Cool and Sexy Videos Part 2: Editing a Bridge Video Live, Cut by Cut

You finally shot the video. Good footage, decent light, you even remembered to smile. Then you open your editing software, stare at the timeline, and realize shooting it was the easy part. Now you’ve got a raw clip, a folder of travel footage, and no idea how any of it turns into something you’d actually publish.

As someone who has recorded a video and then let it sit unedited for a week because the software felt like a locked door, you’re exactly who this second session is for. Picking up right where the first one left off, Regina opens her own project file in Final Cut Pro and edits the actual bridge video she shot, live, on screen, cut by cut.

How do you turn one raw clip into something that looks produced?

Regina starts simple: drag the clip into the timeline. That’s it. From there she layers in still photos of her business partners over the section where she mentions them by name, holding each image for about two seconds before moving to the next, a timing she adjusts up or down depending on the footage. It’s a small trick with a real purpose. A stranger scrolling past sees faces they half-recognize from an event, and that recognition does work no script can do on its own. As she puts it, seeing those photos next to her own face “gives me authority to be able to say, hey, you know, what I have to show you, you know, after you click the link is extremely important.”

Music goes in next, pulled from a royalty-free channel she found on YouTube, dropped underneath her voice track and turned down low enough that the narration stays out front. Then comes the part almost nobody teaches: cutting your video on the beat of the music underneath it, so the visual changes line up with the count in the track instead of landing wherever the raw footage happened to run out. It sounds like a small technical flourish. Watch a video without it and you’ll notice the difference immediately, the cuts feel random instead of intentional.

Should you edit out every stumble and filler word?

This is the question that stalls people the longest, and Regina answers it against her own instinct to clean everything up. Cutting out every hesitation can leave a video technically smoother and emotionally flatter. Removing dead space between words tightens the pacing, but overdo it and the video starts to feel stitched together instead of spoken.

it’s kind of good that you leave some of the mistakes in there because then people actually see that you’re a real person

That single call reframes the entire editing session. You are not building a broadcast-quality commercial. You are building proof that a real person is on the other end of this link, and a little roughness is part of that proof, not a flaw to be scrubbed out of it. Regina does still remove problems that genuinely interrupt the message, like separating a b-roll clip’s own audio from its video so it doesn’t clash with her narration underneath it, or trimming a sigh that breaks the flow of a sentence. The line she draws is specific: fix what actually gets in the way, leave what just proves you’re human.

What actually turns a rough cut into a finished sales asset?

Once the picture and sound are locked, Regina adds the pieces that make a bridge video actually bridge something: a text overlay near the end naming the call to action, sometimes a capture page address typed right onto the screen, and a final export that shares straight out to Facebook, YouTube, or Vimeo depending on where the audience actually lives. None of this is optional polish tacked on at the end. The call to action written on screen is the only part of the video some viewers will read, because plenty of people watch with the sound off.

Underneath every one of these small moves sits a habit worth naming on its own: “learn the keyboard shortcuts for the software that you’re using.” It sounds like a throwaway line about software, and it isn’t. Every minute you spend hunting through menus with a mouse is a minute you’re not spending on the choices that actually matter, the overlay timing, the cut point, the volume balance. The mechanical fluency is what frees up the attention to make the creative calls well.

• Layer still photos of real people over the moment you mention them, held for roughly two seconds each.
• Drop music underneath your voice and pull the level down until the narration stays dominant.
• Cut on the beat of the underlying track instead of wherever the raw footage happens to end.
• Leave in the stumbles that prove you’re a person, and only cut what genuinely breaks the sentence.
• Put your call to action on screen as text, since a real share of your audience is watching muted.

None of this requires expensive gear or a film degree. It requires sitting down with the free or low-cost software already on your computer and doing the five moves above, in this order, on the footage you already shot. Create your free account at empowernetwork.com/watch to watch Regina build this exact bridge video from raw clip to finished export and download the audio.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Cool. So now we're getting into the live example and I use Final Cut Pro. That's my preference. I actually just started using it.

I was using Camtasia for a really long time because I got really got used to using it and I use it for screencasting. But I just wanted some more features in, you know, my editing software. And so I just want to get into this. iMovie is just perfect.

If you have a Mac, it comes standard with a Mac and it's super easy to use. I'm not going to do anything super complicated today. What I'm going to be doing is going to pretty much be similar to what you're going to be doing in your editing software. Shortcuts are going to be different.

