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Lesson Info

Editing a Vlog in Real-Time

No matter what editing tool you're going to use, I like Final Cut and I just wanted to show you where I feel natural, because I thought that would be really useful to you. I do a much more extensive version of editing, actually, the first video you saw in segment one, that will be available and we can talk about that in a bit. But I just wanted to give you a feel for where I like to hang out in editing. This is a very similar feel to iMovie, although iMovie is much more conducive in terms of getting started, drag and drop, lots of options. So, what we go over here, I don't want you to feel that intimidated, just remember that you can take the same ideas and apply them in a little bit more simpler editor, if that is going to be the best fit for you, and the goal here is for you to just get a feel of how I take something like that and turn it into a final product. Is that okay? Cool. So, what's happening here is I've got my clip from our session and I have a timeline here, I've created m...

y timeline in advance. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our clip and drag it onto the timeline. What you can see here is that it's about a 10-minute clip, you can see it's 9:45:09, that's how long we are sitting here. And so there's gonna be a little bit of... I like to zoom in and out of the clip. Because you'll notice that right now I can get a really quick look at how long it is, and what it looks like at this moment. If I zoom in, I can really see those audio lines. Do you see those audio lines that I'm talking about here? I'm just gonna maybe move this up a little bit, and give me some more... well it's not gonna let me. Okay. That's okay. So, let's just let it play and see where we are. I'm gonna pull it out just a little bit, give myself more room to look. You can see that we were talking because we were talking, we were talking here, so there's a little bit of that, you can see me actually talking there, but we know that we're gonna be cutting that out. So we can quickly drag this clip to the point we want to start, but as you know, what did we do first? (speaking from audience) Create a thumbnail. So we pause, there you can see the audio drop, because what did we do? We smiled for the camera. So your software should give you the ability to save a frame, and that's what I've done here. It's essentially from the export process, I'm gonna save a frame and go ahead and... next, I'll just put that on my desktop. "Thumbnail," save. So we definitely know we don't need that content, we're just gonna tear it out. Now, this is where we were still prepping. I know that I need a couple seconds because we were, now you can see; do you see where the audio is increasing in volume? Yeah, so, pretty sure we started right around that time. Ah, no, sooner. Perfect, so I'm gonna go ahead and go to this piece. He clapped - do we want the clap? Do you want the clap? (speaking from audience) Kurt? Do you want the clap? Yeah. That's fine with me! (audience laughter) That's fine with me. We'll keep the clap! So let's see, I'm just gonna cut it there. (speaking from audience) Yeah, I can. Let's see. Now, you wanna start it from "so," but do you see how close the audio - these audio waves are really touching each other, so that's sort of the idea I'm talking about, where those clean edits are gonna happen. You can absolutely do it, you have to tweak a little bit here and there, but I will do that. I'm gonna start it right at "so." You really have to get it into that groove of the audio to start it. But if you ended up hearing something carry over, I like to kind of pull this option forward. This slowly increases the audio, just in case anything from the former word carried over. And I go into much more detail in the extensive edit. And one of the things that she said to me was, "you know, Kurt, I wished I had lived more. I wished I had lived a little bit more like you." So, in this video, I wanna share with you three strategies, three tips that can help you be more of an inspiration to your kids. (Amy) Alright, so, that's the end of that word, so we cut it there. I hear a lot of vloggers cutting off their S's, and you need the entire word. So leave it all in there. If you don't want there to be a period of time after that, we can change that. But you should not be cutting it in the middle of the sound wave. Does that make sense? Because you're taking away from that. So now, (audio from video clip) Okay. We don't need that, right? So we're gonna skip through this little decision-making process here, and I can see where he's started to lean in again. So here's what we're gonna do. I have my friend Amy with me and we're gonna go through these three strategies with you right now. (Amy) Did we- We retook that, didn't we? So I'm gonna look for the second time he said that, because I think he might like that one better. Have you guys done that? Where you retook something that - you were like "oh, we'll wanna use the second version of that." That's a good starting point, right? So, Amy and I- (Amy) Now I'm gonna take the "so" out this time, okay? Because sometimes, trust