcasts like the Editing Podcast, take notes and apply whatever you can onto your own edits. I have linked a few resources in the description where you can learn all about the filmmaking aspects of editing. If you have learned the technical and the psychological aspects of editing, then congratulations, now you're an amateur. To put it simply, what separates an amateur from a pro is his or her ability to earn from their skills. And in our case, it's video editing. Back when I was at this stage, I would take up any work that I could get. I would even work for free and get reached out by local clients. And I remember I used to create a YouTube playlist and add my best work to it. So what I was doing at that time was building my portfolio. So you may ask, what the hell is a portfolio? Portfolio is nothing but your body of work. And it can be in any form, a YouTube playlist, a Google Drive folder, your own website, or it can even be a showreel. You just have to keep in mind that a portfolio is nothing but a convenient way of showing your clients your work. What you should essentially be focusing on is having better quality work in your portfolio. Up until 2021, I had edited quite a few videos, and that is when I learned to deal with clients. Be a pleasure to work with and deliver your best output because ultimately you would want those clients to hire you again and again, and that is what's going to generate income. By 2022, I had developed the skills to deal with clients and built up a fairly good portfolio by working with a few brands as well. But I was getting work very inconsistently, meaning some months would be very busy, while some months I would not get any work at all. So I knew I had to step up my game. So instead of waiting for clients to reach out to me, I knew I had to take a proactive approach to it. So I decided to take some time off my freelance video editing career, and I finally decided to restart my YouTube channel properly. And within a few months, my YouTube channel grew and my videos reached out to a worldwide audience. And this is when everything changed. I got reached out by many international clients, and I even got the opportunity to work with YouTubers like Marco. So if there is anything that you can learn from my experience, it would be, as an amateur, you should be able to market yourself. Because you can be the most skilled editor in the world, but if no one knows about you, no one is going to hire you. As simple as that. So you can establish yourself as a brand and market yourself that way. But if you're someone like me, one thing we all have access to is our social media. Use it to let the world know how skilled you are. So now that you've become a pro, what's next? Well, for me, I wanted to use my video editing skills to build this YouTube channel. But for you, it can be something else. Figure out what you love doing and double down on that one niche. Be the best at it. Anyways, that is something I'm still trying to figure out. And if you're a beginner starting out, you should probably be focusing on the basics first. So those were a few of the things that I learned in 7 years of my video editing career as a self-taught video editor. And hopefully you could learn a thing or two and progress even faster in your career. And always remember that everyone's path is different. But regardless of whichever path you choose, you should always keep creating.