Do

•  Remove unusable footage - It's not uncommon to use as little as 10% of what you shot. Taking out the bad is what editing is all about. Cut out of a shot before it gets shaky, cut out your bad takes. Your final project should be only your best work. Prepare to shoot lots.

• Pace the video well - Pace refers to the speed and consistency of your video. Don't have 3 very quick shots and then a 10 second shot. If you are using music, consider cutting to the beat.

• Balance audio levels - Audio is just as important as visuals when it comes to video editing. Distorted or unbalanced audio can even make a video unwatchable, so don’t forget this tip when you’re editing! To balance your audio, prioritize the sound of people talking. Make sure the audio levels of speech in your video are fairly consistent. Once you fix voice levels, adjust music and sound effects to create a smooth, clear listening experience.

• Use cutaways - Cutaways are when one shot changes to another to show a different person or location. They are one of the most common effects used by editors to alter the pace of a scene, draw attention to something, or keep a viewer’s attention. They will be an essential part of your editing toolkit! Cutaways are a great way to cover edits, especially jump cuts - when you cut from one shot to a similar or the same shot. 

• Correct your colour - If you’ve never heard of colour correction before, don’t panic. You might have done some colour correcting before when editing photos. It simply refers to editing contrast or brightness in your video to make the colouring appear more natural. The more you learn about the software, the better you will be at this.

• Use a variety of shots - Varying your shots is a great way to keep your viewer on their toes. Switching angles, such as from a close-up to a wide shot, is visually engaging. Cutting from wide to tight shots looks better than cutting from a tight shot to another tight shot.

• Review your work - Many things can seem like a great idea when you're editing, but they may not end up looking all that good. Watch your entire project back a couple of times and search for errors like jump cuts or black holes.

• Stay organized - It's important to keep a good file system when editing. If you ensure that everything you need is in one folder on your hard drive, then you will always be able to find it.

• Dump your footage - It is important to take the footage from your card and put it on your computer before editing. If you try editing from the card, you will find all of your media disappears when it's removed. There is no guarantee that the footage will still be on the memory card next class, so do this at the end of every class.

Don't

• Overdo jump cuts and effects - It can be so tempting to go overboard with editing. It’s easy to get hooked on the thought that more cuts, effects, or sound effects will grab your audience’s attention. But it’s all about getting the right balance. If you add too many effects, you’ll bombard your viewer. Remember that sometimes less is more

• Leave black holes - Leaving a bit of black can be done for effect, but is really hard to pull off. It will almost always look like a mistake. If you do a fade to black, it may look more purposeful. 

• Forget to save and backup your work - There is no worse feeling than making some great changes to your video in post-production, only to find that you saved nothing. Set up automatic saving on your device, and back up the latest version of your video on an external hard drive. This way, your work will always be safe.