Top Video Editing Techniques That Make Your Videos Look Cinematic

You took hours of filming yet your records still look... flat. Sound familiar? You used the tutorials, nailed the framing, got the lighting decent and when you play it back there is something missing. That spark. That feeling.

Now consider the very first time when you saw a video which gave you chills. Perhaps it was a travel movie, a product advertisement or a mini cinema reel. The images were smooth, the sound was ideal, and the scenes were flowing smoothly. And you all must have thought: How did they do that?

This is the secret that most amateurs fail to understand, the cinematic quality is not determined by the cost of the camera or lighting equipment. Video editing is the actual magic.

It is at the editing stage that raw materials are converted into a story. Even the most basic clips can appear professional and emotionally involved with the help of the appropriate techniques. And when editing is too much, several creators opt to outsource video editing services in order to film and tell stories.

It is time to take a look at some of the most effective tricks which could immediately render your videos more cinematic.

Your Colors Are Telling a Story

The first thing that most novice editors do is to adjust the exposure and move the brightness slider slightly up and refer to it as a color correction. That is a beginning-- but that in itself is by no means enough.

Color is an emotive power that is felt before a word is uttered. Orange cozy colors are words of comfort, nostalgia, intimacy. Desaturated teals are a message of tension, grit and drama. Hollywood colorists are obsessed by this and your video editing workflow should be also.

I was not aware why my videos appeared cheap until I changed my colors. It is one of the most frequent discoveries made by new editors making their initial attempts at color grading in a proper manner.

There is no complex equipment required to begin with. Identify one LUT (Look Up Table) that is closest to the mood you intend to achieve, and make sure to apply it at approximately 50 per cent before editing it. Darken your shadows, add some lightness to the middle, bring some warmth in the light areas. It is not an attempt at a predetermined appearance but rather a sense that is coherent throughout the entire frame to the end.

The Cuts You Don't Notice Are the Best Ones

Every time you make a jarring, unmotivated cut, you yank your viewer out of the experience. Bad cuts break immersion. Great cuts are unseen - they are processed in your brain as normal and you continue to watch.

Motion and logic lie at the base of the mechanisms of the way your brain processes visual change. Directional cuts, directional cuts, cuts that occur on a beat, cuts that cut character action on one scene to the next - they are painless because they resemble the way your mind already works.

The J-cut is one of the tools that every serious video editing practitioner should be skilled at. In a J-cut, the audio of the following scene starts before the image moves off of the one. You listen to the new set-up before you see it and this makes the transition to look seamless and deliberate without the viewer understanding why specifically.

Real talk: fewer cuts, more intention. Do not be tempted to cut after every three seconds to maintain the energy level. Occasionally, nothing is stronger than letting a shot breathe.

Those Black Bars Aren't Just Aesthetic

It was no accident that the first time you put letterbox bars in a video something got done. It suddenly felt like a movie. It is not a coincidence, it is psychology.

The wide aspect ratios (such as 2.35:1 or 2.39:1) still remain deeply embedded in the collective visual memory of the movie. It has taken decades of viewing movies with those vertical black lines to condition our brains to associate that format with grandeur, size, and plot importance.

It is a psychological stimulus that is effective all the time. Put slap-letterboxing on your video and your viewers will subconsciously be sitting up straighter. It is more planned in its content. More important. And even when you are not using it, give it a run on your next project, the change is instant.

Close Your Eyes. Does It Still Feel Cinematic?

Video producers are obsessed with the visual aspect and do not even think about the sound. That's a critical mistake. In case you removed the picture completely, what you are recording ought to feel like something.

Every editor has a point at which he or she slips the proper ambient sound into a scene the dull whine of a metropolis, the rustling of the wind, the distant rumble of an empty room and suddenly it is all together. The flat images previously experienced are no longer lightweight.

Music isn't background noise. Music informs your audience about how and when to feel. A sorrowful guitar declares to slow down and listen. A building string arrangement informs them that something huge is on its way. Locating the right track is similar to locating the right word in a sentence, when you have the correct one, you simply feel it.

Take time with your audio as you take with your color grade. Often, it matters more.

Why Does That One Slow-Mo Shot Hit So Hard?

Speed ramping isn't a trend. It is an emotive device that has a tangible psychological force behind it. A slowing of the footage is interpreted by your brain as an indicator: it is a moment. Linger here.

That is why a slow motion shot of a man laughing, or a ball going out of the bat, or the waves crashing, is more effective than the same shot at normal speed. Your brain has adapted in such a way that you have a higher probability of paying more attention to visual information when it is slowed down.

The distinction between slow-mo as style and slow-mo as impact is purpose. The use of slow motion is a cliche. To put it at the very emotional climax of a scene? That's craftsmanship.

In case you fail to master speed ramping, many of the video editors prefer to outsource video editing services to handle such technical jobs. Some platforms even have a free trial option to trial the professional-level editing without commitment, a clever idea in case the number of tasks to do is increasing faster than your expertise.

Use it sparingly. The less frequently you use slow motion the more effective each instance is.

Your Titles Are Speaking Before You Do

Flashy text animations scream amateur. Rotating 3D texts, neon fonts, two-second transitions, none of this contributes to excitement, it contributes to noisiness. And sound disturbs the movie magic at once.

Minimalist typeface is an indicator of confidence and professionalism. Consider the title cards of good movies — plain, unadulterated, utilitarian. About the whole that follows the font, the weight, the placement all speak something of tone.

Your title is the handshake you make. It establishes all the emotional contract of you and the viewer in the first three seconds. Less animation. More intention. A smooth gradual introduction of carefully selected type will always triumph a motion graphics fireworks show.

Shaky Footage Breaks the Dream

There is no way that someone can get out of the cinema scene as quickly as jitters. The watcher is sucked into it, then the camera is shaken, and then he realizes clearly he is looking at a video.

Contemporary after-stabilization equipment is quite efficient. Premiere Pro has Warp Stabilizer, DaVinci Resolve has an in-built stabilization, even mobile apps will straighten out handheld shake without making it too clear that it is slice and dicing your video.

Nevertheless, even a small natural handheld action will introduce some realism and vigor under the appropriate circumstances: a run into a crowd, a frenzied news-like segment, a documentary situation. It all depends on being able to distinguish between deliberate texture and unintentional instability. One adds. The other subtracts.

The Honest Truth

You won't nail all of this on your first edit. And that's completely fine.

The editors whom you admire, who are the editors whose work you have chills over, did not get their style. A thousand bad cuts it took them to know what a good one felt like. They were coloring with heavy hands before they learnt to restrain themselves. They took excessive slow motion until they experienced declining returns.

The best practical piece of advice you will get is the following: choose only one method in this list. Do it compulsively on your following five videos. Then, and not before that, upon to the next. Attempting to do all at the same time is a formula of stagnation. Advances in video editing are a step by step undertaking that is developed by learning a lesson that is well comprehended.

Conclusion

Cinematic is not a filter that you put on. It is something that you create intentionally, one act of will superimposed upon another. Color that tells a story. Cuts that disappear. Music that touches your listeners and hears your audience.

Your film has already been half the way there. The closing in is through editing.

When you are in the position to take things to the next level, yet time stands as the only hindrance, then having a reliable video editing agency can help in closing the gap between where the content is and where it should be. The methods can be acquired. The results are real. But there is not actually so much distance between flat and cinematic storytelling.