The Video Ad Masterclass | Premiere Pro & After Effects

Welcome! Make sure to watch the intro video and download the document - join the exclusive Learn Video Freelance Group linked in the document using the password IMAKEVIDEOS

Here we cover the basics of script-writing - make sure to download the attached script templates resource so you can quickly create video ad scripts for clients of your own!

Access the folder here

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1iKE7lyRrKCRqSfUoJ6ozkwdM36co9ERN

Welcome to this brand new 2024 update! *Important please read

This module will show you how I create videos just like this for my high ticket video editing clients fast, and efficiently (because time is money when it comes to video editing).

The formula I walk through in this video is how you can literally edit ANYTHING. It's not about the specific techniques, it's about following the right steps to create consistent videos so that you can ENHANCE those videos at the end with your own styles and preferences.

You can grab a coffee and a notepad and take notes, or follow the process with a project of your own! I'd reccomend writing yourself a promo script for your own video editing services, so that you finish the module with something to market for yourself.

Please make sure to read the description on each video for important recap notes, extra information and relevant links.

If you haven't already make sure to join the Facebook Group where you can have open discussion about this module with other students, otherwise feel free to ask questions below the course videos, and if you find anything valuable please leave a review! It helps a lot.

You can join the group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/728899124183701?locale=en_GB

See you in the next one.

For a fast and efficient edit, especially when managing a lot of videos and a lot of client B Roll it's super important to get set up correctly.

In this video I'll show you how I set up my project for lightning fast editing, including folder management, naming conventions and setting up proxies.

Whatever type of video you create you're going to have "A Roll". A Roll is the main narrative, whether that's multiple people speaking, a voiceover or a talking head video script. We also call the script "copy" (copywriting).

Our goal with the A Roll is to create a sequence and cut out the best pieces that we want to use in our video, and highlight parts that could be used for "hooks" (attention grabbing copy) or that we really like so we can use them later.

This is fairly simple as we have one long pre-written script with a few takes. Usually however, there's lots of meetings, interviews etc. and we want to find the best building blocks to put them all together.

By having timelines dedicated to the different types of footage, we can easily go back and pull those "selects" later without having to re-watch hours of footage.

Once we have our A Roll script in place, it's time to go through, cut out UMMS and ARRS, dead space and refine the script so it tells a complete story.

We can DUPLICATE our selects sequences at any time to edit in the new sequence so that we don't lose our original selects. I do this multiple times throughout a video as it acts like a "save point".

I name my new sequence with proper naming conventions

It can be really difficult and overwhelming to select music and mix it together, especially on the fly and without a plan. It's also quite hard to explain this live while making a brand new video but here's the formula: 

1. Break your A Roll up into "chapters" (Introduction, main story telling, testimonials, call to action) 

2. Find music that fits the vibe of each video for example;

Intro - Epic Strings / Cinematic

Main Story - Steady, driving, "Industry" 

Testimonials - Emotional, hopeful, inspiring

Call to action / end of video - EPIC, BIG, EXCITING

I like to use ARTLIST as they have tonnes of amazing tracks and it's extremely useful to be able to filter by keywords, genres and find similar tracks. On the max plan you get footage, music and sound effects. You can find royalty free music, footage and sound effects on google which is totally fine, but it's going to be less organised and the quality will vary.

If you DO decide to use artlist you can use my affiliate link to get 2 months free on the annual max plan - this makes me a small commission at no extra cost to you (in fact it saves you 2 months of subscription)

This is my artlist link: https://artlist.io/artlist-70446?artlist_aid=ryancollinsvideo_2940&utm_source=affiliate_p&utm_medium=ryancollinsvideo_2940&utm_campaign=ryancollinsvideo_2940

3. Audition your music by playing it side by side with the video you are editing until the "vibe" is right.

4. Place your music under each "chapter" - do not worry about mixing yet, it's better to have great music that fits the vibe which you can transition later, than trying to find music that fits together perfectly.

When your chapters are marked up and you found tracks that get you EXCITED, move on to the next step!

Now that we have our music placeholders in we can start to mix the music and refine the script to fit the pacing of the music.

To mix music here are the main techniques I will use: 

1. Simply fade out music and fade in new music pressing "Shift + D" to add a default transition which is usually "constant power". This will increase or decrease the music at a consistent rate. You can use the levers on the beginning and end of each video.

2. You can use risers and impacts or booms to help hide the transition. As the riser increases, you can decrease the music and then cut the music on the moment of impact.

3. You can cut the song shorter by finding the last 4 or 8 beats of a track and cutting it, then replace it earlier in the track. Look for peaks in the wave form and make sure to count 1,2,3,4 to find the right place to place it.

