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Olympics Editing (not FCP-X)
Since so many good editors hang out here, I wanted to mention a post I just put up in Art of the Edit.
I was reading social media and saw two stories that caught my eye about video editing in the Olympics. One taking NBC to task for an edited piece – and another praising an effort from the BBC.
Clearly the NBC thing is something they realized (sadly after the fact) that they should not have released and have since pulled from their sites.
OTOH, the BBC’s piece is pretty impressive. (controversial content, but the editing is outstanding, IMO)
This isn’t to trash NBC which has done plenty of great editing during the games. It’s to note that these stories are out in general circulation and part of the reason they are succeeding or failing is how they were constructed in the edit suite.
I’d be interested in hearing what everyone here thinks.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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128 Replies
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I think maybe the first thing anyone is going to ask is – please link to the edits.
B
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Hi
Here’s Bill’s links:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/27/860446The BBC item is a cut-down rework of an excellent Channel 4 TV one hour documentary analysis of the subject, dealing with the subject in some scientific depth, presented by Michael Johnson (200m gold at Atlanta in 1996). I speculate that Johnson brought the subject to the notice of senior BBC editoral staff covering the Olympics.
Johnson was in the presentation studio when the BBC aired this item – his comment was that although 90-something percent of the population of Jamaica carry the ‘sprint’ gene, 8% of the human race in general also have the gene, so, for those 8%, ‘nurture’ (ie training) could produce a sprint performance comparable to descendants of the slave trade.
Johnson has been one of the lead in-vision commentators during the Athletics coverage – I speculate the VO of this cut-down was modeled on the delivery of Michael’s original reading, he being otherwise occupied with his in-vision stuff.
Here’s what the original sounded like 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKqbpZv1vB0Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.
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That NBC piece is unbelievable, surely it was a “private” edit that somehow got shown?
Steve Connor
“The ripple command is just a workaround for not having a magnetic timelinel”
Adrenalin Television -
Looked like a lot of shots of women athletes to me, pulled together from the OBS pool footage. I think if someone had set out to shoot pervy stuff they could have done a lot better than that. In fact, just wandering near the various venues in the London parks the other day I could have done much better than that.
Of course, I didn’t stand a chance of getting an actual ticket to the women’s beach volleyball, as it was one of the most popular on the games. Can’t think why.
As for the “does Usain Bolt have sprint genes” film – well made stuff asking a perfectly sensible question.
I didn’t find either film especially emotionally charged, but I live near London, and maybe we just think differently. London is one of the most culturally and racially diverse cities in the world, and the women in the parks in summer don’t necessarily wear a lot. AND you can get a good meal from anywhere in the world just by walking down the street.
Bernie
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[Bernard Newnham] “I didn’t find either film especially emotionally charged, “
Just for the record, I posted this primarily in “Art of the Edit” because that’s where I sometimes interact with relatively young editors who are interested in exploring what differentiates between “competent editing” and “excellent editing” – so this wasn’t ever mean as a commentary on anything but how two different editors approached their work and how one “cut” resulted in a lot of negative commentary – and the other – quite a bit or praise.
The subject matters addressed will obviously cause many to look at content over craft. But if you can get past that – the skill with which the different editing jobs were done is pretty clear, to my eye at least.
To now learn that the BBC effort was a re-edit of a longer program is even (to my thinking at least) even more impressive – following the idea that it’s often (but not always) more difficult to express complex ideas briefly.
FWIW.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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The BBC just broadcast an AWESOME film just before the closing ceremony, I’ll post a link when I can
Steve Connor
“The ripple command is just a workaround for not having a magnetic timelinel”
Adrenalin Television -
Weird that the BBC showed a cut down of a C4 doc that only aired about a month ago…
Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor -
[Michael Sanders] “Weird that the BBC showed a cut down of a C4 doc that only aired about a month ago…”
Why?
They had potential massive new interest in a current-event related topic – but not the luxury of a huge block of time in which to show the entire original.
So they needed to EDIT it.
And brought professional editing skills to the table to enable just that.
Isn’t that essentially the soul of our entire discipline?
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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Its just a bit strange Bill that’s why.
Over here (i.e. in the UK) unless its news material it’s very rare to get material originally shown on one of the commercial channels rebroadcast on the BBC. There’s the 90’s news access agreement but this was outside that. Interestingly C4 only have the rights to show it for 30 days on 4OD (their on demand site) and no secondary broadcast rights.
Sorry, just pondering really. As I say not normal for the UK.
Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor -
[Bill Davis] “Clearly the NBC thing is something they realized (sadly after the fact) that they should not have released and have since pulled from their sites.”
You can see what the Bodies in Motion could have been from a couple of shots – like the group of hurdlers clearing the bar. Unfortunately it fell into the hands of a horny post adolescent with an ass crack fetish – why not just cut it to “You can Leave You Hat On” and be done with it.
Cutting images to music is the easiest type of cutting there is – if the pix are interesting and the music is good, even Randy Ubillos can come up with something interesting. It was actually quite an achievement to come up with something so dull and shoddy.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf
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