14:58Gavin Herman · Tutorial
How To Sound Design Any Video In 15 Minutes
A ten-year editor breaks his three-pass audio workflow — vocals, sound effects, music — into checklists anyone can run without becoming an audio engineer.
June 22ndThe argument in one line.
Great editing controls attention through three viewer questions: do I understand, do I feel something, do I want to see what happens next. Effects only amplify those fundamentals.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A video editor who keeps adding zooms, motion graphics and sound effects but still sees viewers drop off.
- A creator who edits their own YouTube videos and wants a simple checklist for deciding what to add to a cut.
- An editing lead or hirer who wants a shared vocabulary for giving feedback on retention.
SKIP IF…
- You want software tutorials or plugin walkthroughs. This is about editorial judgment, not button clicks.
The full version, fast.
Retention is not about how much happens on screen but how well you steer attention. Viewers constantly ask three things. Do I understand what's happening, solved by guiding the eye, leaving shots up long enough, and keeping music from burying dialogue. Do I feel something, solved by choosing what to show, holding shots, using reaction shots, and using sound contrast. Do I want to see what's next, solved by open loops and by controlling when information is revealed. A real pattern interrupt gives new information, not just a new screen.
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00:00 – 00:51
01 · Attention over effects
Flashy edits only work on top of fundamentals; introduces the three viewer questions.
00:51 – 02:54
02 · Do I understand?
Guide the eye with zoom, highlight and radial blur, and avoid cutting away too early.
02:54 – 04:51
03 · Sound clarity and sponsor
Keep music from competing with dialogue; stems demo with the sponsor Epidemic Sound.
04:51 – 07:34
04 · Do I feel something?
Choose what to show, hold shots, use reactions and sound contrast to shape emotion.
07:34 – 10:16
05 · Do I want to see what's next?
Open loops, controlling reveals, and why real pattern interrupts add new information.
10:16 – 10:55
06 · Wrap-up
All three questions answered, then a pointer to a sound design video.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Great editing is measured by how well you control the viewer's attention, not by how much is happening on screen.
- Flashy effects only work when the fundamentals underneath them are already doing their job.
- Every extra element on screen is another decision the viewer has to make about where to look.
- Editors cut away too early because they have watched the clip hundreds of times and the viewer is seeing it for the first time.
- Music with vocals competes with a speaker's voice, and removing the vocal stem keeps the energy without hurting clarity.
- Sometimes holding the shot is the edit: discomfort builds the longer you are forced to sit with a face.
- A reaction shot can carry more emotion than the thing being reacted to.
- Layering in extra laughter can make the same joke land noticeably funnier.
- Silence and room tone create tension, but only when contrasted with moments that get suddenly loud.
- If every joke gets five sound effects and a zoom, none of them hit as hard.
- Instead of asking what to show next, ask what the viewer should feel next.
- Keep something unresolved at all times: a question, a transformation, a pending result.
- If the answer is revealed at the very start, the viewer has no reason to stay for the failed attempts.
- Editors confuse changing the screen with giving the viewer a reason to stay; the strongest pattern interrupt is new information.
- Answer one question while opening another, so every payoff comes with a reason to keep watching.
Three questions that decide whether an edit holds
WHAT TO LEARN
Before adding any effect, check that the viewer understands, feels something, and still wants to see what comes next.
- Guide the eye by removing distractions, zooming to the relevant part, and highlighting in sync with the words being spoken.
- Leave each shot up longer than feels necessary, because you have seen it hundreds of times and the viewer is seeing it once.
- Keep music and sound effects below the speaker, and use stems to drop vocals when a track competes with dialogue.
- Hold a shot or cut to a reaction when you want a feeling, since what you show decides how the same footage lands.
- Build contrast in sound and pacing so quiet moments and loud moments each hit harder.
- Keep open loops running and reveal answers late, so the payoff gives viewers a reason to stay.
- Treat a pattern interrupt as new information, not a new visual, and open a fresh question as you answer the last one.
Terms worth knowing.
- Open loop
- An unresolved question, result or transformation that the viewer wants to see completed, which pulls them forward through the video.
- Pattern interrupt
- A change meant to reset a viewer's wandering attention. The video argues the best ones add new information rather than just a visual change.
- Stems
- Separate layers of a music track, such as vocals, drums and melody, that let you remove or lower one part without losing the rest of the song.
- Radial blur
- An effect that softens the edges around a point of focus so nothing else competes with it.
Things they pointed at.
02:10toolFree radial blur plugin for Premiere
03:23productEpidemic Sound (sponsor)
Lines you could clip.
00:00
“Great editing isn't measured by how much is happening on screen. It's measured by how well you control the viewer's attention.”
09:40
“Editors confuse changing the screen with giving the viewer a reason to stay.”
05:22
“Sometimes you don't need more happening, sometimes holding the shot is the edit.”
Word for word.
