Graphics and Animation

Any professional editor in the buisness has a few graphics and animation tools in their toolkit. Animations can be as simple as adding movement to the lower-third title slates for the experts in your film and they can be as complex as 3D animated pieces. While animations might sound too advanced for an editor, we're here to tell you that you need to learn some basic animation and graphics packages to be an editor that can pull his own weight. 

The first thing to learn is a basic photo-imaging tool, such as photoshop. On video that was shot with a tripod, you can actually take a screenshot of the image, go into photoshop with it and manipulate as needed. If there is no movement in one section of the shot, such as the text on a sign, you can change it write in your photo-editing software. It's the most basic tool, and the building block for complex animations. 

The second basic editing tool, is to use a motion-graphics pacakge.