Speaker 1: Imagine your editing is so good that your viewers can't resist watching until the end. I want that for you, so I've boiled down my years of editing experience into a four-pillar formula. By the way, you'll have to take notes today because we are going way deeper than basic things like cutting out dead space. Editing is so much more than that, and let's be real, your video deserves so much more than that. A great editing style may get you perfect watch time and millions of views, but it may also leave you with terrible view counts and broken dreams. To figure out why, let's start with this. It's just this guy, Sam, in his car talking and then working out. The video lasts 26 minutes but has just 17 cuts and no other form of editing. How many views, how many subscribers do you expect him to have? So this means that editing is optional, right? Wait, slow down, that's not what's going on here. Sam did edit, he cut out all the boring parts that the viewer doesn't come to see, but he left it at that because his viewers aren't looking for a super stimulating experience, they just want to feel like they're spending time with someone. A bunch of quick cuts and flashy animations would ruin that authentic experience that the viewer wanted. And guess what? A disruption of what the viewer came to the video for is the best way to make them stop watching. And while Sam edits with an average of 90 seconds between cuts, MrBeast does quite the opposite. So if both editing styles work, what should you do? Start with considering what experience your viewers want. Sam's editing tells us that millions of people come to YouTube to feel like they're hanging out with someone. MrBeast's rapid fire style shows that a ton of people go on YouTube for entertainment. All your editing choices contribute to that experience. For example, cutting out all your pauses so that you're speaking constantly is easily the most important thing for entertainment, but it takes away from authenticity. An effective editing style takes all these choices into account. So as I reveal the reasoning behind my editing for my first three uploads, take notes on what you should add to your own videos based you should add to your own videos based on what suits your audience the best. This video is not a bunch of tutorials. It's a handbook to addictive editing. Think of it as a foundational starting point to know what tutorials you should even watch in the first place. I want you to look at this. There's a problem here. This is the timeline of a typically edited YouTube video. A couple cuts have removed the unnecessary bits. There was a tangent here that wasn't really relevant to the video's greater purpose. These cuts removed pauses, and these removed bad takes. But in its current form, this video is doomed to fall short of its potential. The reason is this video isn't using its visuals to maximize attention. Think about this. When you see a change in your vision, like something moving abruptly, it gets your attention. The same is true for watching a video. And here, there's only three different things to look at in the span of a minute. Kind of boring, but if the video were to switch between A-roll, B-roll, and other types of footage every few seconds, it would keep attention much better. However, there is a drawback to changing what's on screen too much. Try to notice it as we go over how different types of footage should be used to maximize engagement. A-roll. This is when you can both see and hear the subject at the same time. It feels personal and holds attention really well if you're speaking with confidence. Use it for short periods of time when you're saying something important. B-roll. This is extra footage recorded separately from the audio. It creates a visual depiction of your words, letting the viewer see what you're talking about instead of just having to look at your face. This lets you get things across much more clearly, and faster too. It's more interesting than A-roll, so use it as much as possible. Some variants of B-roll are stock footage, which is just a lazy version, and motion graphics. These improve explanation times a ton. Look at how quickly a complicated thing was explained in this Dude Perfect video. Did you find something? Nope. I found a suspicious looking math problem over by the pool table, and it appears that I need to use the pool balls and the numbers on them to form some kind of solution. You really need to understand how crucial that editing choice was. That was an essential but boring moment in the video's story. Any attempt to use A-roll or normal B-roll in this moment would either be too slow or terribly confusing, both of which would lose viewers. But an animation explained it crystal clear and fast. That's the sort of editing choice you need to make to create an addictive video. If you've been following my channel, then you've probably noticed I've only uploaded three videos, and with that I've gotten over 300,000 views and like 13,000 subscribers. What makes it crazier is that I haven't promoted these videos anywhere. I just uploaded them on YouTube, and they did great completely by themselves because of all the YouTube knowledge I've gotten over the years. I got a channel last year that I got to like 60,000 subscribers and over 24 million views. So naturally, I've been getting a ton of comments and emails of people asking me to help them out. So I want to let you know that I'm releasing my calendar below, but it's for serious creators only. If that sounds interesting to you, then you can book a call below to learn how to grow your YouTube channel. And by the way, the spots are extremely limited at the moment, so don't miss out. Now you probably remember from earlier, there's a drawback to cutting between different clips a ton. All of this visual variety can quickly become visual mush if you're doing it wrong. Let's say you want to be engaging, so you're trying to cut between different clips literally as much as possible. You risk making things confusing, which hurts engagement. To avoid that, don't minimize shot duration just for the sake of minimizing shot duration. It's okay to leave the same clip on screen for 10 seconds if it's interesting for 10 seconds. And oftentimes, adding some engagement spice to your video doesn't even require cutting to another clip. Instead, use some of these tricks to make things way more immersive. First, give some movement to any boring still clips you have. Make either the scale or position slowly change. Or even better, make things fancy by changing their perspective. You can also do more abrupt scale changes to draw attention to certain things. For example, when I say something important in an A-roll segment, I'll zoom in close to my face to subtly communicate to the viewer that they should listen up. You might also make wiggle keyframes. That's when you see images or text or maybe the whole video shaking around. You never see me doing this because I don't like the way it looks, but if you want to do it, then go ahead. Next, throw on a bunch of visuals on top of your footage. Many people make the mistake of adding captions just to jack up the visual variety. But don't forget that drawback that we talked about. Using captions to fill in dead space can quickly become obnoxious and ruin a great opportunity to use a more engaging visual. So I only use captions when I want the viewer to understand and pay closer attention to certain words. But if there's really