Upgrading Your Cellphone Footage: Part 4

Now that we’ve covered how to take cellphone videos with intention, by adding in transitions, let’s talk about how to edit these transitions. A lot of people will capture the content and then not know how to fully use it, so then they just don’t. We want to empower you on how to edit your cellphone videos in a way to put all the transitions to work and create a visually interesting cellphone video that you can be proud of.

Editing the Transitions to Create a Seamless Cellphone Video

To start showing you how to edit your cellphone videos with the transitions, let us set the stage - You have cellphone video clips of your trip to a state park. You want to take a video of someone enjoying a trip to a state park, so you could start with a shot of the overhead tree branches, moving your phone down to “reveal” a car driving towards you, then walking to the side, as the car drives past…ending by walking behind a tree.  This example shot has given you an awesome start of you video and ended with a great way to transition to the next shot.  As you can see if we start and end our videos with transitions in mind it really raises the quality of our videos.  Below we are going to break down each “shot” you would have taken and show you how to piece them together:

Step by Step example of Editing your Cellphone clips with Transitions

Shot 1. over-head tree branches, moving your cellphone down to “reveal” the car driving towards you, then walking to the side as the car drives past, ending by walking behind a tree really close to end the video dark. This will be your cellphone clip that you start with in your video.

Edit 1. Cut the cellphone clip down to the darkest point at the end and that is where the next cellphone clip “shot 2” will start.

Shot 2. Place your cellphone on the door of the car, so the shot starts dark…pulling back the cellphone and walking backwards, as the person gets out of the car, ending with a whip pan to the direction the person is looking. If you are unsure what a “Whip Pan is, refer to the previous blog post.

Edit 2. Take your “shot 2” cellphone clip and place it in the timeline next to “shot one”. At the darkest point at the very beginning of your cellphone shot is where you want it to start. Then take the ending of this cellphone clip and cut it down to the point were your moment from the whip pan at the end is the fastest. Butt this cellphone clip up to “shot 1” and you’re ready for the next clip.

Shot 3. Start this cellphone clip panning up from the hiking trail onto a person walking down the trail. Take your cellphone and follow a person walking down a trail, as if you’re hiking with them, then you are going to pan over their shoulder and show the amazing view of one of the main attraction points of the state park that the person is there to look at.

Edit 3. Add your cellphone clip, “shot 3” onto the timeline and cut the beginning down to where the movement is flowing, then cut the ending down to where it ends strong with a beautiful view of the main attraction point. Put this cellphone clip up against the other two and you’re done.

So there you have a simple example of how to edit your cellphone clips with the transitions in mind, to create a seamless video. Since there are so many different editing platforms out there, we don’t want to cover the specifics of how to use each platform, but the overall editing remains the same across them all. Once you have your video the way you want it, you can add music or voice over to it, additional transitions, some graphics, and more depending on the platform you’re using. As you can see there are so many ways to elevate your cellphone videos. Knowing this information, we’d encourage you to go out and try to capture just three clips of a moment in your life and make them far more visually interesting, using the transitions and editing tips we’ve shared and see what you can create!

Upgrading your Cellphone Footage: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3