The features are going to be slightly different, but the concept is going to be the same. So I'm not going to get into the file organization, the project organization within Final Cut Pro because you might not be using it. So let's just get into it. Now, earlier what I did was I created a bridge video and I ended up putting all of my footage here just so that you guys can quickly get into it.

So earlier I was talking about, you know, shooting, keep being mindful and being aware, being aware of where you're shooting and how you're shooting. And let me just give you an example. This is This is a video that I started doing. Hi there, Regina here.

This is the bridge video that I started doing. This is going to sound really strange in the bathroom. You can't tell, but this is an outdoor bathroom here in Bali and there's a koi pond there. So it was pretty amazing.

So I actually started doing this Video So I went through it. But then I was, I realized that there's so much more light in the background that even though you can see my face. It still looks a bit off so I ended up Mike is actually really good at scanning spots. He's got a really good eye.

So we went out into the yard and there's a little corner Regina here you either little corner bit here with, you know, some trees and some greenery and there's some on my face. It's a little bit bright and a bit warm, but you know, it works just fine. So I have this MP4 from I I just used my camera phone and So super easy. So Let's see.

So what I'm actually gonna do is I'm going to drag and drop this. And I'm just gonna let, okay, here. And so what I did is I dropped the video clip into the timeline. I'm pretty sure you can do that with all software, if not most software, and otherwise you can always just import the media or import your clip in whatever, whatever your software entails.

So you might want to look up some tutorials on the specific software that you're using. So, this here is the timeline. So you can see here, there's 0, 0, you know, 15, 30, 45, you know, one minute. So this is the time, and you can see that the dynamic time right here in this little, and this little piece here, you can see it moving up in that little box.

So now I have the clip that I want. I don't have an intro or outro, and I'm not going to use. I don't usually use it for my bridge videos, but you probably would do the same thing, as you can just drag and drop it and move, move clips around.

So let me just show you an example of, let's just say, I actually had a. I'll just drop my other clip in, just for example sake. So let's say this was not my intro, you might call my, my outro. I ended up dragging and dropping it in, or importing the clip in. You can actually move these around in your timeline, so I can just move the clip around. This is my intro, outro, or any other clip that you want to add on to it.

Now you noticed here that I ended up moving this clip here on top of the other clip, and all I've. All I did was, you know, I just moved this clip here on top of the other clip. And all I did was, you know, I just moved this clip here on top of the other clip. And all I did was overlay it.

So now you can see in the viewer, and this viewer here, that this video with me in front of the koi pond is, is what's actually showing. And I don't have a sound on right now, but then you can see here that once it gets to this point, the original video is showing. So that kind of gives you an idea, and we're going to show you how to overlay photos later on as well. It's fairly, fairly simple, really easy.

So what I normally just do is I listen to the whole video, and I'm not going to go into the structure of a bridge video, but by now you know. I'll probably give you an example, or I'll probably play this through at some point.

Hi there, Regina here. Now you've either found me on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or any other social media sites. My husband and I have been traveling since January 2014, but after quitting our jobs in 2013. And I remember a moment where, which was actually the straw that broke the camel's back, where I was sitting. Okay, well, you get the idea.

Generally, when I'm doing my bridge videos, I, I try to aim to shoot for one take, because even though I love editing, sometimes it gets really tedious. I think I've, when I started learning how to edit, I, you know, I pretty much taught myself. When I started learning how to edit and I was shooting videos, I kept thinking to myself, okay, I'm just gonna edit that out, I don't have to worry about it.

But I'm not sure, if you go to the top of your feed or not, and you're good, and then you just watch all of the videos that are all the same, and you start thinking, well, here we go, and now I just want to move forward. So yeah, so that actually caused a lot more headaches, because I was allowing myself to make mistakes, thinking that I can edit, edit it at the end, which is cool. But when you go back and edit it, it's not always the. You know, it takes a lot of time, it really does take a lot of time. So it's best to just make the intention to do your video really good in one take.

So that's the first reason I started editing your videos, even if you have to do it a bunch of times. So, for example, the very first time that I do my videos, and I'm just like, what do I do, my videos? I end up doing my videos, and then I'm like, well, how many videos do you do? And I'm like, well, how many videos. I wanted to put out a two-minute video, and I didn't know how to edit back then.

I shot that video probably about, I don't know, 30 times. It took me two hours to do a two-minute video, but I got it in at the end and you just get better and better each time. So now I have a bridge video and my bridge video is basically connecting my brand, which really is me and Mike traveling to my offers. So in this case, I made it really generic at the end and I'm just going to let you listen to the call to action.