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Great editing isn't measured by how much is happening on screen. It's measured by how well you control the viewer's attention. And one of the biggest mistakes editors make is trying to control that attention by jumping straight to the flashy stuff.
More motion graphics, more effects, more zooms, more sh** happening every second. And to be clear, all of that can improve in edit. I use it all the time.
But those things only work when the fundamentals underneath them are already doing their job. So as editors, how can we actually hold someone's attention? Well, when someone's watching a video, their brain is constantly asking three things.
And the third one is probably the biggest one for retention. But once you get them right, all the cool sh** becomes way more powerful. If none of these are working, no amount of flashy editing will save the video.
So let's start with the first question viewers ask while watching a video. Do I understand what's happening? This sounds obvious, but I've led editing teams and hired quite a few editors, and this is one of the most common problems I see.
You can have beautiful motion graphics, great sound design, amazing footage, but the second the viewer gets confused, they stop experiencing the video the same way. They might only be confused for a second, but every one of those moments pulls them out of the video.
It breaks the immersion. So what actually makes a viewer confused? The first reason is that they don't know where to look.
Our brains can only process so much at once, so every extra thing you put on screen is another thing the viewer has to process, and another decision they have to make about where to look, and what actually matters. And to fix this, we need to guide their eyes take this newspaper article for example let's say i'm quoting this line in my video if i just throw the entire page on screen you have no idea where to look while i'm talking your eyes are searching through all this text trying to find what i'm reading so let's remove those distractions first zoom in to the excerpt then highlight the section we actually care about and this is already much easier to follow but we can take this further and we can animate the highlight in sync with the words being read and now your eyes don't have to search at all then Maybe we add a subtle vignette or a radial blur effect and now nothing else even competes with the point of focus.
And by the way, I left a link below if you want this radial blur plugin for yourself in Premiere. It's completely free. Now, none of the effects we just used are there just because they look cool.
Every single one is gently guiding your focus and you should be thinking about this constantly as the editor. But even if the viewer knows exactly where to look, you can still confuse them in another way. And this is something editors get wrong.
because we watch the same clip hundreds of times when we're editing. The issue is cutting away too early. You put something on screen for a second, and it feels fine to you, but you've already seen it.
The viewer hasn't. They're processing that image for the first time, so leave it on screen long enough for the viewer to understand what's happening. And there's one more clarity mistake that can ruin all of this, even if your visuals and pacing are perfect.
Too often, I see videos where the music or sound effects are too loud, making it difficult to understand the speaker. You should use sound to emphasize moments and make things feel more real, not compete with the dialogue. And the fix isn't always just turning the music down.
Sometimes you like the energy of a track, but vocals or busy melodies pull attention away from the speaker. I ran into this issue in a previous video of mine. Take a listen.
These systems can turn a project that takes you an entire week to edit into one that takes a fraction of the time. As you can tell, it's hard to hear. The vocals of the song are interfering with the vocals of the speaker, which is me here.
But luckily with Epidemic Sound, which is the sponsor of this video, this is an easy fix using their stems feature. Stems give you separate layers of the song. So in a click, I could just remove the vocals, and immediately it sounds much clearer with the same energy of that song without finding another one.
But that's just one reason I use Epidemic Sound for pretty much all of my videos. They have a plugin for your editing software, so you never have to leave your timeline their music is made by real musicians and using epidemic helps support those artists i also love their assistant feature where you can describe the music you want and ai helps you find it and honestly after using this it would be hard to go back to normal search because this just saves so much time finding the perfect track for your video and because epidemic owns all the rights to its music and sound effects i don't have to worry about any copyright issues just add your channels before publishing and you're good and videos published under your license during an active subscription stay cleared for forever, even if you cancel after.
I'm currently on the pro plan because I use Epidemic across not just my social media accounts, but also digital ads and client work. But Creator covers your own channels, and there are business and enterprise options for teams and larger needs. And if any of that sounds interesting to you, click the link in the description below to get a 30 -day free trial of Epidemic Sound.
And thanks again to them for sponsoring this video. So, whenever you add something to an edit, ask yourself, does this make it easier for the viewer to understand what's happening? But understanding alone isn't enough.
The viewer is also constantly asking, do I feel something? This is where editing becomes almost like a game, because you can completely change how someone feels about the exact same footage. One of the easiest ways to do this is simply choosing what you show, or what you don't.
Take this scene from Obsession. Instead of immediately cutting away, the movie just sits on her face.
Cory Barker, who directed and edited the film, actually said he originally wanted to hold that shot for an entire minute. Because the longer you're forced to sit there, the more uncomfortable you feel. Which is exactly what a horror film wants.
And that's something editors forget. Sometimes you don't need more happening, sometimes holding the shot is the edit. Now obviously most of you aren't editing horror films, but the same principles apply to almost anything you edit.
Take reaction shots for example. If someone wins something, don't just show the win. Show what it means to them.
to their family. You're using someone else's emotion to influence the viewers. Same thing with podcasts.