4. You can add a reverb effect to the last note of the video if it cuts short too quickly - this will let the note ring longer bringing it to a more "natural" conclusion.

IMPORTANT: If you can't make it sound like a good transition at this point, just keep it simple! 

Simply fade out one track and bring in a new track. You can always improve on this later, but it's better to have the best music that fits the vibe, than a great transition with two average or boring tracks.

I get all my music and sound effects from artlist. You can get 2 months free on an annual plan using my affilate link. It saves you money and provides a small commission to me which enables me to create these tutorials.

This is my artlist affilaite link: https://artlist.io/artlist-70446/?artlist_aid=ryancollinsvideo_2940&utm_source=affiliate_p&utm_medium=ryancollinsvideo_2940&utm_campaign=ryancollinsvideo_2940

You can also search "free royalty free music" on google!

Now that you have a solid foundation in, you have full creative freedom to get fancy! 

If the copy, music, transitions and pacing is good at this point, it can only get better from here.

For the first pass I reccomend going through and placing things that NEED to be shown.

Are they talking about a warehouse? Show a warehouse. Are they talking about results? Show the results.
Happy clients? Show clients (preferably happy) 

I also try to use the client's original footage as much as possible first, rather than stock footage. When I do use stock footage I try to find the BEST stock footage clips that look premium and authentic.

If there's no stock footage or client B Roll that looks good, but an important point is being said, then I will add a big TITLE to enhance that key point.

Whether it's stock footage or client B Roll, I try to use the BEST part of the BEST clips! I'll open up the clip in the source monitor and select in and out points on the exact part I want, then drag that into the timeline. I try to avoid shaky camera footage, weird faces or cameras changing direction.

You can get FREE stock footage from pexels.com, but you can also get premium curated libraries of stock footage from artlist. You can get 2 months free on the artlist annual plans using my link:

https://artlist.io/artlist-70446/?artlist_aid=ryancollinsvideo_2940&utm_source=affiliate_p&utm_medium=ryancollinsvideo_2940&utm_campaign=ryancollinsvideo_2940

This link will save you money and generate me a small commission at no extra cost to you - but you are in no way obliged to do so!

Color correction and color grading are two different things! 

Color correction is getting the exposure, contrast and white balance correct to get the shot "neutral"

Color grading is adding a "look" or "feel" to your shots!

I'll be honest - I am no color grading expert and in my experience unless you really know what you're doing there's a good chance you'll make your video look worse.

Also - if you're using various client B Roll and stock footage it can be really difficult to balance all the shots, which is often the case with these kind of ads.

In this video I'll show you how I quickly color correct my videos. I simply scrub through, look for dark, underexposed or green shots and play with the sliders by eye to get them looking acceptable!

Like I've said previously, there is SO MUCH to video editing. A hollywood film would likely have a person or even a team dedicated to color grading alone. Therefore I think it's important to pick your battles!

Things we can easily control: finding the best voiceover clips, picking the best music, making the best of what we have and then adding our enhance skills / style / passion over the top! 

Captions are part of the design.

Skipping over captions as just that thing you put on the end can really hurt how your video looks and feels.

In this video I'll show you some of my preferences when it comes to captions!

Here's a quick recap: 

1. I prefer to lean towards smaller, clean captions with less shadow and background for "cinematic" looking videos. I don't want the viewer watching the captions, I want them watching the video.

2. I like complete sentence, and don't like finishing on half a

sentence.

3. I try to keep everything to 2 lines.

4. I bring the captions UP on social media to avoid any information at the bottom of a reel.
5. If the video cuts JUST before the caption, I'll sync them up so it's less jarring to look at.

Rendering your video is pretty straightforward but you can get some issues with heavy animations. One quick fix is to turn off GPU acceleration, or try rendering at a medium bitrate. You can also see the timecode where the issues happen, then go and render out that graphic / animation to video, then put the render it the main edit.

When delivering to a client, make sure to do all the heavy lifting up front and deliver them something that has proper naming conventions, in a tidy format so that they understand they are working with a professional!

So how do we take a 16:9 ratio video and easily convert that to 4:5 or even 9:16 without messing up our video? 

Well it's simple! 

We ask chat GPT 

"If my video is 16:9 at 1920 x 1080 and I want to KEEP 1080, but make it 4:5, what is 16?" 

The answer is 864.

Important: by doing this you are losing SOME quality because true 4:5 would be 1350 x 1080 and true 9:16 would be 1080 x 1920, HOWEVER - the difference is barely noticable when running ads on social media.

You can always duplicate the timeline and resize it, but you may have to replace transitions.

ALWAYS double check your video, captions, design and shot placement!