video2zero

These tips are taken from Oliver Peter’s “12 tips for better film editing”.

I use the term Videojournalism only because Documentary means nothing these days with regard to the actual process of capturing or processing visual images. You can shoot a documentary in a film studio with professional actors on a day-for-night set, while feature film crews are down at the train station with handicams chasing their talent through droves of unsuspecting commuters.

The principles of filmvideo design, composition, cinematography are the same whether shooting a big-budget narrative production or a five minute street interview. But the practicalities mean that the focus of attention is very different, one man’s useful tip is another man’s esoteric piece of theory. We focus on what we need. This should not cloud the fact that useful tips come and go with the wind, esoteric pieces of theory tend to hang around. The same goes for editing. Nevertheless, with an eye on news you can use I’ve adapted Peter Oliver’s tips for the run’n'gunner. A few of them got lost and a couple of them have ended up bass ackwards, so you really should read the original.

1. Cut tight. The best editing approach is to cut tight scenes without becoming too “cutty”. This means taking out unnecessary pauses between actors’ delivery of dialogue lines. Sometimes it mean tightening the gaps within dialogue sentences through the use of carefully placed cutaways.

Double-true for the web - does that 5 second ID really need to be at the front? - “So they [Google] asked a group of searchers whether they’d like to see more results on a page. When they said “yes” Google upped the number of results to 30. The outcome was that traffic from this group dropped by 20%…..the page with 10 results began to display after 0.4 seconds, while the page with 30 results, began to display after 0.9 seconds….User impatience is measured in units of 1 tenth of a second starting at 200 milliseconds or so.” havemacwillblog.com

2. No Dragnet edits. Our brains seem to react better to edits where the change in picture and sound is not always together. These are called split edits, L-cuts or J-cuts…..I suppose this more closely mimics real life, where we first hear someone start to talk and then turn our head to see them.

With modern NLEs creating a split edit is an additional step, but always worth considering. A quick and dirty way of adding a veneer of professionalism, while minimizing any glitch in the edit. A small problem in either the audio or video edit will be more noticeable if picture and sound both switch at the same time.

3. Matching action. Technical matching is the least important concern. I’m not saying you should throw it out the window, because a mismatch that is too extreme can be very jarring to the audience. On the other hand, as an editor friend often tells me, “Matching is for sissies.” The audience will often ignore many minor continuity differences from one shot to the next if they stay totally engrossed in the story. Your job as the editor is to cut in such as way that they do.

When you have 50 hours of footage to produce a ninety minute film, with 4 or 5 takes of every scene, then match edits are an easy option. In the run and gun world match edits are not so easy to come by. It’s like hitting high C on a piano versus hitting it with your voice. Shooting run and gun doesn’t have to be all jump-cuts, cutaways and dissolves - it’s worth considering match edits right at the start - during shooting and set-up.

5. Moving camera shots. I prefer to cut on movement, so that the camera is in constant motion from one shot to the next. Many directors and DP will disagree, preferring instead to start and stop each camera move before making the cut.

This brings up a common gotcha for handheld doc-style workflow. The more often the camera is in unscripted motion, the more of a challenge it’s going to be to find the right cut. If there is more motion (blur) in the outgoing frame than the incoming frame you will create a jump-cut. You can avoid this by having having the same amount of camera motion in both clips. But if you are shooting handheld, especially if you are intercutting with locked-down camera, transitions will require more planning/time/finesse. Dissolves are for sissies. More on this, including myriad examples showing how you can put aside the dissolve-blankie and learn to edit like a pro - in Richard Pepperman’s “The Eye is Quicker”. An excellent resource for feature/narrative editing.

6. Don’t cut back to the exact same angle. If you have a choice of several camera angles, don’t automatically cut back to the same camera angle or take that you just used in the previous shot.

Too often changing the angle (moving the camera) is not an option - relentlessly cutting back to the same shot of the interviewer/interviewee creates a stale “seen it all” feel very quickly. But for the vj - this is rarely a problem that can be solved in the edit. When setting up the shoot most of us will go for the position that gives us the best composition/framing/lighting/ - but sometimes we would be better to settle for second or third best - to scout out a position that yields 3 or 4 good compositions, rather than a single “best”.

7. B-roll shots in threes. When the scene calls for cutaway inserts, it feels right to use three on a row. Not a single shot, not two, but three. These should be at least 1.5-2 seconds long (or longer)

Cutaways are often used in live action video to hide awkward transitions. That’s not been a big problem in the past. But now they know about the man behind the curtain - an increasing number of viewers know why a cutaway is being used. A blah cutaway draws attention to itself - like a bead of white caulk hiding a badly fitted piece of joinery. Sometimes a jump-cut is a better choice.

Shooting a Western, John Ford was concerned about the amount of time a cowboy took to leave the saloon, get on his horse, and ride off. As there was no other coverage, Ford asked the editor to jumpcut the sequence: “Get him on the darn horse”. The editor complained, Ford countered: “Sure it’s a bad cut, but it only hurts for a second. The other way, it hurt for a lot longer.”

Use cutaways if you have something worth cutting to, or to establish geography, and of course to to cover mistakes if you have to. Using them in threes adds a definite touch of class. Visually there is something inherently harmonious about “three”. Both spatially (three dancers in a shot not 4), and temporally (a sequence of 3 shots, not 2).

8. Cut for the eyes. When I’m cutting an intense dialogue scene, I’m looking at how the actors’ eyes play in the scene. Do they convey the proper emotion? What is the reaction of the other actors in the scene? What the actors are or aren’t doing facially determines my cutting.

We follow eyes. Split edits allow us to choose a picture edit point based on the visual cues, rather than the soundtrack. Very often watching the eyes suggests the best choice for a edit point.

Cutting from a wide shot to a close-up a more harmonious effect is achieved if the protagonist’s eyes are in the same screen position across the edit. Bruce Block explores screen position across edits and other ways in which visual elements interact to create harmony/intensity in a motion picture, in his book The Visual Image. The book is more concerned with feature-film production design and cinematography, rather than editing. But for the VJ (unlike the Hollywood Filmmaker or the PBS documentarian), editing and cinematography are mashed - think cinemeditography.

When is the edit finished?

The traditional answer: It’s never finished, but eventually they take it away.

Walter Murch responds: It’s finished when I can’t see myself in the edit any longer.

The VJ answer: It’s finished 60 minutes after it’s started