I edited together 22 minutes of the 4+ hour Mario Party 4 livestream. This is my second time doing one of these and I'm still new using Lightworks, so if there are some rough moments, bear with me. I skipped Mario Party 3 as I didn't think that stream was as entertaining as the second. However after watcing the Mario Party 4 stream, I decided to have another go at this.

I always try to do a short write up of my process making these edits so I can try to record what I've learned and share what my goals were.

For this video I wanted to keep it short and focus less on providing context for the state of the game -because the game part is mayhem- and more on the couch moments. Trying to visually keep track of the board state meant providing clips of the game that aren't necessarily funny and add needlessly to the length of the video. I didn't include every good either moment because I still want to incentivize people to pick up a premium subscription if they enjoy this short recap.

As for the actual editing process, this one came together in about 4-5 hours. Thats about the time it took to watch the video in real time and mark cue points, cut out everything between and do a second pass adjusting the start/end times of each clip.

Timing is one thing I really tried to pay attention to. I was listening to the audio to try to time most of the cuts and add some space around them where appropriate. Having a bunch of rapid fire riffs is great sometimes but since all of the moments are in chronological order, sometimes there are more quiet moments that break up those runs and I felt like I needed slow down the pace of the video in spots.

Pacing is something I want to work on in future edits. I feel like one the best ways to achieve better pacing would be to start grouping the clips by theme to create mini stories (i.e. all the times 'a game of skill' is referenced). However doing that means moving all the clips out of chronological order which is something I've been debating with myself. It would be harder for the viewer to keep track of the game but it would link all the relevant riffs together. As much as mario party is already a clusterfuck to keep track of, jumbling the clips around would make it even more inscrutable. I may experiment with some nonlinear edits in my next video.

I've also been thinking about adding some graphics. There were a few times where I felt like it might be entertaining to add some text or a cutaway of someone's face during some of the more trying moments. I'm not entirely sure how Lightworks handles stuff like that quite yet. I futzed around with some graphics in the GB Extra Life edit I did and it was not the smoothest experience.

Anyways, hope you guys enjoy the video. I feel like there's been a slight improvement in my understanding of Lightworks and of video editing in general. As you can see I've really gravitated towards the theory end of editing and it gives me an appreciation for the work that Drew and Jason put in to the live streams.