If someone says something wild, don't just stay on them. The other person's reaction might be the more emotionally impactful shot. I even used this idea in funny gaming videos.
If someone told a joke and only one person laughed, sometimes I'd actually layer in everyone else's laughter too. I don't include the bullying in my GPA item. That's the only class you haven't cheated in.
And suddenly the exact same joke feels way funnier. Slightly manipulative, sure, but that's editing. But visually choosing what to show isn't even the most powerful way to control emotion.
Sound might be even more powerful. Sticking with the horror theme, Backrooms is a great example. A lot of its tension doesn't come from constant music telling you to be scared.
It comes from fluorescent humming, room tones, strange noises, and long stretches where barely anything is happening sonically. You just feel like something is wrong before you even know what it is. But there's a problem.
If you stick with the same sounds and music the whole time, it stops working and becomes boring, rather than pulling on your emotions, which is where contrast saves the day. Those quieter, eerie moments in backrooms really only work because there are moments where everything suddenly gets louder. and more intense.
And this contrast makes both the aggressive and the silent eerie moments hit so much harder. And that's why contrast matters so much in editing. And this applies to normal YouTube videos as well.
If every section has the same music, the same pacing, and the same intensity, eventually everything starts to feel emotionally flat. If every joke gets five sound effects and a zoom, eventually none of them hit quite as hard. Sometimes pulling everything back is exactly what makes the next moment hit.
So instead of only asking, what should I show next? what should the viewer feel next? Because once someone feels something, they're not just watching anymore, they're invested.
But there's still one question left. Do I want to see what happens next? This is probably the biggest one when it comes to retention, but there's one mistake editors make here that can make everything else useless.
But this starts with how the video is scripted and shot. If there's nothing interesting to look forward to, editing can only do so much. But when those ingredients are there, editing has a ton of power to amplify curiosity.
And one of the easiest ways is by teasing what's coming while always keeping something unresolved. Maybe there's a question that hasn't been answered yet, a transformation we haven't seen. A result we're waiting for.
Or a story with a problem that still needs to be resolved. Basically, the viewer should feel like there's always something just ahead that they still want to see. And as editors, we can amplify that.
For example, in this video of mine, I teased level 3 before it was actually time to talk about it. Not only did I mention it in the script, you could always see that more levels were coming. You just couldn't see what they were yet.
So every time we finished one, there was always something left unresolved. Another way to do this is by controlling when information gets revealed. Say you're editing for a fitness creator who completely transformed their body.
They might explain what finally worked first, then talk about all of their failed attempts to get there. Now technically all the information is there throughout the video, but once I know the answer that I get at the very start, why do I need to stay to see what their failures were? So maybe you restructure it, tease the transformation at the beginning, then show what they tried that failed and why those failures matter.
And only after that do we reveal what finally worked. Now the answer becomes the payoff. The same principle works visually with before and afters, progress bars, countdowns, or anything where the viewer can see there's still something left to complete.
Now, these are all subtle, but they create tiny open loops in the viewer's mind, an incomplete thing that the viewer wants to see completed. The point of a pattern interrupt is to reset someone's attention. So maybe if they're getting bored, you quickly switch up the music and the pacing so that they're right back in and focused on your video.
But this is the mistake I mentioned earlier. Editors confuse changing the screen with giving the viewer a reason to stay. If I'm bored and you zoom in on your face, I'm probably still bored.
The strongest pattern interrupt is usually giving them new information. A new question, a contradiction, an example, a result I haven't seen yet. Something that directly changes what I'm thinking now from what I thought five seconds ago.
So when I'm editing, especially near the end of a section, I like to ask, what does the viewer still want to know right now? And if the answer is nothing, then that's a problem. Ideally, you answer one question while opening another.
You give them a payoff and then give them a reason to care about what happens next. That doesn't mean constantly baiting people or hiding the answer for 10 minutes just to keep them watching. Payoffs still needs to come.
You're just controlling when it comes. So if viewers understand what's happening, they feel something, and there's still something they want to see, that's when an edit becomes incredibly hard to click away from. And notice, none of these three things required adding more just for the sake of it.
Once these fundamentals work, all the flashy stuff finally has a purpose. Now throughout this video, we spoke about how important sound can be, but we didn't really dive in to how it's actually used. So if you want to see how to sound design any video in 15 minutes, you might want to watch this video right here.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Most editors reach for more motion graphics, more zooms and more effects. Gavin Herman says that skips the part that actually holds people: three questions the viewer's brain is asking the whole time.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:26model
The three viewer questions
- Do I understand what's happening?
- Do I feel something?
- Do I want to see what happens next?
The three things a viewer's brain asks constantly; the third matters most for retention.
Steal forany edit review or feedback pass
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
10:34next-video
“If you want to see how to sound design any video in 15 minutes, you might want to watch this video right here.”
Ties directly to the sound points made during the video, so the recommendation feels like a continuation.
Visual structure at a glance.