me when I say that is my overused word, and if it's a clean cut I'll take it right out. So I'm gonna take that clip before and let's see where we ended up. ... that can help you be more of an inspiration to your kids. Amy and I are gonna go through... (Amy) Now there's a little bit of space there, so I'm gonna cut that in, and if you wanna see how I usually do my content, and I'll get fancy here just for a minute, but I'm probably gonna go back and make it simpler. I'm sorry if my desktop is interfering a little bit. I like to detach the audio from the video, so that I can start to make words run into each other. That's why we left the entirety of the word "kids," does that make sense? Because I need to hear the end of the word "kids," but we can be moving on at the same time. So here's what I'll do, is drag this back, can you see that? Can you see how those audio files are overlapping? Let me go full screen if that - ah, yay! Now - now, listen here. Does that make sense? That's a harsh cut, right? We might not want to go that fast, so let's go here. Does that feel good? That's so big. That little audio tweak right there is a really great way to pick up the pace on what might feel like you're kind of trying to pull teeth, going through a conversation with somebody, but speed it up a hair. That was a big differentiator when I started in terms of making marketing content a little bit more interesting. Does that make sense? So, I might do that more, but it's... We're definitely gonna go into more detail in that extensive edit, but I just wanted you to see that first-hand here. ...are gonna go through these three strategies, I'm gonna start, and Amy's gonna jump in every now and then, okay? Not just every now and then. Every now and then, right? So let's start with the first... (Amy) So what I wanna do is, I want to leverage a cut again, just to make sure they know we're going in on that first point, right? So let's move it back just a little bit. So I'm probably gonna stop it right where I started laughing, because that's the audio that tied me into this next piece, does that make sense? My laugh is so funny when I cut it out. And now we're just gonna take that piece and that's gonna help give us that hard cut so we go "okay, number one," does that make sense? That's the only thing I think I would have corrected, is for us to just take a beat, "Amy's gonna help me with this," "number one." Do you see - the break is helpful from a pacing standpoint. Because then it doesn't just feel like a run-on sentence. So let's start with the first thing. Now, you know, as fathers, it's extremely important to be serious all the time, and one of the strategies I wanna give you is, you know, just remember that it's okay to make fun of yourself. Oh my gosh, yeah, my dad used to make fun of himself all the time. And you do have to have that balance, right? You have to have that balance of, "I'm your dad, I love you and I'm having fun, but I'm the authority," and so making sure to have that respect. But you have to have both, otherwise you're just scary. And what I notice is that- (Amy) So here's gonna be the only difference between what's happening here and probably what's gonna happen with you. We got to have a conversation, so this is gonna be a little bit easier on the editing side. When you are the ones talking and having a conversation with your avatar, sometimes there are moments where you get more frustrated with yourself, you feel like you didn't say something right, you get in your own head. So, it's okay to do that- to make this process faster for you, it's that break that's going to help you. Because when you have to listen to yourself over and over and over and over again about the same points that you said six or seven times and you only want the last one, you're gonna notice by those audio breaks that you can take a big chunk out. I'm actually gonna be watching a lot more of this and editing it down because we were having a continual conversation, and then we had those breaking moments, does that make sense? With my kids, with my own children- ...something really embarrassing and, you know, a lot of times they'll say, "aw dad, you embarrass me" but it's what they remember. (Amy) That was a good point of "oh, okay, we relax a little bit." We don't necessarily need that, so what I'm gonna say is that we'll cut this here, we kind of like summed that up, so right in the middle with no audio, and then we're gonna pick it up here. What's happening every time we make this break, it's not just to take out the lag time, but you're speeding it up, you're re-correcting the attention. So being able to cut and make them force to re-correct when they're locking eyes with the video and watching the video, that little cut right there actually makes quite the difference when they're kind of being woken up, in terms of paying attention to the content. Does that make sense? So you can use as many or as little of those as possible, in the beginning, if you have a lot of mistakes, you'll probably have more of them, right? But if the conversation is going and you don't need them, you're good. So, yeah, make fun of yourself, it's okay, you know, we're not all perfect, right? (Amy) So