Editing on your phone

You do not need to learn professional software. You need to be able to do four things, and do them fast.

The four things

• Trim. Remove the breath before and the silence after each take. That alone tightens the material.
• Join takes. Straight cut, no transition. Transitions belong to another decade.
• Add text. Most people watch without sound the first time.
• Even out the levels. So it is not a whisper in one take and a shout in the next.

Cut the hesitation, not the person

Remove the empty seconds. Keep the laughs and the small pauses that make you sound like you. A clip stripped of everything human is a clip that looks like advertising.

Do not cut to the music

The client often swaps the music out. Edit so the film works with no sound at all, and it holds even when someone puts their own track on it.