What Classes to Take to Become a Video Editor

If you are looking to learn how to edit videos professionally, you’ll want to enroll in courses that teach you the essential skills and practices utilized by professional video editors. While this may seem obvious (and a bit tautological), it is important to be sure that the courses you enroll in provide you with the practical training that you need to quickly start finding work in the field of professional video editing. This article aims to explain what kind of courses you’ll want to take in order to become a professional video editor, but the main skills you’ll need to pick up are video editing theory, video editing applications and the technical practices of editing.

Immersive Bootcamps

If you want to become a video editor without needing to spend several years and a hundred thousand dollars on an MFA in film, you can enroll in an immersive, career-focused bootcamp to learn all of the skills you’ll need to become a professional video editor. These courses will teach you the essential skills you need to build a demo reel and prepare for the job application process. In these classes, which can run full-time or part-time, you’ll receive an immersive education in everything from film editing applications (like Premiere Pro) to film editing theories and techniques, which are essential to the process of making a finished project look professionally done. These courses are the best way to quickly get all of the training you need to begin work as a novice video editor and they are a great way to lay the groundwork for more advanced training and editing projects in the future.

You’ll also want to consider the different career support options offered by training centers and providers. Since so much of your time in these classes will be focused on career-centered training, it pays to have the added support of career services to help ensure that you can become a video editor once you’ve completed the program. For example, many programs aim to structure their lessons around practical, real-world projects that students can refine, personalize and add to their job materials as part of their demo reel. Many programs offer one-on-one career mentoring and support as well as time dedicated to things like practice interviews, guest speakers discussing the industry or practical lessons on how to find and apply for jobs. Some programs even offer job guarantees, internship possibilities and other placement support for graduates.

Enrolling in an immersive bootcamp is probably the best way to prepare for a career in video editing, since the lessons taught cover the technical and practical aspects of editing and the career-focused nature of the program ensures that student will leave the courses with an understanding of how to find work and how to succeed in their careers. Since these are career-focused classes, you are likely to focus primarily on learning technical skills, like how to create a clean, organized edit using common applications like Premiere Pro. As a result, you’ll spend less time learning the subtle aspects of cinematic editing (you won’t spend much time in your classes discussing the complex development of modern montage, for example), which is fine for amateur video editors, but you’ll probably want to spend time supplementing your course work with on-demand (or even free) materials that aim to teach you the history and traditions of video editing.

Smaller, Shorter Classes

Many students find that they aren’t able to dedicate the time, energy or investment to a career-focused immersive program and would instead want to space out their training to become professionally ready at their own pace. This process has its own pitfalls, most notably the additional time and cost but it is doable for dedicated students willing to put in the time and effort to learn the necessary skills. If you plan to take this route, there are a few kinds of classes that you’ll be sure to want to take.

Advanced Video Editing Application Courses

If you want to become a professional video editor, you need to know your way around one of the many commercially available video editing applications that are used within the industry. This can include programs like Adobe Premiere Pro or Apple Final Cut Pro as well as a range of other free or subscription-based applications. These are the bread and butter of modern video editing and you’ll need to know the programs inside and out to quickly and effectively make the kinds of edits undertaken by professional editors. In fact, most professional editors will likely need to learn more than one application, though it pays to start off with something common and accessible, like Adobe Premiere Pro.

Complementary Editing Applications

While not as important as a tool like Premiere Pro, professional editors are likely to want to learn at least the basics of adjacent and related applications that find use during the video editing process, such as audio mixing tools (like Adobe Audition) and 3D VFX and modeling tools (like After Effects). Professional editors working at smaller studios or on personal projects are more likely to need to learn more applications since they won’t have as many other editors to defer to for things like VFX and sound mixing. Many immersive programs cover multiple applications (particularly those bundled together through services like the Adobe Creative Cloud), so you should look for ways to learn multiple, complementary skills at the same time.

Theories of Video Editing

Video editing is as much of a creative art as it is a technical art, meaning that you’ll need to spend time developing your own personal style and flair as you become more comfortable with the basic processes of video editing. This will require you to learn about how editing contributes to the overall final product of any video project and since editing is one of the four basic elements of film, it is a fairly important process to understand. While you won’t need a BA in film studies, you will want to understand the basic premises of cinematic editing as well as some of the major techniques that professional editors utilize (like montage, shot reverse shot and the Kuleshov effect). These can be learned in a focused class or they can be picked up as part of an introduction to video editing course. There are more than a few on-demand courses that cover these theories and if you are at all interested in learning about editing techniques, you’ll be able to find quite a few high-quality free resources on YouTube or on platforms like Nebula, SkillShare or MasterClass.

Demo Reel Development and Professional Training

Finally, you’ll want to spend some time in a class that focuses on giving you the opportunity to build your demo reel (the sample track of edits that you give to employers to have them judge your talents) and gain an understanding of the professional lives of video editors. This means learning how to construct an application, apply for editing jobs and how to work in a collaborative studio environment. While these skills will be developed in the other courses offered, it can pay dividends to enroll in specific classes designed for the purpose of helping you develop your demo reel and prepare you for the practical, day-to-day work of finding and holding onto a video editing job.

Learn Video Editing Skills with Noble Desktop

Regardless of how much money you want to spend learning video editing, Noble Desktop has a course that is built to fit your needs. Students looking for a detailed, professional training program can spend 126 classroom hours learning video editing skills in the Video Editing and Motion Graphics Certificate program. In this course, students with no background in video editing can prepare themselves for a career in the industry in full-time or part-time sessions. Students will learn how to edit complex video content using Premiere Pro, After Effects and Audition, and since this is a career-focused course, students will build an application-quality demo reel to demonstrate their skills as aspiring Video Editors.

Students seeking a more accelerated training program should consider enrolling in a course like the Premiere Pro Bootcamp. Over three days, students will get hands-on experience working with Premiere Pro, and they will learn everything from basic to advanced skills and get a handle on working with Premiere Pro at a professional level. Students will learn how to navigate the user interface and make simple cuts in one or more video files. They will also learn the basics of maintaining continuity, aligning audio and keeping their video project moving smoothly. Then, students will learn how to work with multiple video files, multi-step edits and adding, removing and cleaning audio files.

Finally, students looking for a quick introduction to video editing can enroll in the Premiere Pro in a Day course. This course will give students six hours of hands-on Premiere Pro training to help them become familiar with the interface and the basic process of uploading video files and working with them in the Premiere Pro interface. Students will learn how to clip and merge video files, and they will learn the basic philosophies that go into creating edited video content. This course is a quick introduction to the application for students looking to learn more about the tools and begin experimenting with Premiere Pro.