Best way to edit jump cuts??

[Kylee Pena]

A pause isn’t always a bad thing.

But if you have to cut it, the best way would be to cover the edit by cutting away to “b-roll”, related video to support what they’re talking about.

If you don’t have that, you may be able to resize/reposition the interviewee’s video so it looks more like a cut to a different camera.

[Mark Suszko]

As Kylee says.

You can also do a wipe transition or a DVE type flip move, but too many of those, too close together, looks bad. My usual answer when I face this problem in post is either find some B-roll, or re-size the frame. In HD this is easier and cleaner to do, especially if the end product is SD. You can freeze on one frame and fade in the next video over it, if you do it consistently it looks like an aesthetic choice and not just an expedient.:-)

Another technique would be to cut to a smaller PIP box set into some kind of background, as the cover. That works because it is a larger jump in scale and position, so it reads smoother to the eye than full-frame jump cut.

The *real* answer to this is in the camerawork on location in the first place. I can’t abide interview shooters who just park the camera on one shot and burn thru a roll of tape without ever changing the angle. I usually cut my own stuff, so when I am shooting, I am very closely following the speaker, and manually instant-snap-zooming to a wider or tighter shot in those pauses that are long enough such that I know they are going to become an edit point later. You only need a second to snap-zoom if you are paying attention and following the rythm of the speaker’s cadence. Any long pause, any time the are listening to the question you’re going to cut out later, you can be re-framing. So when I’m in the edit bay I don’t nearly get as many cases of the jump cut problem in the first place. I’ve shot *around* the problem, even without any b-roll opportunities.

[Kylee Pena]

Oh yea, forgot the itty bitty dissolves or wipes bit.

I wanted to second the snap-zoom. Go find your videographer and smack em. They should be paying attention. They should be paying attention during the interview. When I shoot interviews myself, I also try to go in closer during intimate questions, wider during establishing questions – you can figure out when those might occur if you get with the interviewer beforehand.

Fun fact: I did this for an interview project in college and my prof gave me a B because he said I should physically move the camera for each shot change, not just zoom. He said I should halt the interview, move the camera, and resume.

[Mark Suszko]

Kylee, your prof is an egghead, right on paper, and wrong in real life, and going by this grading statement has a poor understanding of the practicalities of documentary shooting, IMO.

While he is technically correct that it is better to stop and physically move the camera forward and back, from a practical standpoint this completely disrupts the flow of a candid interview conversation, to the point of ruining the material because you’re breaking up the flow as well as constantly calling the *process* to the attention of the interview subject.

In over twenty years of field shooting or gripping or directing for news and docs I’ve seen dolly shots used over zooms for interviews maybe twice, and what they did was just run the entire interview twice, once at wide, once with the camera dollied-in. It took a lonnng time. Generally the subtle difference in the shot’s is outweighed by the fact that the doubled takes cost more time to shoot and to edit, because they are generally not very consistent regarding the content.

At that point, you might as well shoot one take with multiple cameras instead, and live-switch it or simulate the live switch in post. But people that do this for an actual living try to do it the most efficient way possible, and that’s one take using snap-zooms.

Your prof’s approach is really only valid for the most pre-rehearsed and staged types of “interview”.

[Kylee Pena]

Right, our assignment was to shoot an emotive interview in a real world setting but with only one camera, no b-roll allowed, no other direction. So I went with the only thing that made sense. It really didn’t make much sense to me because I felt like it was an assignment in trying to get us into a situation we’ll commonly be in and do our best to get a lot of coverage, but apparently it wasn’t. I tried to argue with him that when my interviewee is having an emotional moment and crying in front of the camera, I am most certainly not going to say hey hang on with those tears for a second while I move the camera over here. I understand that snap zooming can be jarring and is basically a form of jump cut, but I do it a lot these days because I’m a one-woman show 😀 I’ve only been in the real world for about 3 years but I feel like these methods are more accepted and less jarring to people as time goes on and crappy reality shows continue to saturate our media, almost to a point for me personally where a multicam formal interview seems cheesy.

A lot of my profs in college were pretty out of touch with real world media creation. But I’ve been out nearly 3 years now and the bitterness is beginning to fade 🙂

[Mark Suszko]

To be clear, I meant that the snap-zooms themselves are cut out of the final product, not seen on the final product. because you now have a definite angle change on either side of that snap zoom, you no longer get a jump cut, but a natural cut/

Some people occasionally leave snap zooms in for a cinema verite’ look, (see Firefly and Battlestar Galactica’s space flight scenes) but I find it too artificial-looking, myself.