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134 P a r t I I Producing Your YouTube Videos

Note

For the examples in this section, we use Windows Live Movie Maker, the
free video-editing program available for users of Windows 7. Similar fea-
tures are available in other programs, and work in similar ways.

Editing Together Different Shots

Unless you shot your video in a single continuous take, you probably have multiple
takes and shots to work with. To create an interesting video, you need to edit these
various clips together into a cohesive whole so that the video flows from shot to
shot and scene to scene.

In most video-editing programs, you have the ability to work in some sort of clip
view. This involves dragging and dropping individual clips onto the program’s sto-
ryboard. As you can see in Figure 11.8, the storyboard is a filmstrip-type area in the
interface. You can easily change the order of clips on the filmstrip, and delete clips
that you don’t want in the final video. Just keep rearranging clips until your video is
in the order that you want.

Figure 11.8 Arrange multiple video clips into a single storyboard.

The key to effective editing is to tell a cohesive story. Don’t jump around from topic
to topic; more important, don’t jump around temporally. Tell a linear story from
start to finish; don’t make the viewer work hard to figure out what’s going on. Make
sure one shot leads logically and directly to the next without any glaring gaps. If
you’re not sure whether the scene order works, just watch the video from start to
finish—if you can’t follow the threads, re-edit!