So remember my call to action is, you know, to get the person to come and follow us. Now in the link below, what you're going to find is a video with our business partners that we've created. That talk about the exact system that we've been using since we started, well, since before we started traveling the world. So see, I just talk about my business partners.

You know, after you click the link below, you'll, you know, meet our business partners. I just made that generic because that'll allow you to let you use the bridge video on any sales video. So what if it changes and there's a sales video with, you know, for example, Rhonda Swine. She's still my business partner.

But I didn't specifically say in the link below, you're going to meet my business partner Rhonda Swine. I just said, you know, my business partners. So you can change it however you want. This is just how I decided to use it.

So I've got my clip and I'm going to start with the end first because I'm talking about my business partners right now. And so my business partners. In this case are my business partners. In this case are, you know, Chris Jones and Dave Wood, and this is why this is part of the reason why you want to go to events is really to network and be able to take photos and videos with leaders on top of all the incredible content that you learn at events.

So for example, in here I'm talking about my business partners and I want them to see actual pictures of my business partners before they get to before they click through to the link. So I want them to sign up to opt in, right? So we took photos at different events with Dave and Chris, and now it's, this is their whole reason why you want to do it. So let's see that talk about now in the link below, what you're going to find is a video with our business partners.

Cool. I actually, I'm trying, I'm expanding my timeline here so that this wave form and that, so this is a video. Okay. And then I'm going to kind of move this.

This expands here so that I can be a bit more precise with my clicks. What I want to do is I want to move my photos over the specific area that I'm talking about, in my business partners. So let me, I'm going to end up trying to play.

What you're going to find is a video with our business partners, with our business partners that talk about the exact. What you're going to find is a video with our, is, you is. I'm going to stop right about here, so I can bring in these clips of my business partners.

And these are just still frames, and generally I make them, depending on the clip itself. A lot of times I kind of keep two seconds as a standard, so it's not too fast, not too slow, for people. But sometimes I adjust it depending on the actual footage itself.

Is a video with our business partners, that's. So I'm just gonna stick, I know, make this two seconds here. So now I've got two images I laid on my video: is a video with our business partners. And I might even say, you know, fine, is a video with our business partner, cool.

Our business partners that talk about the exact system that we. I might even move it over. So, and I'm going to talk about this in a trick in just a second: what you're gonna find is a video with our business partners that talk about. And the reason why I moved it over a bit is because you can see a waveform here, this little waveform here on the bottom, and that's my audio.

It'll look different in each software again, but that just kind of gives you an idea of what, you know, the peak, the highs and the lows of the audio, right? So that gives me a chance of, gives me an idea, of how I can overlay certain things. So, you know, for example, especially if I'm putting from video to music, when the music changes. This is the ninja trick, so keep your eyes open. It helps me quite a bit, and it's kind of, keeps your videos, gives a nice flow to your videos.

If so, if I overlay a video over music, sometimes I will, and I only want a specific clip. Sometimes what I'll do is just put a piece of the clip there, and I'll adjust it based on the count of the. I don't know much about music, but based on the music counts. So, although, you know, okay: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, then I usually cut the video there.

Then I usually cut the video there, so that. And move it on to a different clip, so that when the music changes, the video changes as well, which gives a really nice flow to the video. I'm not going to get into cutting, you know, right now, maybe, in a bit. But I'm just trying to keep this as simple as possible. So now you notice that what you're going to find is a video with our business partners that talk about the exact system. So cool, that's kind of a good area that I wanted to put. But then, if you notice, of course, you can still see my video there on the bottom.

It's not really overlaid pretty well, so you can always scale it up, scale it down, move it around so that you can get what you want. Now this particular window here on the right, the top right, these are just all the properties that allow me to change, you know, the properties of a specific clip. I'm just going to leave that at that. I'm going to close that right now because what I want to do is I want to transform this because I want it to overlay over my video and look decent, right?

It looked pretty silly before, so I'm just kind of moving it over so that it's not overlaid. It looks good. So now, there you go. Now there's no little video bits hiding from the back, from behind, so let me just scale this up and then, you know, move it down so we're kind of centered.

Dave is pretty darn tall and I'm pretty short, so now when I'm playing this again. What you're going to find is a video with our business partners that talk about the exact system that we've been using. Yeah. See, so even though I made my video generic, by just putting photos up there over, you know, overlaid on my video or even, you can even do, you know, video footage, that bridges me to my business partners.

So people know me, people know, see in these pictures that we know these two guys and then when they click the link below to the next video, you know, to the next video or to whatever sales content. You have, they see these guys there or they see my business partners there, so they know, okay, well, there's some sort of a connection and that just gives me authority to be able to say, hey, you know, what I have to show you, you know, after you click the link is extremely important. So that's pretty cool. But what I'm going to do now is I want to overlay music.

