Video editing is a skill that allows you to work from anywhere at any time you want and make great money doing it. But starting out, it can be overwhelming—what software do I use? What tutorials should I watch? What projects should I work on? If I could start over knowing what I know now, here’s exactly how I would learn video editing and learn it fast. I’ll break this video up into six key steps that, if you follow and put the work in, will quickly make you a great video editor.
Step One: Your Mindset
I get it, when I started I just wanted to dive into the tools and edit the best videos possible. But rushing into editing without the right mindset is like trying to run before you’ve learned to walk. The good news is mindset isn’t something that takes extra time, so let’s break this down into three mindset shifts you should focus on to learn video editing faster and better.
Number one: story first, tool second. When I was 17, I genuinely thought I would be a great video editor because I was super fast at video editing in Premiere Pro. But my entire mindset shifted when I spoke with an expert motion designer who made me realize that I had learned everything backwards. Sure, I could put together and edit super fast, but I was missing one key thing: storytelling. The key is to recognize that your main purpose is to be a storyteller who simply uses their skill in video editing software to tell their story in a way that keeps the audience engaged.
Which leads me to number two: think like your audience. Believe it or not, it’s easy to forget that when you’re editing a video, you’re making it for other people to actually watch. You need to ask certain questions with every editing decision you make, like: Should I make this video super energetic or more laid-back? What music will this audience relate to? Should I use sophisticated or playful visuals in my animations? To put it simply, it all comes down to one thing: who am I making this for?
Next up is three: visualize your why. Let me tell you the brutally honest truth—you will never stick with video editing if you don’t have a strong underlying reason to keep going. When I was 10, I wanted to make soccer videos that would entertain my friends and show off my skills. At 13, I made funny gaming videos to make me and my friends laugh and try to get famous. When I was 15, I combined the two and made soccer gaming videos, and then soccer Instagram videos to see if I could grow social media accounts. The common thread through these years and now is that there was always a strong why. Whenever I lose sight of this why, there is less conviction and less reason to keep going, so keep that why on the top of your mind all the time.
Step Two: Choose a Video Editing Software
The first question every new editor faces is: which software should I use? Here’s the deal—tools are just that, tools. What matters is how you use them. I personally use the Adobe Creative Suite: Premiere Pro for video editing, After Effects for motion graphics, and sometimes Photoshop, Illustrator, or Figma for creating assets. But if you’re on a budget, DaVinci Resolve is a great free editing software, and it’s even used professionally for its color grading features.
Once you choose your software, there’s an even bigger problem: learning how to use it. You can find tutorials on YouTube, but it’s still hard to put together a detailed lesson plan if you’re trying to go from absolute zero to proficiency. That’s where a platform like Skillshare comes in, who were actually kind enough to sponsor this video. Getting started learning any new tool can feel overwhelming. Skillshare allows you to select skills that you want to learn and provides a variety of related categories like design, film and video, or animation and 3D. 10 years ago when I began using Premiere Pro, I opened the software and struggled for years to fully grasp the depth of its capabilities. If I had used Skillshare, those years of trial and error would have been reduced to months. It’s the largest online learning community for creatives with thousands of classes led by industry experts. One feature I found especially helpful is called Learning Paths—curated collections of classes designed to help you master specific skills. For example, if you’re diving into DaVinci Resolve, there’s a learning path from the basics of the interface to advanced color grading. It’s like having a personal roadmap to mastery.
Step Three: Learn Core Concepts
Now it’s time for the fun part. After learning your video editing software, we can dive into the fundamentals which are the backbone for great video editing. But before we dive into those, I want to share a mistake I made early on—one that you should avoid at all costs. When I first started, I tried to learn everything all at once. I jumped between Photoshop tutorials, After Effects animations, and Illustrator designs, and it got overwhelming fast. Sure, I learned bits and pieces, but it distracted me from my main goal which was making better videos. What I didn’t realize is that great video editing comes down to a few key fundamentals. If I had focused on these sooner, I would have improved so much faster.
Here are the fundamentals that I wish I started with. One: composition and design. Composition is all about how your video looks and how you arrange the elements on the screen to guide the viewer’s eyes. One of the most important concepts here is hierarchy—making sure that the most important element in your shot stands out. You can do this by using size, position, or contrast to draw the viewer’s attention. Another concept is color. Color isn’t just about looking pretty; it sets the tone and the mood of your video. Stick to a consistent color palette and use complementary or contrasting colors to highlight key elements in your frame. There’s also balance. A balanced frame feels natural and pleasing to the eye, whereas an unbalanced one feels awkward. You don’t want everything crammed on one side of the shot.
Next is storytelling, and honestly, this is the heart of any great video. Without a story, your footage is just a bunch of random clips. Every video, whether it’s a feature film, a vlog, or even a tutorial, should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. The goal is to just make your audience feel something. Ask yourself: what emotion do I want to create here? Let that guide your cuts. If a shot doesn’t add to the story, then cut it, even if you think it’s the best-looking shot you’ve ever filmed.
Next is sound, which in my opinion is the hidden hero of video editing. Take my voice, for example. It sounds good normally, but if it doesn’t sound clear or full, you might not want to watch this video as much. You can have stunning visuals, but if your audio is bad, people will click away. The dialogue should sound clear, the sound effects should subtly emphasize visual motion, and the music should set the mood. These three things should also be balanced so that the music isn’t overpowering and you can actually hear what is being said.
