Don’t feel lost in the dark about how to ask for feedback in your video edit. The hardest part of sharing an early edit is not exporting the video. It is understanding what kind of feedback is most helpful to receive. For example, if you are new at editing, you will hear feedback like “make this smoother” or “there is something not right” and you will open up your timeline not knowing where to start. Helpful feedback is not a reaction to the entire video. Helpful feedback is a reaction to one particular aspect of your edit. Perhaps it is a reaction to the rhythm of the intro. Perhaps it is a reaction to how well the story is told. Perhaps it is a reaction to the level of the audio. Perhaps it is a reaction to how long the cut holds. Feedback that is asked for broadly will yield broad answers. Narrow answers are easier to use, and thus, it is more likely that your second edit will differ from your first.
One trick to making feedback helpful to you is to decide one thing you want to focus on before the edit is shown to anyone else. If you are testing a cut timing, then ask, “Is there any part that feels too static or too abrupt?” If you are testing your audio, then ask, “Is the spoken dialogue clear and does the music enhance the scene?” If you are testing how well the story is told, then ask, “Is it easy to understand without any context?” This is especially important because people who are new at editing tend to say, “What do you think?” When the question is too vague, the feedback can either be too broad or even contradicting. Feedback from the video may mention one concern for the audio, another for the colors, and another for the image. Questions that are targeted lead to more useful feedback that you can implement directly in your edit.
Another thing that can make feedback more useful is to show a short clip instead of the entire edit. It only takes a 20-second intro or a very short scene for your editor to see if your edit is working. By showing only part of your edit, your editor can focus their feedback on this section, and you can test changes quicker and easier. Another big mistake people make when asking for feedback on their edit is to present it after having added all the text, effects, music, and transitions. When too many details have been added, it is difficult to determine what problem you are seeing. A better strategy is to first show a basic edit. If you edit is not working, adding more details will not change that. If you edit is working by shot selection and pacing, then you can then add text, effects, music, and transitions on top of it.
Another way to use feedback in your own video editing practice is to spend fifteen minutes just on the feedback. Set your timer and spend five minutes doing a rough edit of the scene using three or four clips. Spend the next five minutes playing back your edit twice and writing two questions. These can be as simple as, “Does the audience understand what is happening?” or “Does the ending feel resolved?” Spend the final five minutes watching your edit as if you were responding to someone else’s work. Be very objective. Make a note of one detail you think works, and a note of one detail that needs adjustment. This exercise is very beneficial because it teaches you how to be aware of specific parts of your editing problems. Once you can define your problems, fixing them will be that much easier.
When you have feedback, do not just take all the comments as rules. Look for a theme. If several people mention the same scene, then that is a scene that needs adjustment. If one person makes a comment you do not understand, go back to your timeline and try it. Instead of accepting or denying the comment, make a copy of the sequence, add or remove the detail, and compare the two. This strategy is useful especially when the comments are subjective. You do not need to fight with a comment or blindly accept a comment. You just need to see what happens when you make the change. The revision process is much easier when it becomes an experiment instead of a debate.
Once your feedback becomes a part of your own practice rather than the last step of making a video, then you will see more of what to improve. This is because you will begin to anticipate the feedback you receive. You can hear a bad cut and know that it lags, you hear bad audio and know that the scene is muddled, or you hear a slow introduction and know that it takes too long to establish the scene. By learning how to recognize and address the feedback yourself, your eye becomes more sensitive, and your editing process becomes a sharper process of editing the video.