For a lot of content creators, the main focus of making a video is filming the content and engaging with the audience afterward. A lot of us don’t think about editing beyond ensuring it’s smooth and makes sense. But for content creators looking to try something new and expand their skills, trying new editing techniques is the place to start. There are dozens of techniques that can all enhance emotion, grab the audience’s attention, or make an uninteresting scene suddenly engaging.

In today’s article, we’ll be sharing four editing techniques you should try. All you need is a phone, an editing app like CapCut, and a little patience!

1. Cutting on Action

This is a specific set of cuts where an action (literally any action) is seamlessly broken into two or more shots. Each shot will have a new angle or composition of the action, but pick up exactly where the other left off. Take, for example, a woman cutting a pepper. Shot one would be us facing her head on and watching as she picks up the pepper and sets it on her cutting board. The second shot would pick up in that same beat and show the knife coming to cut off the stem, but from the left side. Shot three would be her actually cutting off the stem and slicing the pepper, but we’d shoot from the right.

It’s hard to follow in a written format. Here’s an example:

This style of editing maintains or drives momentum in what could be a static scene. It also keeps your audience engaged and can emphasize key moments within a scene. And, because we’re jumping to a variety of angles, it can make the scene feel more immersive for the audience. It can also make even the most boring or mundane moment seem like a story and help us focus on each individual action.

1.5. A J-Cut

They’re a bit like a J-cut, which shows how two connected clips that tell a story. Imagine a woman flipping through a recipe book, with a cut to her considering two different peppers in the store. We see the initial spark, the cause (her looking for the perfect recipe), and then the effect (her finding the best pepper). You can see examples in the first few cuts of this example video.

This technique paints a picture of the entire moment, not just the key action. It tells us the whole story in a few quick clips and helps immerse the audience in the scene. It gives even the most mundane moment momentum and story.

2. Speed Ramping

With this technique, you increase or decrease the speed of a shot to add emphasis to a moment. It can also be used to create tension or anticipation – like that scene in Brave, where the arrow flies really slow for a few seconds and leaves us wondering if Merida will make her mark. This is usually done in short clips, to really emphasize the moment. You’ll see speed ramping around second fifteen in the example below.:

This technique is mostly used to enhance action sequences or highlight emotion. In the scene above, it adds a little context to an interaction and helps convey parts of the story we might not get so seamlessly. It can also be used to convey the passage of time or let editors tell the story in a more visually interesting and engaging way. Some editors have even used it to hide or fix pacing issues or add style or flair to a scene.

3. Stop Motion

We’re not telling you to channel your inner Tim Burton and create little clay figures. But you can still incorporate stop motion through pictures and still shots. It’s a bit more tedious, though. You have to get a ton of individual, slightly different shots of the action to ensure the story flows as seamlessly as possible. This is probably the technique you’re most familiar with, but here’s an example!

This technique is ideal for a creator looking for a bit of a challenge or a super unique style. Stop motion has a distinctive look and style that sets its apart from everything else. Because of this, it’s also attention-grabbing and can really capture even the most casual viewer’s interest. It’s also a flexible style that can suit any genre or tone.

4. Cutaways

Cutaways are fairly self-explanatory. You cut away from the action in a scene to give the audience information that was previously “out of view” or not included. As an example, let’s go back to the woman cutting peppers in the kitchen. She’s cutting up a jalapeno to toss into a salsa for dinner. We could cut away to her partner chatting with friends, saying she can’t handle spicy food and doesn’t like peppers. Then, we cut back to our salsa-maker cutting another jalapeno for her salsa.

This scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a perfect example of a cutaway.

This example uses a cutaway to add context and a bit of tension to the scene. Because we’ve cutaway, the audience learns something new about the scene and plot. A cutaway can also be used to introduce or explain a new element, like the CDO scene in The Big Short. The CDO cutaway also builds suspense, because we’re pausing the action to focus on something else and now have to wait to see how the actual story plays out. This type of cutaway needs to be quick and succinct. Narratively, a cutaway (or sequence of them) can be used to reveal the answer to a mystery. Cutaways are also pretty common because they work well!

Want More Editing Tips?

You can follow @ClapperAcademy for all our latest tutorials. We cover everything from getting to know Clapper to boosting your engagement to life-saving filming tips! To learn about editing in-app specifically, check out our Editing on Clapper article.