So I gave you some resources for some royalty-free music and I gave you ways to, you know, figure out how you can use music from, you know, independent artists and all of that stuff. And so the clip that I have here, I found on YouTube, but this guy posts on Incompetech, which is a free, it's royalty-free, free royalty-free site. And so I'm just going to drop this on here. And I actually want to move it to the beginning.

And generally, just because this is my preference, I put my audio on the bottom. I don't even know if I'm supposed to or not, but that's how I do it. Here at the end, generally what I'll do is I'll just cut it off. I'm learning the shortcuts in those.

So that's what I only know. So for, you know, Final Cut Pro to clip it in, you know, I click Command-B and what that'll do is it'll just cut it in half or cut it wherever. And then you can just select the piece that you don't want and then just delete that. And so now…

Hi, Regina here. Hi. Hi. Hi.

Hi. So now you've either found me on Instagram… So now you can hear the music on top of the video audio, but it seems kind of loud. And you want to make sure that people are able to hear your voice.

So what I'll do is I'll select the clip and then I'll change the volume. Maybe I'll just lower it to negative 13. And you know, every software is different. I know Camtasia works very differently on like the numbering system, but it's the same concept.

So make sure you look for it. Make sure you look up tutorials for specific softwares, so let's just play it now my husband I have been traveling since January 2014, but after quitting our jobs in 2013 and So it's nice so you can hear the music in the background. It kind of makes good creates good movement moving forward And that's part of the reason why I like putting music over Video is it kind of makes really great movement in the video? You know people kind of enjoy the music sometimes listening to just Someone speaking.

It's a bit. You know, can get a bit boring, maybe not, because some people are really, really great speakers. And some people are really, you know, hypnotic to listen to. But sometimes you're putting audios, is pretty cool, so that's what I do.

So I think that's basically it: me putting, putting these clips above your, you know, overlaid, overlaying these still frames over your regular video. Is actually very, very similar to, is the exact same thing that you would do when you have b-roll. Let me see if I can find a spot where I'm talking about traveling, and I have a travel clip I can put over. So now, before I look for some travel footage, I noticed something when I was playing something back.

There was a bit of. Here, listen. Using since we started, well, since before we started traveling the world, but allowed us to keep on. Start traveling the world, and keep on traveling.

So I made a little bit of a mistake there, and, you know, and I quite often, I'll say. There were sometimes I'll say um, ah, or whatever. And I. Take those out of my videos sometimes. Now, in this, in this video in particular. Or, even in a lot of the videos, you don't really have to take it out.

And it's kind of good that you leave some of the mistakes in there, because then people actually see that you're a real person. But sometimes I will end up editing out the ums and the ahs, if they fit, or if it makes sense. I'll sometimes I'll take out the dead space, just so that my video can flow. And sometimes that makes the video, the actual video itself, a bit choppy, but makes the audio a bit smoother. So it's really all preference.

But I don't, I don't even know, you wouldn't even necessarily have to edit those out, because, you know, it's kind of good to be able for people to see you as a real person. If it's excessive, you could probably edit it out, or I would even just reshoot the video, so that's up to you. So, but, but if you're interested in. How to actually take this out conceptually?

I'm just going to show it to you right now, like, of how I would do it. And this is probably a bit more advanced for some of you out there. But that's fine, because you can always go back to this, and you can always look up other tutorials to see. You know, how did. How to fine-tune things about, just want to show this to you really quick?

Start, have a. To start. Star, traveling all the time, traveling world, keep up. Well, since before we started traveling the world, that allowed us to keep on. Been using since we started, well, since before we started traveling. Says that we've been using since we start, before we started traveling. The already, before we started traveling, the world.

Chapter 4 on our YouTube channel. So now you can see, I'm actually getting pretty detailed here.

So I even expanded my timeline. And here's one good tip is learn the keyboard shortcuts for the software that you're using. And that just means that you're able to just down-press one of the keys on your keyboard without having to use your mouse to go to the menu items and go down. Like, for example, you can see all of these keys here, all these keyboard shortcuts here.

So, like in this case, you have capital I, capital O, capital X. These are the different keyboard shortcuts for this particular action. So I kind of found a cool spot here. And what I'm actually looking at, what my eyes are looking at, are the audio waves.

Because I can see here that before I start saying before, there's a little dip here. So what I do is I just cut that, cut that there. You know, I have the clip selected. I cut it.

