Cutting Your First Sequence
Editing is sometimes called the final rewrite. It's where your footage stops being a pile of takes and starts being a film.
Choose free software and stop shopping
DaVinci Resolve from Blackmagic Design has a free version used on professional productions, with editing, colour and audio tools in one program. Shotcut is open source and runs well on older machines. On a phone or tablet, CapCut and iMovie are capable for short projects. Pick one and learn it. Switching editors mid-project is the editing equivalent of changing cameras halfway through a scene.
The workflow, in order
Follow these steps every time. They feel slow at first and become second nature by your third film.
Back up before anything else
Copy all footage and audio to two places: your computer and an external drive or cloud folder. Cards and phones fail. Footage that exists once doesn't really exist.
Organise into folders
Create bins for each scene, plus folders for audio, music and graphics. Rename clips with scene and take numbers if your camera didn't. Ten minutes here saves hours later.
Sync your sound
Line up separate audio with picture using your clap or the software's waveform sync. Check a few lines of dialogue to make sure lips match words.
Watch everything and log favourites
Watch every take once, with notes. Mark the best performance, not just the cleanest technically. A moving take with a small focus wobble beats a perfect, lifeless one.
Build an assembly
Lay your chosen takes on the timeline in script order. Don't polish. This rough assembly will be long and slow; that's expected.
Make the rough cut
Trim the starts and ends of shots. Cut into scenes later and out earlier. Remove lines and even whole scenes the story doesn't need.
Refine to a fine cut
Adjust timing frame by frame. Use reaction shots and cutaways to tighten dialogue and cover jumps. Watch it with someone who hasn't seen the script.
Mix the sound
Even out dialogue levels, lay room tone under gaps, add effects and music. Dialogue usually sits around −12 dB on the meter, with music underneath it.
Colour correct
Match shots within a scene so brightness and skin tones are consistent. Only then try a creative look, and keep it subtle.
Export and watch again
Export in H.264 at the resolution and frame rate you shot. Watch the exported file on a phone and a TV before sharing it.
“Emotion first, story second, rhythm third. If a cut feels right, it usually is.”After Walter Murch's rule of six
What makes a cut work
In In the Blink of an Eye, editor Walter Murch ranks what an ideal cut should respect: emotion (51%), story (23%), rhythm (10%), eye-trace (7%), the two-dimensional plane of the screen (5%) and three-dimensional space (4%). The percentages are playful, but the lesson is serious: if a cut feels emotionally true, audiences forgive small continuity slips.
Cut on action. If a character starts to stand up in the wide shot, cut to the close-up mid-movement. The motion carries the eye across the cut and hides it. Match eye-lines so characters seem to look at each other. Use the L-cut and J-cut, where sound from one shot begins before or continues after the picture changes; they make conversations flow naturally.
The Kuleshov effect
In the 1920s, Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov showed that audiences read different emotions into the same neutral face depending on the shot placed next to it. You'll feel this immediately in your edit. A plain look becomes longing, fear or guilt purely through what precedes it. It's why reaction shots are among the most valuable footage you have.
Music without legal trouble
Don't use commercial tracks you don't have the rights to. Platforms will mute or remove your film, and festivals will reject it. Use royalty-free libraries with clear licences, such as the YouTube Audio Library or Free Music Archive tracks under Creative Commons, and read each licence for credit requirements. Better still, ask a musician friend to score it; many are looking for projects too.
Know when to stop
You can tweak a film forever. Set a deadline. When changes stop making it clearly better, export it, title it, and show it to people. Then start the next one. Your second film will be better, and your tenth will surprise you.
Cut a single one-minute scene from your footage using the ten steps above. Stuck? Read the troubleshooting notes or send us a question.