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Advice on editing

Becoming a better editor is a collaborative endeavor, so learn from others and connect with like-minded people. Embrace change, draw from inner feelings, find inspiration online, and step out of your comfort zone. Experience life and use those experiences to fuel creativity.

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  • starky seedling style avatar for user benjamindavid5
    Why is she surprised more women/girls are getting involved? I am an eighteen year old dude and I am not surprised at all, girls have creative ideas and are talented and strong willed too.
    (40 votes)
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  • male robot hal style avatar for user bigkye
    Is it just me or does one of the dudes voices sound familiar like if he is an actor or something
    (9 votes)
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  • primosaur ultimate style avatar for user Elenamtm
    Why did he say you should cut and cut? Does that mean shorten the movie? Because personally I like longer, more developed movies much better
    (7 votes)
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  • male robot hal style avatar for user Dominick C
    What if nobody gives you advice?
    (6 votes)
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  • starky tree style avatar for user Elisa C.T
    I love how the kid just ran up to him and said "I love u" :D
    (7 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Najat Mahjoub
    First, I want to thank all people who make this lessons great, inspiring ,easy to understand and apply..thank you very much all of you guys..Pixar staff and khan academy staff..
    Secondly, can anyone help me how to write and animate “short “ stories...I think this lessons were very very useful, but I think it will be different if I want to apply it on short ones, so what kind of courses and videos I must learn from.
    Finally, please pardon me if my English language is not clear it isn’t my native language 😅
    (5 votes)
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    • male robot donald style avatar for user Tybalt
      Short stories and long stories do not have much different to them. In fact, the only difference between the two is the length!

      Just because a story is short does not mean that it should be any less engaging. While you may want to scale down on conflicts and large goals, they are still prevalent, and the character still goes through them. Your main characters and your world should still be fleshed out, your dialogue should still be well-made, tension can still be added, and your story should still show--not tell! Practice making stories first, then add your length limit as you feel more confident in your abilities.

      Also, keep in mind that writing a story for a book and writing a story for a movie (or animated short) are two different things. While both have the same principles, they are formatted for different things. It is almost like drawing a landscape and drawing a face. You use the same techniques for both, but you are making something different with them.

      Please let me know if you need more help or some examples. Also, your English is quite good!
      (3 votes)
  • starky tree style avatar for user asarameka3
    Is it just me or is there like 20 seconds of silence at the end
    (5 votes)
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  • orange juice squid orange style avatar for user Kathryn Sommers
    Is there an online community / forum or mentorship program for artists? I am the only member of my family who does art, and I have no idea how to get in contact with aspiring artists. I'm especially interested in mentorship programs, but I'll take what I can get!!
    (4 votes)
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  • stelly yellow style avatar for user kinah
    why is she surprised more women and girl are getting involved?I am an 14 year old and I am not surprised at all,boy have creative ideas and are talented and strong willed too.
    (4 votes)
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  • sneak peak blue style avatar for user Generic SYT
    what kind of software could i use for free for this old ACER pc?
    (3 votes)
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Video transcript

- Editing is a craft that takes years to learn and perfect and any editor will tell you that they're still doing it. So the best thing you can do is just keep at it, keep practicing. - Cut as much as you possibly can as frequently as possible. Go out and shoot stuff just so you can cut it. Give yourself a task and give yourself some constraints and get a smartphone, get some, download some free software or some inexpensive software and just cut. Cut and cut and cut. Try things. Try juxtaposing images. Try putting music over things. Just feel it out and experiment and don't, say I wanna tell a story with these three things and then try it or say I don't care if it makes any sense, I just wanna feel this. Just cut. The more you work on your craft, the better you get at it. - And be tenacious. Tenacious beats talent. In other words, the more you want it, the stronger you go after it. It's more important than if you're talented. - The more you work on something, the better you feel about it. The more you apply yourself to it, the prouder you are of it and this is the part that can be hard to remember. The harder the problem is that you have to solve, the more proud you are of the solution that you come up with. - If you're drawing to get a job, that's not good. You gotta draw for yourself. You gotta draw sort of based on your inner feelings. If you're thinking, if I draw this amount, I'm gonna get in Pixar, that doesn't help. You wanna look around and find the truth around you, find what's funny. If you're in your basement all day drawing, that's not good either. You need to get out. - Listen and watch and read other stories too just to immerse yourself in different kinds of stories. - It's great to watch a lot of movies, think critically about the scenes, see what's working, what's not. When you are watching a movie, think about how does this, listen to the sounds. Think about how the sound is helping the storytelling. - Putting yourself outside of your comfort zone has always benefited me creatively and personally and it kinda just opens up your mind to different ideas and points of view. - One thing that helped me was that I was a camp counselor at a summer camp one summer and it got me out of drawing in my basement and those experiences have helped my films amazingly. The opening line for Dug in Up is I have just met you and I love you and that's taken from a kid who ran up to me at summer camp and said, didn't know me, little kid, you're my counselor, I love you like that and all these things that you can sorta store up and they come back into your work all the time. So get out and experience the world but bring your sketchbook. - And the world is changing too. I think a lot of girls are applying for animation schools. Right now, the enrollment is about 70% girls in a lot of animation schools. So the landscape's changing which is awesome and for me, I found a lot of inspiration from a lot of online artists, lot of online female artists. I think it's not just the people around you. Now, with the internet, it's like we're connected with the whole world so you're bound to find a lot of like-minded people like you anywhere in the world too and it's a great feeling to feel like you're not alone. Yeah.