Behind the Scenes: 11 Steps to Edit a Short Film
There are six video tracks and twelve audio tracks, but I couldn’t fit them all into this screenshot 😅
This is behind-the-scenes of how I created my short film “Slow Down”, but the steps remain relatively the same throughout each video project.
1. Come Up with Concept or Idea
The first thing I do when creating a new video is to figure out the idea or concept behind it. Why am I making it? Who is it for? What’s the message or the story?
For this, I wanted to make a short film about the concept of “slowing down” and being present in everyday moments. It was based on the idea that nowadays, we rush through our lives and don’t take the time to relish the smaller moments. We’re always looking forward to the next big thing, the next big step, or some not-so-distant event or outcome in the future.
2. Film Scenes
With that concept in mind, I filmed as much as I could that related to that concept while I was traveling around Europe.
It also made sense to have a large majority of the shots be static without much movement. That either meant a lot of locked-off tripod shots or very still handheld shots. I wanted the viewer to feel as though they were just observing in that moment what was happening in front of them.
Ideally, I would’ve had the majority of the voiceover written so that I could know what type of scenes I needed to film. However, I had a pretty terrible writing block before and during my trip and I was unable to adequately express my thoughts.
3. Choose Music
Personally, I think choosing music is one of the most critical parts of creating a short film. The choice of music can make or break a video. It can bring the edit to life, but it can also make the most stunning visuals fall flat. I usually spend an absurd amount of time trying to find the perfect song.
In the last couple of years, I started using Artlist. It allows me to search for royalty-free music by mood, video theme, genre, instrument, BPM, length, and more.
Knowing this video was going to get the voiceover treatment, I had some basic parameters to start with: 1) No vocals; and 2) It can’t be too distracting as background music.
I settled on this song called “A Little Peace of Mind”, which was peaceful, a good tempo, and mostly acoustic.
4. Write & Record Voiceover
Now that I had the song, writing the voiceover came more naturally. Through the music, I knew how the video would feel, and I could also pinpoint the different musical sections.
I wrote the voiceover with specific timestamps attached. Throughout the process, I kept adjusting words so that they would fit within the melodies of the song.
For example, there’s one section of the song where the same melody repeats three times in quick succession. And this is how I wrote the voiceover for that section to correspond:
“1:14 Time to just feel the power of a wave crashing over your back.
1:20 Time to just appreciate the magic of live music in a public square.
1:27 Time to just be… and feel what it’s like to be truly alive.”
I hummed and hawed over the voiceover for a few weeks. I’m probably overly critical of my writing because I don’t want to sound preachy or cheesy or be misunderstood. But, I try to tell myself that whatever I write will resonate with some, and others will hate it. That’s just how it is. How’s that saying go? “If you try to please everyone, you will please no one.”
Once I finally decided I wasn’t going to edit it anymore, I recorded the voiceover. I currently just use an inexpensive Blue Snowball microphone that I got for $50. I plug it into my laptop via USB and record from my closet to dampen the echo. It’s a simple setup that does the job.
I simultaneously played the song while recording the voiceover, so that I could get a sense of the timing that each voiceover part needed to be. Once I was happy with the result, I brought the recording into Adobe Audition to make some tweaks to improve the audio quality.
5. Align Voiceover with the Song
Now I’ll bring the voiceover and the song into my editing software (I recently switched to DaVinci Resolve) and chop up the recording to fit with the song. This way, I know exactly where to place my video clips later on.
6. Pull Selects
The next step is both fun and tedious. I go through every single piece of footage that I have and pick all the parts that I deem good enough to include. It’s fun because I get to relive all the footage that I shot, and oftentimes, there’s stuff I forgot about, and/or it brings back a good memory. It’s tedious because it can feel like it takes forever.
7. Assemble Timeline
With all the good clips selected, it now becomes like a puzzle. I find the clips that correspond to the audio (voiceover + music) and place them correspondingly. This is when the edit starts coming together.
8. Sound Design
I’ll then scour the Internet and my hard drives for appropriate sound design elements like sound effects, atmospheres, risers, drones, etc. to really bring the edit to life. In this video, I kept things pretty subtle as I wanted the voiceover to shine through.
9. Picture Lock
I’ll finalize the clips in their positions and now is when I make sure all the timings are perfect. Once this stage is done, there will be no more changes to the visual edit points.
10. Colour Grading
One of the last steps is colour grading. It’s become one of my favourite parts of the process, especially since I switched to DaVinci Resolve. This is when I get to experiment with different visual looks to create a stylistic effect.
I’ll colour correct, fix any extreme exposure issues, add a LUT, then add a final grade.
For this video, I used the “Phantom LUTs” by Joel Famularo. This particular LUT is meant to mimic an ARRI camera to make it look filmic and natural.
11. Export & Upload
The final step is exporting the final video. Thank goodness for modern computers because this used to take me hours, only to realize that there was a glitch in the exported video. Now, the process takes mere minutes.
I’ll then take the exported video file and upload it online, send it to my phone, and watch it on my laptop — just to test out that everything looks and sounds the way I intended it to across different devices.
Once it’s uploaded to YouTube, I just click “Publish” and voilà! The video is done and out in the world.