Following my quite intense SCUBA diving season in Corsica – more about that on my AMA post – I was left with a good deal of underwater footage taken by me, my dad and Jonathan, an instructor and friend. So, a couple of months later, I decided to put it all together in a nice edit, and set off to make it.

I started off by filtering out the usable and worthy shots, and trimming them down to their best chunks: judging based on things like shakiness, tone, lighting and just overall usability left me with a significantly smaller amount of footage.

I also chose not to include any “slideshow-style” still pictures: while some were definitely interesting, I wasn’t really looking forward to having to insert still pictures and make them visually captivating in the context of a video – it was my first edit after all, and I would have failed miserably.

However, as this platform does allow for a much easier integration of pictures in a compelling way, the following are some of the worthiest of the bunch:

Photos by me and Badi.

Coming back to the video now – I began looking for some good soundtrack to go alongside and complement the footage: I found SoundCloud to be the perfect place, with its unique collection of great royalty-free music.

Unfortunately, most of the videos we’d taken hadn’t been filmed according to any plans or with a specific edit in mind: no structured shots, no introductory land shots, not even any surface shot. That meant there wasn’t really “a story to tell”, or even an obvious sequence for the takes, since in all honesty I only had footage from literally 3 dives.
However, I still wanted to put the edit together despite the relatively scarce pool of shots I had: it obviously wasn’t going to be a professional video, but it was never meant to be in the first place – I only wanted a short edit I could use to show my friends and family the best underwater shots we’d taken.

So with this in mind, after finding a suitable soundtrack, I took another look at the video and another listen to the music waiting for some general inspiration to arise – and it did. The first constraining elements that floated up to the surface of my mind to start shaping my creation were some anchor points for synchronising the footage and the soundtrack: things like turning moments or particular beat sequences in the music to couple with cuts or transitions in the video, or possible sections in the soundtrack to pair with certain montages.

I fired up my trusty Shotcut and began aligning those elements on the timeline: with this as a starting point, I set off to scanning for spontaneous editing ideas in the same “zen-like” way I’d done before.
From there, everything started slowly but steadily coming together on the timeline: the sequences started settling in definite places to make the edit varied enough, the cuts aligning with the soundtrack and the beginning and ending taking their final shapes.

Only a handful of finishing touches were needed and it was done – but I’ll let you be the judge now: here is the finished edit. Enjoy!