Editing_Tricks

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www.videomaker.com nextEditing Dirty Little Tricks

Editors are dirty

little tricksters.

Yes, we pull all sortsof illusions behind

our viewers backs.

Some people might

even say all editing

is a "trick."


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g y

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I define editing as the manipulation of audio and visual elements to tell a compelling story. If we accept that all editing

is manipulation, what is "dirty" and what is not? The Ethics of Editing sounds like a great topic for another article, but

lets concentrate on technique. More specifically, lets stick to Band-Aid-type fix-it solutions.

I asked my fellow magazine editors and colleagues in the video-editing world for their favorite dirty editing tricks,

and some of them will be included here. I encourage all of you in the Videomakercommunity to e-mail your dirty

tricks from the edit bay to the magazine to share with all of our readers ([email protected]).

Editing Dirty Little Tricks

What Comes After A-Roll?One o the most basic tricks (as well as a technique) and one we talk

about oten in these pages concerns B-roll extra ootage that is notpart o the main action. I wonder i there is a project where I havent

used this trick? Shoot or request rom your cameraperson as much

B-roll as time allows: buildings, crowd shots, extreme closeups o

interviewees hands, mouth, eyes, etc. Get as much as you can to help

bridge a cut in dialog or action, saving you rom an unwanted jump-

cut. This does not help only documentary storytellers. I remember

waiting or the sun to rise on a shoot in Lima, Peru, early one morn-ing, with a ull moon about to duck under the horizon. I shot the

moon or over ve minutes, just because both it and I were there, and

the director ended up using it as a main plot line.

Get as much as you can to help

bridge a cut in dialog or action, saving

you from an unwanted jump-cut.

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An example of the nat sot tickle. We're using the same B-roll shot for the video and

bridging two pieces of interview audio with a piece of sound that we're fading up and

down from the B-roll shot.

Editing Dirty Little Tricks

Audible B-RollWhile we are talking o B-roll, we should

mention room tone and wild sound. Thisis really more o a requirement than a

trick, but a minute o natural sound rom

any set or location will be your absolute

best riend when it comes to editing dia-

log or interviews. In the eld, it might be

good to grab some nat sound" with cars

driving by, i that is natural or the sur-rounding youre shooting in, but try to be

conscious enough to grab some without

recognizable audio intrusions as well.

When collecting your room tone on set,

make sure the set is the same as when

you were shooting your main ootage. All

cast and crew members and set piecesshould be present, as the tone can change

i anything or anyone is missing.

Jennier ORourke, Videomakers Managing

Editor, used this natural sound technique o-

ten in her many years as a news editor. She

called it the nat sot tickle (nat sot is indus-

try-speak or natural sound on tape). She

would bridge two pieces o diering voices

by using a bit o nat sot almost like a cross-

dissolve. Be subtle, maybe lowering the room

tone or nat sound a number o decibels with

a ade in and ade out, and your audio will

be much less jerky or jarring.

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A quick and easy way to add dialog you didn't capture when shooting is to use the classic

over-the-shoulder cutaway, dubbing in the audio under the shot of the back of the person

speaking.

What They Cant See WontHurt ThemThis nat sound or room tone will help

us with a trick our Editor-in-Chie,

John Burkhart, has used oten. John

has ound himsel needing to x a

problem with dialog or even creating

an entirely new scene completely in

post. He records the actors voice in a

sound booth and then adds nat sound

or room tone rom the set or location

to match the eld audio. To make this

trick work best, John relies on wide

shots or scenes where the actor is not

acing the camera. This way, the viewer

does not know you have added the

dialog ater principal photography had

wrapped. I remember a scene rom a

Hollywood movie where a person was

walking and talking with a congress-

person on the Mall in Washington,

DC. The scene kept cutting away to an

extremely wide shot because the edi-

tors were probably inserting dialog that

may not have appeared in the script

but became obviously necessary in ed-

iting. The wide shot included many o

the national monuments on the Mall,

but the viewer could not see the lips o

either character.