Then we have pacing, which is what keeps your audience hooked throughout the video. For action-packed moments, you might want to have fast cuts. If a section feels too long or drags, then tighten it up. For emotional or dramatic parts, slow it down and let the audience feel what is being spoken about.
Step Four: Never Stop Learning
The next step is a little more straightforward, but I’m going to break it down into a mini roadmap that you can follow each time. If you look at anyone who is a top performer at what they do, it’s because they are in a constant cycle of practicing, reflecting, and iterating. They put the work in, reflect on what was good and what could be done better, and then they make the changes that they need to improve.
Here’s an easier way to think about this: take someone who wants to get more muscular. They start out going to the gym three times per week. Pretty good, right? But after a month, they reflect on their growth and decide to change their routine; instead, they go five times per week. Another month goes by and they notice a lot more growth. Then they read some articles that say taking creatine helps with muscle growth. Now it’s been about six months and they’ve noticed significant improvements. But after thinking they have the key to building muscle, six months later they realize they haven’t grown in size. Funny enough, this was actually a story about me. Once I felt I was sort of untouchable in terms of growing at the gym, I kind of put my routine on autopilot. A similar thing will happen to you if you stop learning as a video editor.
Step Five: Work With Others
What if you feel like you’ve learned everything you can, or you’re not sure where to look next to keep learning? Well, this leads me to step number five: work with others. The life of a video editor is inherently isolating, and that can be incredibly discouraging for a lot of people. Additionally, if you aren’t sure how to improve your skills, it can feel like a hopeless dead end. This is where working with others comes in, and there are four main ways I would recommend going about this.
One: find a job at a content agency. I think working at an agency is essential for beginner and intermediate video editors. You need to spend time working consistently to build up the skills that go beyond just the technical expertise. You also have free access to speak with your team members and learn from their experiences. For me, a huge takeaway from my time at an agency was also getting to understand a bit of the business side, which is more client-facing and logistics-focused.
Number two: find a mentor. Getting one-on-one coaching from someone who has more experience than you do is one of the biggest game-changers for your technical skills as an editor. They can teach you so many tricks that they’ve learned that you can usually only gather over time. In my opinion, it’s a hack to learn anything like 10 times faster, and this person might also become a friend or a professional reference for you down the road.
Number three: join a community of like-minded people. You might not believe this, but I didn’t used to believe in the power of community. I thought I could do it all by myself. This is partially true, but when you isolate yourself, you miss out on the perspective and the learnings that others have, which I have found to be one of the biggest ways I was able to become more successful. For this very reason, I started a community that I linked in the description below.
And four: work with clients more personally. Instead of just being your client’s video editor, be more than that. Have scheduled video calls and figure out what other problems you can help them solve so that they get better results. Personally, this is where I have found the most fulfillment as a video editor. Focusing on other ways you can help not only strengthens your professional relationship, but it helps you learn more skills in the process and makes your services harder to replace. You can also get referrals from happy clients and even testimonials for your website or portfolio. There’s no bad option here, but if you’re interested, my path was personal development for about five years, agency and freelance work for about two to three years, and for the past one to two years, I’ve owned my own agency helping clients grow on YouTube.
Step Six: Make Yourself More Valuable
Now you’ve mastered your mindset, you’ve become proficient in editing software like Premiere Pro, you understand the core principles, you never stop learning, and you found ways to work with others. But now you need a way to keep progressing in your video editing career, which leads me to step number six: make yourself more valuable. There are just about a hundred different ways that you could go about this, but to keep it simple, I broke it into three simple categories that will make the most impact for your career.
One: personal brand. I’ll break this up into two different categories. The first is showcasing your work. This looks like posting your work on a portfolio site and creating professional-looking profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. The second is showing yourself and your work. This is everything I just mentioned, but you’re also showing a little bit of yourself. This is a real personal brand. This makes people feel like they know you already, even when they’ve only seen you talking on a video. This turns cold leads into warm leads that want to work with you, not leads that want you to work for them.
After personal brand, we have complementary skills. Some of the most important skills that I think you can have are motion graphics or motion design overall, visual design skills, storytelling, business, and negotiation or sales, and then communication and professionalism. I would argue adding complementary skills to your skill set is the most important factor in succeeding as a video editor in today’s global economy.
Plenty of people have complementary skills and somewhat of a personal brand online, but what 90% of people lack is communication and professionalism. It matters more than you might think. People want someone they can rely on and they know will get the job done, and if you can be that person, then you can command a premium for your services. Another part of this is being clear with deliverables that allow you to run your business and not let your business run you. You might even want to draft contracts that make your relationship a little bit more established.
Some other things you should do are being comfortable in the language of your target customer. So if English isn’t your first language, but you want to work with English-speaking clients because maybe they have more money to work with, then you should probably try and learn the language. That would be a lot more important than you might think. I know it’s not easy to learn a language, but it can make a pretty big difference.
And just be genuinely caring. Care about the work that you’re doing because most people are just out there to get a little bit of pay, which is fine—it makes sense, you need to keep yourself alive. But past that point, you should think about: how can I make this better for my client? How can I make them want to work with me? How can I get other clients interested in my work and get paid better overall? Unless you have times where you’re very invested in your work, then you might not reach that point. Now, if you’re serious about developing as a video editor, why not surround yourself with others who are on the same journey? You can join the video editor community like I mentioned before, and the details for that are in the description below. If you found this video helpful, I think you’ll like this video where I condense my 10 years of video editing knowledge into just 10 minutes.
