Why would I want to edit video I've shot?

Why would I want to edit video I've shot?

Tim Smith (Camcorder Training Specialist) gives expert video advice on: Why would I want to edit video I've shot?; What kind of computer do I need to run a video editing system?; What software do I need for video editing? and more...

Video is so easy to shoot that we tend to shoot way too much of it, and it needs editing. Video that has not been edited tends to be as boring as it gets. You really need to take out the scenes that weren't important, and just leave the stuff that really catches your attention and tells the story. Maybe you're shooting a basketball game - you don't need all the information of everything that happened at half-time. We need to know that there were star players, we need to know what the score was, we need to know how it began and how it finished. We don't need to watch the whole thing, so it needs editing. We need somebody as a film maker or video maker to condense that into a way that we can sit down and take it all in. That's really what editing does: It gets rid of the stuff that we don't need to know; puts the stuff that we do need to know in a logical fashion; and puts it front of us so that we can see it, understand it, and enjoy it.