T351 Week 4 - Spring 2008

Editing 102

Agenda:

• Review Week 3 & Tech stuff
• Graphics
• Editing guidelines

Reality Check

• This week in lab: Review storyboard exercises. Bring a critique and your interview feature story idea(s) to lab. We'll share these in lab this week. A finished program proposal (who, what, where, why & your questions) will be due NEXT week. You can work with a partner if you wish, but the two of you will need to coordinate the logisitcs. If you do this, both partners can help light the interview, but both should shoot close to equal amounts of B-roll and edit his or her own project. Please note that you need to have your subject sign a release. Visit the interview/feature story directions for more info.
• Now is the time to plan your other projects! (Art Video, Storytelling & Final Project) Draft an idea for your Art Video and Storytelling project. Remember that the number one ingredient for storytelling is conflict. This will be a partner exercise. Everyone will pitch an idea in lab. We will discuss each story and its strengths & weaknesses. The Art VIdeos will be solo projects. Final Projects will be solo- unless a few of you want to work on a larger, more indepth project.
• Next week we'll cover audio while shooting a news exercise during lab. You will need to bring in a short news story.
• The week after is lighting. I'm going to show you some advanced interview lighting techniques.
• Then you should shoot your interview/feature stories.

Graphics

What are good graphics?

Review Jim's Graphic tips.

Photoshop CS makes the issue of making graphics the right size easy. Just use their built-in templates. They have templates for most of the widely used formats being used. It's important to create your graphics at the right size in order to avoid rendering and re-sizing them in the editing program.

DV is always 720 x 480 regardless of whether its 4 x 3 or 16 x 9. The difference is how the pixels are displayed. PS CS provides templates for both.

The industry accepted pixel dimensions for HD are as follows:

• 1080 HD ----- 1920 x 1080
• 720 ----- 1280 x 720

However most recording formats use smaller pixel sizes and upconvert upon playback.

HDV uses 1440 x 1080 pixels. (or 1280 x 720)

DVCPro HD uses even fewer pixels than HDV. 1280 x 1080 (or 960 x 720).

Editing 102

Editing can be fun or torture. It can be done efficiently or waste an incredible amount of time & money.

You need two things:

• Understanding of the process & tools. This allows you to focus on having fun and being creative. How to get more familiar with the tools? Do the tutorials (again) Edit a lot in your spare time. Read the on-line manuals. Go to creativecow.net and read the forums. Spend a lot of time doing it and you'll become proficient. The only way you can get better is to spend time with the tools.
• Your ducks all in a row! Know what you want to do in the edit room before you ever get there. Have your script, footage logs, graphics, and music etc. Minimize the time you spend in an edit session trying to figure out what shot comes next. (This is what should be done in pre-production or at some corner cafe with a mug of your favorite beverage.) When you edit, you should have a plan, or you are wasting your time or someone else's money.

Continuity Editing techniques (See cybercollege 50, 51 & 52):

Transitions - Do you know when to use these?

• Cut - the default transition. Happens in the blink of the eye.
• Wipe
• Dissolve
• Fade

Editing techniques

Continuity editing refers to arranging the sequence of shots to suggest a progression of events. This is a simplification. In continuity editing we try to tell a story with many different shots. These shots can come from multiple camera angles in a studio or from multiple segments taken in the field. The idea is to assemble these shots together to tell a story while preserving the illusion of time and space- or manipulate it as we see fit.

Acceleration Editing

In film and video production time is routinely condensed and expanded. (When you are telling a story, cut out anything that doesn't develop the story or character.) Someone gets a phone call asking him/her to meet. How much do we have to see before he/she meets his/her date?

Expanding Time

Occasionally an editor or director will want to drag out a happening beyond the actual time represented. Expanding time can heighten the suspense. (Think action/adventure movie- A timer on a bomb is counting down to 0. Someone is working furiously to defuse the bomb. We might have 15 seconds left on the timer but the scene can take 1 minute! If the bomb does go off- we see it happen 4 times from different angles)

Causality & Motivation

This aspect of continuity editing addresses cause & effect. As viewers try to figure out the story they look for answers.

Imagine we see a bomb being placed underneath a table in one shot. This is followed by two men sitting down to a picnic table in a park. We cut to a shot of a kid looking up just as they hear an explosion.

While we assume that the two men have been blown up (causality), we still want to find out why (motivation).

Good storytellers will string us along for the length of a movie so we can determine cause and effect.

