Video Editing 101: The four most basic cuts to elevate your videos
Welcome to the “Video Editing 101” series where I will be presenting the basics of video editing, in this first “episode” I will be talking about the most basic cuts every editor must know.
Who is this series for?
Video Editing 101 is mostly oriented toward beginners in the video editing world.
1. Cut
The first and most basic form of a cut in a video or a film is the CUT or as we call it in the industry HARD CUT. A CUT is nothing more than two videos playing one after the other. This form of CUT can be used to emphasize the scene’s tension or to change between two camera angles.
2. Match cut
A MATCH CUT is quite similar to a basic CUT but with a key difference. Instead of just adding two clips next to each other in the timeline like we did with the basic cut, in the MATCH CUT we try to get our subject roughly in the same position and size between our two videos, this tricks our eyes into thinking that the movement of the subject just continued and thus making our cut more seamless to the eye
3. J cut
Unlike CUT and MATCH CUT the J CUT is a little more complicated since we have to handle the audio and the video of our two files separately. So a J CUT is executed by making the sound of our second video start before the image part thus forming a J in our timeline between the two files. Unlike the match cut where we try to trick the eyes of the viewers, this time we try using the sound -of the second clip- which starts playing earlier than the image to prepare the brain for the sudden visual changes, this results in a smoother transition experience for the viewer than with the cut for example.
4. L cut
For the fourth and final cut, I will introduce you to the sibling of the j cut, the L CUT. The L CUT’s only difference from the j cut is that the video -of the second clip- starts to play first this time and then the sound follows. In the L CUT, we apply the same brain trickery principles from before to introduce a smoother transition experience for the viewer.
Thanks to everyone who read through this article, hope to see you in the next one.
