PART TWO: CREATIVE EDITING BASICS
165 Part Two: Creative Editing Basics
dio pulls the viewer into the next sequence and softens the transition from one location to the other.
Room Tone
One thing professional editors always ask camera crews to get while recording interviews on location is
room tone: the sound of the location without any of the subjects talking. In high-quality editing, where two soundbites are to be edited together, there might be a difference in the background noise from one bite to the next. To disguise that difference, some of the ambient sounds of that location can be laid in under the edit point to bridge from one shot to the next. This makes the audio edit sound more seamless.
Multiple-Source Audio Mixing
Every editing software program offers multiple chan- nels of audio with which to work. One track is usu- ally designated for the reporter’s audio or dialogue and a second track for all natural sound and sound- bites. If music is appropriate and desired, it goes on a third track. Additional sounds might require addi- tional tracks.
Most editing programs offer enough audio tracks for ENG and EFP. Low-budget projects have many fewer audio tracks than professional movies, which can reach 100 or more channels. However, in the rare case that an ENG or EFP project requires more audio layers than are available in the software, the editor can use the methods of laydowns andlaybacks.
In our example above, let’s assume only two tracks are available in the editing program. The editor would decide which two audio sources were most im- portant for determining the pacing and shot selec- tion for the story. The story would be edited with just
those sources all the way to its conclusion. For this discussion, assume it is a reporter’s voice track and the natural sound of the pictures that are laid down first. Wanting to add a music track under the entire piece, the editor would first take both of the audio tracks of the finished piece and do a mixdown or lay- down by exporting the project as a new file with those two audio channels mixed. This mixed audio would then be laid back onto just one channel, leav- ing the second channel free to mix in the music.
Editing Methods
Many problems can arise in audio editing. An image you choose to accompany a soundbite turns out to be too short or too long. An audio clip of natsound does not match a picture. The reporter’s voice is difficult to time with music fading to background. The best way to avoid problems is to plan the editing well in ad- vance. Two methods, or approaches, to editing are use- ful to consider.
Checkerboard One method is to edit only the princi-
pal images and sounds first for the whole piece. For ENG, this might be the reporter’s talking head and some images that have natsound you plan to use “up full.” After editing these primary shots and full- volume sounds, the video and audio tracks might have some blank spaces where you plan to fill in additional images and sounds to finish the story and give it its fi- nal polish. This pattern of a shot followed by a blank space (black on a videotape) followed by another shot followed by more black is sometimes called checker- board editing. The idea is to edit only the major story images and sounds, and then go back and fill in the rest, including graphics.
The advantages of this approach are that you can:
Figure 7-17 A diagram of the “L” cut; here, the audio for segment B precedes the video by a few seconds, giving segment B the appearance of an “L” lying on its back.
• Make the most critical editing decisions first, followed later by the quicker decisions about filler elements.
• See what video and hear what audio stand on their own and identify what you will need to replace or enhance later.
• Time your piece before it is actually completed. The disadvantage is that if you are facing a severe time crunch, you might still have blank moments of video or audio, or have incomplete graphic work, such as missing lower-thirds, when the project is due.
Section by Section A second approach to editing is to
edit one complete section at a time. With this method, you include all the visual and aural elements as you go, finishing one part of the whole story before continuing to the next part. You leave no blank spaces, but com- plete the polished edit piece by piece.
The advantages of this method are that you can: • Fine-tune each part of the story as you go,
giving you the freedom to change any parts of the story as you come to them.
• Get a stronger sense of the overall visual style of the piece, including type fonts and colors for graphics and other elements.
• Skip over entire parts of the story and go straight to the end in the event of a severe time crunch, giving you at least some form of finished project to meet an air deadline. The disadvantage is that it is too easy to get hung up on one little edit, such as the exact position of a graphic element or the exact number of frames for an audio fade-in, resulting in a loss of editing momentum and the ability to see the “big picture” of telling the whole story.
In reality, most editors use a combination of both checkerboard and section-by-section editing. Depend- ing on the time crunch, the amount of A-roll footage versus B-roll footage, the editor’s own working style, and other variables, an editor might start with a check- erboard, then come to a segment that he or she com-
pletes in its entirety, then go back to a checkerboard for another segment, and so on.
Music Editing When using music, it must be laid
down first if any of the video is to be edited to the mu- sic. If nothing is to be in sync with the music, then it is best left until last so it is easier to mix it with other au- dio. Again, planning is the key.
Start by laying in the music. Next, lay in all the other audio that is to be up full (reporter’s track, soundbites, and natsound with pictures) in the proper place. Finally, insert the rest of the shots, editing them to the music and any natsound, if appropriate or needed. Keep the music level up full when the music is the primary, or foreground, sound element, and fade the music underneath the other sound elements when they are foreground and the music is the secondary, or background, sound element (figure-ground principle). If planned properly, this method lets you edit to the music without affecting the placement of the rest of the audio so that the finished piece has all the elements timed perfectly.
SUMMARY
Editing can be every bit the creative challenge that shooting is. The best shooters are the ones who learn how to edit. Just as a shot can sometimes be improved by moving the camera just a few inches, an edit can sometimes be improved by changing the timing by just a few frames. The goal of the editor is to take the mate- rial at hand and make an understandable presentation: an interesting and comprehensible story. While all edi- tors share that goal, the different methods and varieties of solutions are as expansive as the number of editors themselves.
Whatever their individual styles, all editors share an understanding of both the technical and creative edit- ing basics. In today’s NLE world, the technical basics include logging, creating an EDL, capturing audio and video clips, importing them into the software, trim- ming the heads and tails, sequencing the elements, lay- ering additional audio and video tracks, adding effects (if appropriate), mixing the audio, rendering the final cut, and distributing the project by any of various me-
167 Summary
dia (e.g., tape, disc, Internet). The creative basics in- clude how to sequence shots, maintain continuity, es- tablish a story line, pace the edits, add postproduction effects (if appropriate), and edit sound. By under- standing both the technical and aesthetic concepts and
by following the guidelines put forth in this chapter, you can get started editing your project—the story you want to tell.
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