This trick works or documentaries

as well. For example, you may nd

that an interviewees answer does not

make sense without the question, but

your crew did not mic the interviewer.

As long as you have ootage over the

shoulder o the interviewer (e.g., back

o the interviewers head, so viewers

are unable to see his/her lips), and in

the same shot we can see the inter-

viewee listening to the interviewer, you

can add dialog that you created in post.

Keep your ethics in mind, though.

Editing Dirty Little Tricksnext

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Duplicating the audio track sometimes works to reinforce your audio, but be careful to

get the audio exactly in sync to avoid introducing echoes.

More is BetterOne last audio trick or you while were

here. I your audio is too low and youhave manually raised the levels as high

as they will go, but its still not enough,

what do you do? Some programs such as

Apples Final Cut Pro have an audio gain

lter that could introduce sound noise,

which you should keep in mind but

what i your program doesnt have an au-dio gain lter? You can try copying the au-

dio and pasting it into a new audio track

under the present audio tracks. Obviously,

it has to be exactly in sync or you will get

an echo, but this will in eect raise your

audio. You can cut-and-paste as many

times as you need, but keep in mind thatit will also raise unavorable sounds in

your audio track.

You can cut-and-paste as many times as youneed, but keep in mind that it will also raise

unfavorable sounds in your audio track.


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Breaking the RulesOne mistake even experienced media producers make is with the

180-degree rule and/or with eyeline. This is a dire mistake, as it

can really conuse your audience. For a simple example, imagine a

woman talking to a man. In the two-shot, the woman is on the right

o the screen, the man on the let. When the scene moves into an

OTS (over the shoulder) behind the man, the woman is still on the

right and the back o the mans head is on the let. Now, or some

reason your cameraperson crosses the line and the man is on the

right and the woman is on the let. Oops! A simple and quick solu-

tion is to fip the image in post. This unortunately doesnt always

work, as everything in the image is fipped. Viewers have an un-

canny way o remembering that the lamp was on the let and the

ramed Picasso was on the right. Even worse is a store or trac sign

or any wordage, or that matter. I the camera is locked down (on

a tripod and not panning or tilting in other words, not moving at

all), you might be able to throw some natural-looking shadow on

the reversed text on signs, or even insert a new sign made in Photo-

shop. But youll have to get lucky to make it believable. Give it a try

Ive pulled it o a couple o times. Flipping your shot to avoid crossing the 180-degree line works sometimes, but you need a

bit of luck to get away with it. In this case you

wouldn't be able to pull it off (see the bow in

the child's hair and the logo on her sleeve.)

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Think Way Outside the BoxExtreme problems call or extreme so-

lutions. Here are two examples. I spent

over $1,000 shooting a 16mm lm

short only to nd there was a light leak

in the lens the entire time I shot. I putso much work into planning, casting,

rehearsing, building sets and shoot-

ing only to nd my ootage completely

shot. I was very upset while looking

at this ootage, which had been con-

verted to Mini DV, when a colleague in

the edit bay with me said, Looks kindalike a 1940s lm. Eureka! I down-

converted the ootage to 18 rames

per second, discolored it urther, added

some digital scratches, digital hair

in the gate and shutter jumps and

some old-looking opening and closing

boards as titles. People were amazedwith the old look I achieved.

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The second example comes rom one

the projects done by my students. They

plugged in the external shotgun mic

as I had instructed but orgot to turn it

on! They shot the whole day withoutcapturing any audio. Most o the shots

or this video were closeups, making

automatic dialog replacement (ADR)

very dicult. A quick brainstorm and

they came up with the idea to ask one

o their Japanese classmates to do the

ADR, turning it into a poor dub, sup-posedly or Japanese audiences. Along

with subtitles and some unny hidden

messages in the Japanese dialog, the

piece came out pretty well.

We Showed You Ours Now Show Us YoursThese are just a ew o the editing dirty little tricks some o us at Videomakerhave

used over the years. We now want to hear yours. I we eel it could help our audi-

ence, we will publish your tricks, no matter how dirty they are.


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