How do you learn cinematography and video editing without going to college?

For basic editing, AVS Video Editor is a great choice: It's also free trial, so that's always nice.

There is a classic book "The 5 C's of Cinematography" you can find on Amazon. This is a good start for learning the basics of using a motion picture camera. The other thing you need to learn is how to write scripts, how to break them down into shooting scripts and how to light scenes. The editing of film or video is a whole different but important process. When I attended film school, we spent a lot of time collaborating with our fellow students, picking our instructors minds and spending hours watching classic films, to learn the language of cinema. A really good film is one you can watch with the sound turned off and still follow the story. By trying to learn film making on your own, you give up the richness of having classmates to help you understand the whole process better and to critique your work as you go from shooting your first few pages of a script to your final senior film project. Good luck.

You can learn a lot about a business by working your way from the ground up, but expect it to take a lot of time. There is no substitute for work, an there is not much substitute for a quality film school. Sad to say this coast a lot of money, and even if you go to a great film school, you might be so out of money paying tuition that it is hard to get by on meeting your assignments. I went to film school, Brooks Inst. of Photography Motion Picture. I live in a van for 1.5 years while trying to learn more and advance my career. You can get a diverse education and you have some work to show what you know and have accomplished, but this does not guarantee that people will look at your work, or that you will get a job. If you do this on your own, you will need to work as hard as the student to learn as much as the student. I learned a lot, and saw how many people working in the business were doing things wrong with inferior results. But they did have stick to it attitude and applied themselves, but most only get the low end jobs. The best way I think is to go to a news broadcasting station, and intern, then work for low wages and work your way up. They will have you shooting news stories in a few years, this is likely better then most others do it yourself options. Also start using the power of a laptop computer and a small video camera or even a smart phone. start editing and shooting, so that when they give you a camera you know something about what they what and how to do it. One or two books will not do it for, you will have to work hard and want it bad enough to put all your time into it, 7 days a week. The only difference between you and the read pro is how hard you work at to know everything you can and to practice what you learn. good luck