now that's a good step to end on, right there. We'll pick that up. Little bit of a mouth noise there, so I like to get rid of those. By the way, do you notice that we have a five-minute clip now? ... to be imperfect. And, you know, a lot of times being vulnerable is probably one of the things that's most attractive to you. And, you know, I know you can agree with this but there was a time where my daughter went off to school - (Amy) If you find that, and I'm just doing this because I can, if there are filler words that you feel like you're saying a lot, I like to take those out if it makes sense in the edit. If there's enough room to play in the audio. So I'm gonna take that piece of - Are you sick of your voice yet, Kurt? (audience laughter) There was a time when my daughter had went off to school, and you know, I shed a little tear. It was a touching moment. But you know, she'd always remind me of that, you know, she'll tell me, "dad, that was really sweet," you know, so. That's so great! What a good kid that you have. But even if you can't have those moments, I feel like you still want them, you still want to remember that as a kid and as a parent. Why are you looking at your notes while I'm talking- (Amy) Alright, so we wanna cut this out, right? (audience laughter) So we'll go ahead and- he was at least looking at me at this point, so we're good. So I'll probably leave it at... So then we'll probably go here. So let me zoom out a little bit and find where we picked up again. That's okay, that's alright, it's a perfect (muttered). I liked, by the way, that you summed this up before you got to point number three. Because it was really good, because it was like a refresher. This isn't a long video or a long course or anything, but it was nice to have that. ... making fun of yourself, not being afraid to make fun of yourself, number one... (Amy) Let's see where the beginning of that is. I'm not gonna rush you, we got time. Okay, so, we're talking about... (Amy) I'm gonna take out all that extra fluff. Cut that out. And so here's where we ended up. ... but even if you can't have those moments, I feel like you still want them, you still wanna remember that. We're talking about, you know- (Amy) So that was a little bit harsh, but I'm gonna jump cut and just bring the audio back a little bit so that it feels a little bit more seamless and I might just slowly increase this audio. Do you see the difference? ... making fun of yourself, not being afraid to make fun of yourself, number one; Number two is being vulnerable, don't be afraid to be vulnerable; and number three- (Amy) I can't remember if you repeated back "and number three," but we all know what happened here. (audience laughter) So we can skip that. There we go, yeah. I'm gonna zoom in on this piece here. We'll cut that right in at the beginning. Quickly, one thing to note: I get into the habit of editing with the video and the audio file separate; do not detach audio until you're ready to detach audio. I'm fairly seasoned in this so my audio is probably not going to detach from the video in a way that your mouth will be saying things that the audio is saying differently. Sometimes that will happen if you move this around too much. But keep that in mind, that you have this capability. You might want to do it after you've cut out all the fluff. You might want to wait to do the "detach audio" option until then, does that make sense? Number three, don't be afraid to take chances. That sounds fun. The thing is, is that because we are the macho guy, or macho person in the relationship or in the family, we want to play it by the rules all the time, and make sure all the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted and so every once in a while, it's okay to step out and, you know, take a chance. I remember one time, which I get a lot of feedback from my kids on- (Amy) I'm going to just streamline this conversation a little bit. So just to make it a little bit- feel more fast-paced, I wanna start that sentence there. I'm gonna- I can take all of that out. I get a lot of feedback from my kids on this, I went skydiving, and I'm afraid of heights, right? But I went skydiving, and they know I'm afraid of heights, but, you know, I went, and today, up to this day they still talk about that. It was a major chance that I took, and they still talk about that. And I think they respect me more, and they're a little bit more inspired by that. So that's interesting, because I didn't necessarily connect the fact that you were taking a chance, but also your kids really understood that you were taking a chance. Because it goes into that vulnerability. That's a big component of that. Exactly. (Amy) So we can take that last little bit of feedback out. And then we'll pick it up- We'll cut that word out. I hope you got some really good content here, what I would like for you to do right now is subscribe to the channel if this information worked for you, and also hit Amy's channel up and subscribe to her as well. Yeah, please. (audience laughter) Peace out! Bye! (Amy) So now we have the end of the vlog. So we took ten minutes and turned it into 3:52, does that sound good? (Kurt) Yeah. (Amy) Right.