Where should I start, to become a Video/Film Editor? Part II Fundamentals (Research)

 

How I Would Learn Video Editing (If I Had to Start Over in 2025)

1) Composition + Design: I've just learned that order matters in everything, and that we always have to maintain a balanced and consistent system. 

What do I want to highlight? What's the most important thing in the scene? By answering these questions, I can start building a sequence (designing) and use elements to satisfy the "power" of each one, such as size, motion, contrast, frontality, and color (mise en scene). All of this, as I mentioned in Part I, has to be focused on the audience. What are they going to see first, and as a consequence of their actions, is the purpose of the story maintained, or is the focus completely lost? Because one thing is clear: composition and design must go together. We don't want the final result of our video/film to be just a bunch of clips thrown together haphazardly, but rather logical fragments and scenes that have a beginning, middle, climax, and end. But how do we do this? What surprised me most is that I learned that achieving this doesn't have to involve overly complicated elements. For example, maintaining a consistent color scheme in a scene and only changing or highlighting what we want, like the main character, gives the audience a path they can easily follow. After all, the last thing we want is for them to lose track of the story.

2) Everything matters: every detail adds to or detracts from your story and creates different tones and moods. So, you have to be careful to be clear about what you want to do and consider how to engage the audience. For example, your visuals might be beautiful, but your sound is poor, or your sound is excellent, but your transitions are poor and confusing.

3) Keep the order: Films are made up of sequences, sequences are made of  scenes, and scenes are made up of shots.

Although I'm still learning and will never stop learning how to adapt each element, at least I know that everything matters.

In conclusion, after this research, I've learned the basic fundamentals of editing.