Editing Tricks for Amateur Vacation Video #120

China 2001:  Beijing - Cloisonne Factory

Hey the camera guy must be learning something!  Perhaps years of trying to edit from poorly-shot footage taught me to pay more attention?  There are good close-ups of the artisans at this Cloisonne factory.  I like seeing the red-hot artwork being removed from the furnace.

Music was taken from footage of the Wuhan Bell Ringers' Show, and really works well for this one-minute video.  Good choices of video clips made this video easy to edit.  Here are some ways to bring that sound into the edit:

• Place the music containing video clip on the timeline.  
• If you can separate the video/audio tracks, just delete the video portion.
• ...or reduce the video opacity to zero
• Your software may have an option to bring only the audio track into the timeline.  

Lessons Learned:

Close-up and medium shots are valuable assets when you are editing!  Use them as a contrast or alternative to wide, scenic compositions.
Live music is a good solution to the copyright dilemma previously discussed.  It also helps to establish the location.

Suggestion:

If there's live music happening during your vacation, keep the camera running.  You might use the music in your edit.

FYI:

All of the China trip vignettes are already loaded onto YouTube.  They may be viewed on one of my YouTube channels: HENBCtravel

I have three other channels that might be of interest:  HENBCvideo (miscellaneous videos that try to look professional, with particular respect for copyrights), RAGEAIR (advertises the licensing availability of my newsworthy videos), and this YouTube Channel of Shame (an odd collection of stuff, not respectful of others’ copyrights).