Relational editing

In relational editing scenes which by themselves seem not to be related take on a cause-effect significance when edited together in a sequence. (Pudovkin's Man in chair intercut with: corpse, bowl of soup, child playing)

Thematic Editing

In thematic editing (also referred to as a montage) images are edited together based only on a central theme. In contrast to most types of editing, thematic editing is not designed to tell a story by developing an idea in a logical sequence.

Many different types of montages have been identified and studied. Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin) identified various types of montages. Perhaps the best discussion can be found in Zettl's text, "Sight Sound Motion". Zettl identified three types of montages:

• Metric - related or unrelated images used at equally spaced intervals. This can be sped up into an accelerated montage
• Analytical - an event is displayed through thematic and structural elements
• Idea-associative montage - Two possibly unrelated elements are brought together to create a third principle or concept.

One underlying theory that has been applied to montages (and especially related to the last type) is the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Juxtaposing two separate elements can result in a more powerful third meaning.

Parallel Cutting

Parallel action takes place when the segments are cut together to follow multiple story lines. These don't necessarily have to happen at the same time.

Editing Guidelines (Cybercollege 54 & 55)

Guideline # 1: Edits work best when they are motivated.
Guideline # 2: Whenever possible cut on subject movement.

Entering and exiting the frame. Following the rules of continuity if someone exits the frame on the right to go somewhere, in the next shot we'll see them entering from the left.

Guideline # 3: Keep in Mind the Strengths and Limitations of the Medium.

Remember: Television is a closeup medium.

Maintaining Consistency in Action and Detail. You usually end up with several takes of each scene. Not only should the relative position of feet or hands, etc., in both shots match, but also the general energy level of voices and gestures.

You will also need to make sure nothing has changed in the scene (hair, clothing, the placement of props, etc.) and that the talent is doing the same thing in exactly the same way in each shot.

Guideline # 4: Cut away from the scene the moment the visual statement has been made.

New verses familiar subject matter. New elements need more screen time to give viewers a chance to comprehend them, as opposed to pre-established (or well-known) elements.

Varying tempo through editing

A constant fast pace will tire an audience; a constant slow pace will induce them to look for something more engaging on another channel.

Guideline # 5: Emphasize the B-Roll. An example of this is a feature story revolving around interview. The interview should look and sound strong, but it's the B-roll that holds the viewer's attention.

Guideline # 6: The final editing guideline is: If in doubt, leave It out.

Five Rules for Editing News Pieces (cybercollege)

• Select stories and content that elicit an emotional reaction
• If you have complex subject matter, take your time with it
• While we try to match audio & video, if the video is overly complex, keep the audio simple (and vice-versa)
• Don't introduce important facts directly before strong visual elements. Put them afterwards and they will be remembered better.
• Stick to a beginning - middle - end structure.

Jim's suggestions:

• When using B-roll, don't just use one shot. Always use at least a few shots to make a grouping.
• Shoot shooting B-roll, remember the rules of continuity and shoot "mini-continuity" sequences of shots. (For example if shooting a painter, start with an artfully composed establishing shot. Stay on one side of the line and shoot close-ups of his face, his hands, and his canvas.) These mini-continuity sequences will cut together beautifully as B-roll.
• Cut B-roll on phrases or key words. Try to define a rhythmic pacing of images.

On-line v Off-line editing

• Off-line is not intended for broadcast. You can create a rough draft and/or an EDL
• On-line produces the broadcast master

Week 4 lab

Agenda:

• Share interview ideas
• Turn in critiques
• Review storyboard projects and any issues with shooting or editing
• FCP 202: More editing, titles, effects, output & print to tape
• Graphics lab / Photoshop demo / In-class exercise
• Drama / storytelling exercise planning time

FCP Editing. Students should know:

• Use the Razorblade tool
• Use the Roll and Slip tools
• Adjust audio levels and use the Pen tool to add keyframes for fades
• Add tracks
• Assign tracks
• Add effects
• Load a clip in the browser and modify it using crop, blur, move, move, etc.
• Link/unlink audio
• Make a freeze frame
• Export a still frame
• Import graphics and audio
• Set In points and Out points
• Add black (slug) at end of project
• Export a movie
• Output to tape

Review Jim's Graphic Tips (know these)

In lab exercise (10 points):

Overview: You'll make a promo graphic for your storyboard/continuity sequence and save it as a PICT graphic at a specific location on the server.

Design a promo graphic for your project. It should contain:

• A still image from your continuity sequence
• Important info: Title, time, date,reason to watch (plug)

Place a 720 x 480 (DV-sized) PCT copy saved as your IU login (jarkraus.pct) in the TC NetScratch T351_krause/graphics folder.

Homework:

Bring in your materials for the news story / audio exercise.

 

 

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