Last year, someone asked me to make a guide on how to do overlays. I have made guides before, but they are... Not made well.

I wanted to actually do a good job on the overlay guide, so I spent a long time creating an outline, script, and video examples. Although it was intended as an overlay guide, I felt many editing basics were fundamental to understanding "what makes an overlay good" so I started with a more broad approach.

Understanding how clips
FLOW
and what makes them visually appealing
SEQUENTIALLY
before you try to achieve these things
SIMULTANEOUSLY
in an overlay
is fundamental.
(from 0:34 in the overlay guide)

You can watch the guide here if you like.

The following was going to be my original introduction. I floated it by some friends and they said it was better as its own separate thing. I don't plan on making anything about this, but I also don't want to lose what I wrote, so here it is:

Knowing rules and when/why to break them

Everyone says you should learn the basics first so you know "how" to break them but I don't think many people convey exactly why that is.
People are made uncomfortable by the unknown. In our specific cases (fan music videos) we have customs and norms set for decades before us via cinematography and fine art. There is virtually no escaping the familiarity of your audience with these norms because it's highly unlikely someone watching your videos has not seen a movie or looked at a piece of art.
We may not notice these rules, but we recognize them subconsciously. Following the rules "feels better" and makes things "look nicer" while subverting them can cause discomfort on subtle scales.

But this can also apply in a micro sense as well with the digital age. Your own editing community probably has its own set of norms it follows (especially if you are prolific in a community that focuses on a specific visual editing style). If you follow most the norms except one (or even a few), you can guide your viewer to the emotions you want them to feel with your work.

A separate guide could be made for this concept, but I believe the possibilities reveal themselves to you through learning the basics of editing and cinematography (and there are plenty of guides on those so no need for filmschool) and simple experience/practice. I encourage you to learn about the basics of cinematography specifically. You are doing yourself a disservice when you concentrate on guides specific to fan music video editing.

However, in the interest of completeness, I'll leave you with two examples:
The first, imagine a video that focuses primarily on long fades. Each scene transitions to the next over seconds instead of frames. Then, suddenly, there is a section full of quick cuts. It's jarring, it's different, and because of that, it draws extra attention to this section. Why is that section there? What is important about it?

The second, we have the opposite: A video with a fairly normal editing style; several clips with cuts, fades, etc. No scene really stays on screen for long. Except maybe one or two scenes do. What's important about these longer scenes? You're putting them there because you want the viewer to absorb something about this section more fully than the rest.

In terms of breaking rules outside your own video, let us consider ken burns: Adding subtle motion to clips so transitions or smoother. Most commonly a zoom in or zoom out. It's common advice to add ken burns to a still video, and at least in my circle, the lack of them is quite noticeable and something easily critiqued.

However, there are reasons you wouldn't want them in the video, and those reasons can be similar to the last example (you want more attention on this clip) or perhaps you actually want the viewer to be uncomfortable (which is useful for suspense and/or horror vids).

The thing is, all these examples are intentional choices. While it's possible to accidentally stumble on a psychological effect you like, in most cases it doesn't work well unless you know what rule you're breaking and why you want to break it. Sometimes I don't break rules on purpose too. I'm not perfect and sometimes I just don't make a good overlay. It is what it is!

This all being said, this video focuses on my personal rules for overlays, not how to break them.

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Aug. 29th, 2025

Aug. 29th, 2025

When to break the rules

Knowing rules and when/why to break them

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