And then so I just cut this here because I wanted to. I wanted to get that sigh out. And so now what it sounds like is that we've been using before we started traveling the world. So you can see that the audio kind of smoothens out, but then the video jumps.

Using before we started traveling the world. Which I don't know if I would keep for this particular video, but maybe in another video that you're editing, it might be okay. I just wanted to show that to you as an example. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, like I said, because it's good for people to see you.

Before we started traveling the world, but allowed us to keep on. So now in that particular bit, I'm talking about traveling. So what I want to do is I've got some footage from us traveling. And so I just want to overlay some, some video there.

So maybe something like this. Which just is a little clip of us. Arriving at the Wellington airport in New Zealand. And so I can just drag and drop it on there and it's fairly short.

I'll probably just move it here. But then if I just drop it straight in, of course, using before we started all the audio, the audio from both clips is playing. So you can actually separate the audio and the video. Or in this case, in this particular software and Final Cut Pro, I can detach it and it'll separate the audio and the video.

So. I just took out, I separated the audio video, separated the audio and I'm just going to delete it. So now when I. Before we started traveling the world, but allowed us to keep on traveling, start traveling the world and keep on traveling the world.

So have a look. So right about here, I'm going to stop out, stop talking about traveling the world. I'm just going to do just as an example, just to speed it up a little bit. And this is what you call retiming.

When you're speeding up the clip or you're slowing it down, you're retiming the clip. We've been using before we started traveling the world, but allowed us to keep on traveling, start traveling the world and keep on traveling the world. So have a look at the link down below. Click it and we'll see you on the other side.

And so earlier, since I cut that little bit out here, you can see that the audio, the original audio music of the music, there's still a bit of extra on there. So I'm just going to remove that bit there. Delete that. And now when I play the bridge video, this is what it sounds like.

And this is a good example for you, too. You know, if you've never done a bridge video, this is a really, really good example for you to use. It's very simple, very basic. And you can see that it's around a minute.

Sometimes I make it less than a minute because what you're trying to do is get people in. You want to get them to the offer as soon as possible to keep their interest. And here we go. Hi there, Regina here.

Now, you've either found me on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, or any other social media site. My husband and I have been traveling since January 2014, but after quitting our jobs in 2013. And I remember a moment where, which is actually the straw that broke the camel's back, where I was sitting at work on a public holiday and I was looking outside. It was a beautiful day.

And I was thinking to myself, I can't do this anymore. I can't let life pass me by like it did when. During the five years I was in New Zealand, working, you know, 50, 60, 70-hour work weeks. I knew that if I wanted my life to change, I had to change the things in my life.

So I started looking for a simple system that allowed me to live the life that I wanted to live and also replace me and my husband's six-figure incomes. Now, in the link below, what you're going to find is a video with our business partners that talk about the exact system that we've been using. It's not like we started traveling the world, but it allowed us to start traveling the world and keep on traveling the world. So have a look at the link down below, click it, and we'll see you on the other side.

So that's it. Easy, easy peasy. So obviously right now, you know, you'll want to export that. And like I said, you know, every software is different.

So from here on, you can just export it or share it. The newer, the latest, you know, the latest version of software has share it. You can share it. And when you share it, it just automatically connects you to, you know, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, whatever, or you can simply export a file.

However your software works, you know, is how, however your software works, just do it that way. So cool. I'm just trying to think of any last minute things. That's pretty much it.

You know, if I ever, one of the last things that I'd want to do is maybe, you know, you can overlay text as well. In this particular case, I've got a little area here where you can create, you know, set your titles. And this is the exact same as iMovie. And I think iMovie is actually a lot easier with really great templates.

So you can pick, you know, what you want to do with your text. So generally for a video, I'll put, I'll put the capture page at the end. So I'll just try it here. Just as an example.

So you can even, when you overlay text, you can put, you know, the capture page, or in this case, I'm telling the people to click the link below, so let's put the call to action. Click the link below to meet, you know, you could do that, or sometimes I'll just put, you know, I kept your page here, you know, whatever, whatever you want, you can even drop in your logo if you want. You can do anything. The world is your oyster.

I mean, there's just so much flexibility and all these tools are really great and super easy to use. So something like that, so that's it. Easy peasy. And if I wanted to actually overlay this text over my video, I can simply, you know, move it over and it shows up here, of course, you know, if I wanted to do it there, I probably want to move it so that it's not on my face and I can change the color, whatever color you want.

So it's fairly simple. So this concludes the live example section of this module. And in the next bit, I'm going to talk about how to integrate your videos with your marketing.