nothing else to put on screen, captions are often still better than nothing. Also keep them to three words or less at a time because it makes them easier to read. Now let's say you're showing an image to the viewer. If you plainly show the whole thing like this, it's boring. And more importantly, it's confusing. To make things crystal clear and create some visual variety, guide the viewer's attention to the focus point of the image. Here are six ways that I do that which go beyond just scaling and positioning. Take notes because this is what gives you professional looking timelines like these. Animate the most important piece of text or area of the image being highlighted. Darken or blur the area that surrounds the focus point of the image. Shift the hue of the image to make it red and it gives the image a negative connotation. You can also shift it to yellow or green to make it seem positive. Circles, arrows, and underlines also work. Oh and one extra. Make the subject glow. Another immersion hack is to just make the video look good. This could be color grading, adding a vignette, or some subtle particle animations. On the topic of making things look good, let's bring our focus to making things feel good. This next pillar literally makes your video a digital morphine stream. So we've talked about visual variety, but now let's talk about visual continuity. If you manage to create a seamless feed of visuals, then there's no rough edges, no areas for distraction to build up, there's no point where the viewer loses immersion. The goal for this pillar is to make every moment blend into the next seamlessly. The editing should be invisible. The experience mesmerizing. Anytime a graphic comes on screen, it can't just magically appear there. That doesn't make sense. It needs to somehow move into the frame. Check the description for my free presets. Now you don't have to animate things. You can also let something magically appear on screen, but then explain how it got there using a sound effect. I like to use this shutter sound effect, but a pop sound or something like that also works. Now this is super important. Look, I just made a cut, but I messed up the most crucial rule of doing a cut. In the last frame of this first clip, the viewer is looking right here in my eyes. Then a tiny fraction of a second later in the first frame of the second clip, the viewer is now expected to look here. That's a little jarring and it breaks some of the immersion that your editing should be providing. Imagine if every cut the viewer had to keep changing focus from one side of the screen all the way to the other. This right here is a pretty unimmersive viewing experience. Another way to make cuts seamless is using a full screen transition. There's plenty of free packs out there, but if you like my subtle style of them, then I got something for you in the description. And don't be afraid to break visual continuity every now and then because remember it jolts the viewer. It'll get their attention. Look at this timeline. We've been talking about all these ways to make the video visually addicting to watch, but we've been leaving out the other half of the video. There is a whole nother sense for your viewer to experience the video in. Pillar four, immersive audio. Sound design makes the viewer experience every cut, transition, animation, and piece of footage through a second sense. It's literally double the stimulation. And it can be used to influence the mood that the viewer has, which is an engagement superpower that we'll talk about more once we get to your music choice. But for now, the first step of sound design is to gather a bunch of sounds to work with. I already got that for you. Start with that free sound design pack of copyright-free sounds that I made for you in the description. If you need more, check out freesound.org or get Epidemic Sound. Next, go through your video and basically just add sound effects wherever it makes sense. When something moves, you should add a whoosh sound. And when something's highlighted, a highlight sound. Now comes the engaging part. These next three types of sound effects literally hijack your viewer's emotions and suck them into the video. First are risers. They build tension and anticipation because they communicate to the audience that something really important is about to happen. But only use them if something important is actually going to happen or else they will lose their reputation and won't be effective. Next are hits. These release tension and emphasize moments, making them feel important. You can use these on their own or place a riser before them. It depends on the situation. And again, don't overdo them. Finally, drones. These create a feeling of mystery and intrigue. They're reserved more for darker moods, creating a lot of underlying suspense. These sound effects are so good because they kind of manipulate the viewer's emotions, which is so powerful because the more emotionally invested the viewer is, the more engaged they are. And these sound effects are just the tip of the iceberg to achieve this. Below the surface is a massive potential for emotional investment. Your music choice. For example, I like to find songs that create a feeling of anticipation, which makes the viewer constantly believe I'm about to say something super important. Then during a segment where I'm giving groundbreaking advice, I use a song that gives an innovative feeling, which creates a ton of excitement over what I'm saying. This is super straightforward to pull off. Separate your video based on subject changes and then decide the mood the viewer should have for each subject. By the way, you should spend a lot of time finding the right music because it is really important that it fits. You can find some good copyright free songs on the YouTube audio library, and there's the occasional gem artist like Let Me Know, which offers free songs. But to be honest, subscribing to a licensed music platform is the best choice if you're going to take YouTube seriously. I'm not sponsored, but I saved like four hours with them last time and I found way better songs. I have an affiliate link for them in the description. Okay, this is gonna sound crazy, but there's even more you can do with your music choice to immerse the viewer. Like what do you think happens if you pause the music abruptly? The sudden change will jolt the viewer, getting their attention. Also, the lack of music brings attention to other parts of the video. So for special moments, try pausing the music to elevate that moment. Now what if you instead let the music slowly fade out? Once the viewer notices that the music is going away, they'll understand that the segment they're watching is coming to a close. This realization gives them anticipation of something new coming. Okay, let's get even more advanced. Beyond just making the mood of the song match the tone of the segment it's in, upgrade your music by syncing the hits and dips of the song to the video. For example, in this segment, I introduced the problem here and began teaching the solution here. I line things up so that at this exact moment, the music picks up. Doing that marks a clear topic shift from problem to solution and also makes the solution segment more exciting. And if you're wondering why I have four music tracks playing at the same time, it's because I downloaded the separate elements of the song. That's another feature of Epidemic Sound which is super helpful.