There are many important elements to making a successful video.  Great footage, compelling content, the right music, it all plays a part in taking your concept and making it work on the screen. But the one thing that’s most important in order to get your point across in a video is pacing.  

Most people don’t understand what pacing means. At its most basic form, pacing is the rhythm of the video, or, more importantly, of the editing.  Music videos are often paced very fast, with quick edits and tons of movement.  Why? Because they generally aren’t trying to tell a specific story and are more going for a mood. Documentaries are often paced slowly, giving the audience time to see historical footage and follow what is often a complex story that unfolds over an hour or more.

In media, including television and corporate videos, pacing is, at its most basic level, about how the story is delivered. I’ve always explained pacing as it relates to feeding a baby.  When you’re feeding a baby, the key is getting the food to them at the right time; feed them too fast and they’ll spit it out and make a giant mess, feed them too slow and they’ll become unhappy and start to cry. 

For your video, it’s job is to get your ultimate point across by feeding the audience the information at the perfect pace; that means quick enough that it’s enjoyable and easy to follow, but slow enough so that they can digest it and understand your point.  

Working as an editor, I’ve been brought into numerous projects where the content was great, but the pacing was either entirely too fast, or way too slow.  This led to countless meetings where executives were trying to understand why the audience wasn’t responding to the cut.  Did they need to change the interview bites?  The voiceover? Maybe the picture itself?  No, the way to solve the problem was to fix the pacing.  

On most projects, once I sat down and re-paced the interviews and/or voiceover, the information that was already on tape suddenly started making sense to the audience. No reshoots or new interviews were necessary.  

Yes, it’s important to get great footage in the field, along with shooting compelling interviews and writing the perfect voiceover.  But once you’re in the edit, make sure you have someone that’s paying attention to the pacing.  

Take care in feeding your audience.  You don’t want to make them cry.