Putting yourself in the viewer’s seat

[Grinner Hester]

Just take nothing for granted. When you get too close to aproject it’s easy to skip information needed for the story or for the viewer to connect the dots. I just step back and look at it with fresh eyes and ask myself if I’d know what was happening if I didn’t know the piece so well. It’s not unlike writing a song. You have to paint a picture but it’s good to leave room from the viewer’s listener’s imagination.

[Scott Cumbo]

Thats way 2, 8 hour days is always better than 1, 16 hour day.
Gives you time to get away from the project and look at it with fresh eyes.

Scott Cumbo
Editor
Broadway Video, NYC

[Shane Ross]

Getting out of the editor’s chair, and going back to where you have clients watch and sitting there. You’ll be amazed that something that simple works.

Shane

GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Mark Suszko]

I’m lucky in that I can pull in people from the office to give something a critical viewing from a fresh set of eyes and ears, and they are honest enought ot ell me if they like it or not without worrying about hurting my feelings.

One other thing I would suggest as an editor is, scren the thing without audio of any kind, see if you can make out what’s going on, then try just listening to the tracks with your eyes closed. When both of these auditioning methods work separately, you KNOW you’re going to have something that clicks when it’s all together.

You’d be surprised, perhaps, how often a sequence fall apart with this testing method, if you skimped too much on one half of the package, the audio or the video.

[Rich Rubasch]

Mark stole my thunder….Watch it without sound and listen without picture. I have also heard of watching the program upside down to give a better sense of rhythm and making it harder to for shadow your own edits.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Todd Terry]

I’m late to the party but just found this thread…

Rich already alluded to watching in a “different way,” by looking upside down…

This happened by accident years ago, but I now find it very helpful sometimes…

Once after a loooong marathon edit I got to the point where I didn’t really know what I was seeing anymore, I was so familiar with the project I was cutting. I stood up just to stretch and walked to the back of the edit suite and stepped up to the client area. As I did, I caught a glimpse of the project running on the monitor in the reflection of the glass on a piece of artwork hanging above the clients’ seats. It was amazing. Even though I was so familiar with the piece by then (too familiar), watching it backwards in the reflection was like seeing it brand new again. I could instantly confirm that some questionable edits were just fine… and found a couple that I previously thought were ok but now looked like glaring errors.

I now find that watching a project in a mirror can be very helpful… or throwing on a horizontal-flip filter works, too.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Vince Becquiot]

Gentlemen,

All very insightful posts, thank you very much.

Vince Becquiot

Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area