Do you need ideas to produce or edit videos?
It is important that you create and edit your own videos because it gives you the freedom you need to try new techniques, to test different things and create new editing workflows! That’s because you can’t deliver a job with editing mistakes when you’re working for a client. When you are producing your own videos (recording them) and developing your personal editing projects, you can test what you want and make the video according to your ideas and make as many mistakes as needed to reach perfect level!
In this post you will discover how to have good ideas for creating new videos and never run out of inspiration and topics for videos, which can be a tricky task when you’re a video creator, a video editor or a YouTuber.
Let’s see 7 methods to always have video ideas.
1. Make videos out of daily routine
This can seem a little unusual, but the first method for always having video ideas is searching for inspiration in your day-to-day activities. Everything you do as routine can also become a video, with the right editing, any footage can become a cool video! If you have a hobby such as playing a musical instrument, playing video games or drawing, make a video of it!
Having breakfast, washing a car, taking a pet for a walk, playing video games, doing gym exercises at home or any other routine activity can become a video, an opportunity for you to film something with any camera (even with your smartphone), transfer the media to your computer and apply your video editing techniques to a series of clips you shot that need to be transformed into a short story video. Even a 60 seconds video clip of a dog playing is a challenge for you to be creative!
You will have to apply color correction to it, add background music, cut the parts that aren’t interesting and even add text to outline an idea or something else in the final video! So put this method into practice too.
2. Search for stories that are waiting to be told
The first thing you can do is search for stories that are waiting to be told! This is a basic type of video, telling the story of things and people through a short film (which is a video).
And remember, every story is interesting! Don’t think your idea is bad before putting it into practice and let your video viewers evaluate what you have created! Cities, towns and villages: they all have people and stories to be told! Many of your original videos can come from stories told to the camera, which can be any camera.
This is also an important detail: if you don’t have professional filming equipment like a Mirrorless Camera and Camera Accessories, don’t let that stop you, create your video with your smartphone camera! Then the improvement and effects can be added with your Video Editing Software.
3. Get inspiration from movies and series
To be creative during the editing, you can watch movies and series to get inspired, especially those of a style that you would like to edit (action, comedy or drama, for example). Then, try to reproduce something you saw with your own technique of edition. It doesn’t matter which software you use, it may even be a Video Editing Software for Beginners. Try to recreate a camera movement, something of color editing or the timing of the movie/series/video or any other thing you like in it.
That doesn’t mean that you will copy exactly what other people did in a movie or series or video, you will be inspired, try to create something similar and then finalise your inspired-video with your own ideas. You can shoot something from your daily life as explained above and use that footage to reproduce an editing technique that you saw in a movie or series.
Also, you can download Copyright Free Video Footage to use as material and apply the editing techniques that you see in a movie or series or in YouTube video.
4. Use the brainstorming technique
One technique that you can use is brainstorming, which is simply writing down on a piece of paper or on a computer document all the video ideas that pop to your mind, no matter if they are good or bad. After you’ve written all your ideas, you will evaluate whether it’s worth making a video on the topics you wrote or not.
If you have an audience that watches your videos, you can also brainstorm from the video comments or questions to create new videos from them. Also, don’t get stuck in ideas, if you have an idea that seems to be original, it can be very successful. The important thing is to always seek innovation.
5. Get inspiration from Internet videos
To be creative during the editing phase you can also search on the Internet, and especially on YouTube for references to create your own style. This method is similar to Tip Number 3, you watch videos on YouTube, for example, and try to reproduce the editing technique by yourself in any video editing software you use.
Even though it may seem difficult at first, it is worth trying to put together a new video based on various ideas that you find in other videos, combining them with your own ideas. Remember that you need to exercise your creativity to get better and better video results.
To give you an example, you can search on YouTube for “the best motivational video ever“, or “the best comedy short film ever” or simply “inspirational short film“. Short films are usually under 30 minutes long and sometimes they don’t have speech, only background music, just like mute cinema a.k.a. silent films, which is great to get inspired to create/edit videos.
If you want to develop your own Visual Effects VFX videos, search for “VFX short film” on YouTube to find videos to get inspired.
6. Learn video editing techniques
Learning video editing techniques will improve your creative possibilities. For example, you can use a Video Post-Production Software to learn how to create Visual Effects (VFX), 3D animation and more advanced editing techniques that will help you turn any simple video into something impressive!
You can also learn more about Color Grading and Color Correcting to create artistic looks for your videos and learn how change the FPS rate (Frames Per Second) of a video clip to make it look cinematic. Those are just a few examples, but looking for tutorials on YouTube of techniques you haven’t mastered yet will increase your editing possibilities a lot!
Another thing you can do is test new video editing software programs because usually a new software can offer you a set of tools and features that another software can’t, and that will expand your editing possibilities even more! To start, you can check our Advantages Guides of multiple video editing programs:
- VEGAS Movie Studio for Video Editing: The Complete Advantages Guide
- VEGAS Pro for Video Editing: The Complete Advantages Guide
- VEGAS POST Suite for Video Editing and Post Production: The Complete Advantages Guide
7. Don’t overthink it
And last but not least: don’t overthink your video! It’s a great thing to put a simple idea into practice, go through with it until you finish your video and store it on a hard drive or on the cloud to watch it later. A couple of years from today or even just a few months from today, you can re-watch your older videos that you created/edited and keep a progress check up! That’s a way to keep track of how much your techniques of video editing improved through the years, which is a very constructive experience!
Conclusion
Awesome! Now you know 7 different methods to never run out of ideas for creating your own videos and to editing them too! So don’t hesitate to put what you’ve learned into practice and start creating your new video right now! You won’t regret it!
You can also share your thoughts in the comments below!
