Story Building

[David Roth weiss]

Very good question Michael. Typically most editing of content driven material starts with a “radio cut,” which is just what it sounds like, a cut which, without talking heads or other images could suffice as a piece for radio. Once that begins to make sense, in either some linear or logical way, b-roll is added, typically covering that vast majority of almost all talking heads. This is not a methodology carved in stone, but the workflow that I think you will find that works for most documentaries, corporate videos, and other reality/content driven videos.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Michael Evans]

Thank you so much for responding so quickly! Can you recommend any sites or videos that shows you the radio cut building process. Its funny.. there are so many sites out for how to use the tools but really nothing for show how to build a real story.

[Shane Ross]

This is what school is for. Or assistant editing and seeing how editors do it. ON the job training.

Shane

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[Scott Sheriff]

Michael
“Can you recommend any sites or videos that shows you the radio cut building process. Its funny.. there are so many sites out for how to use the tools but really nothing for show how to build a real story.”

That’s because it isn’t something you learn overnight, or by surfing a couple of web sites.

Scott Sheriff
Director
SST Digital Media
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

[Andrew Rendell]

I frequently do a rough assemble of main sequences before deciding how they go together in the film. It helps clarify in my own mind what the point of each sequence is/what function it’s going to play in the narrative structure of the film, as well as becoming completely familiar with the material. Next step is to get it into a form that you could transmit if you really had to, even if it’s a bit rough and the timing isn’t quite right, then go back over it really critically and refine.

When it comes to making up multi camera clips, do it first as it’s a pain to have to go back into a cut to replace things like that.

[David Roth weiss]

[Michael Evans] “Can you recommend any sites or videos that shows you the radio cut building process.”

No, not really. Transcripts of all talking heads really helps, but the secret is simply listening, to everything, and selecting those sound-bites that really tell “the essence” of your story.

Shane and I are both proponents of using markers. So, you load the complete interview or speech into the viewer, and place a marker wherever the person on-camera makes a nice self-contained statement. You’ll notice that every time you add a marker a new entry will be added below that clip in the twirl-down created when you create the first marker. And, each of those can be labeled… So. you can just type a few keys words to help ID that part of of what’s being discussed… Then, you string them out in a way that makes sense, chipping away at what’s not essential to the stroy, and trying to make your on-camera subject sound absolutely brilliant. Then, once you have a segment that sounds good, and seems very natural, populate it with images that seem appropriate and use that to cover all or most of your jump cuts that happen when cutting from that person to him or herself.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Mark Suszko]

The first step of “editing” is deciding when to turn on the camera.
The second step is deciding when to start and stop recording.
That’s not being fatuous, what I mean is, we’re constantly shaping the final product from the instant we decide if we’re even going to DO it or not. As far as the cameras are concerned, if it wasn’t shot, it never happened. We approach the story many times with a pre-set vision of what we want to say, so we’re unconsciously editing all the time, by the conscious and unconscious choices we make.

With all that said, if I have a project without a pre-determined guide, my next editing step is in the loading up of the clips. I try to pay close attention as each clip is digitized, and I may include stuff that many folks throw away, because often it is just those junk clips that turn out to have something useful like some room tone, a phoneme or word I need for fixing some dialog, a texture, a cut-away, something.

Then I tend to throw everything on the timeline and chip away at it. I put things in chronological order first, then I carve away stuff I’m not immediately needing. That’s subtractive editing. At this point usually I have seen the clips enough that I’ve decided more or less what the story is that I need to tell most. I’m horrible about wanting to keep *everything* in, so my first cuts are always too long. I get too much in love with the material sometimes. Okay, all the time:-)

When I get it down to a rough cut of the best workable clips, then I go into additive mode, creating with montage theory in mind. That is: combine A and B to create a more powerful and new C that’s more than either A or B alone. For that you may need to swap some pieces around in linear time. Additive editing is more a European approach and Subtractive is more American, that’s a generalization. But if you think of it as making a sculpture, subtractive is chipping away at a stone block to reveal the sculpture trapped in it, and Additive is building the sculpture up from lumps of clay. I think the best editing is a mix of both.

Then I might do one more evaluation in subtractive mode with an eye to the target running time, asking myself; what’s the minimum I can leave here and still communicate this idea? Then it is a running battle, retreating as I have to give up frames here and there, to keep the sense of it while shortening things until I hit the goal.

I don’t do a whole lot of multi-cam, but I would align those scenes up and save them off as separate sets, so I can treat the multitrack pieces as if they were single clips for the gross positioning part of the rough assembly. If speed is key, I’d probably just put up the master shot from each multicam piece, then go back and add and align the additional multicam elements to it after I know where everything else goes.

[Scott Sheriff]

I have to agree with what Mark said about the process starting at the camera. Back in the linear and film days there was a tendency to not shoot enough. Now it seems like there is a trend of shooting (maybe) too much. I’m guilty of this myself.
But for me, the first step in post is to do a critical logging session, and do some serious discarding of junk before the first sequence is created. The other big part is getting really organized. I think knowing what you have and where its at. While this may seem like unglamorous grunt work, it is as much editing as what goes on in the timeline, and just as important.

Mark
“Additive editing is more a European approach and Subtractive is more American, that’s a generalization.”

Additive editing was also very much the style for linear online editing in broadcast for everything from promos to complete shows. Everything was TC logged, and you built from a script.
Additive editing isn’t practiced as much on NLE’s, but it is still a very useful and efficient style.
I prefer a hybrid additive approach, which I would call additive with ‘slop’. By this I mean to only put what is needed in the timeline, but with plenty of pad, which is trimmed up later.

Scott Sheriff
Director
SST Digital Media
https://www.sstdigitalmedia.com

[Trevor Ward]

I agree with both Shane and David’s approach.

My approach is more or less subtractive. I’ll put an entire interview on a sequence. Instead of using markers, I use the blade tool. I listen to the whole thing. As I find good sound bytes, I blade them into smaller clips. I move the good clips to V2. When I’m done with the whole interview, I copy all the clips from V2 into the main sequence of my video. I will then do the same process with the other interviews. I then end up with a bunch of good sound bytes.

I didn’t like the markers because it seemed a little cumbersome to me. To keep track of each marker, you can type something in the note field. But I don’t like doing that. Seemed quicker to me to blade the clip out and I can just as quickly listen to a word or two of the clip and know what it’s about.

I suggest you just try one way and if it works for you, then great.

I’ll tell you getting a transcript and trying to edit from that is NOT a good idea. You can’t just edit based on words or sentences in a paragraph. Speech patterns make this really difficult.

I hate it when a customer just says “well, take those words and put it with his other words.” It doesn’t work like that. Although, transcripts can be good in figuring out in general what was said.

-trevor ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
orlando, fl

[David Roth weiss]

[Trevor Ward] “I’ll put an entire interview on a sequence. Instead of using markers, I use the blade tool. I listen to the whole thing. As I find good sound bytes, I blade them into smaller clips. I move the good clips to V2. When I’m done with the whole interview, I copy all the clips from V2 into the main sequence of my video. I will then do the same process with the other interviews. I then end up with a bunch of good sound bytes.”

While that method certainly works, it essentially turns a non-linear editor into a linear editor, and you have to then run down clips in a linear fashion to find them, almost like shuttling a tape, but a bit faster. The marker method that Shane and I prefer might take a bit longer initially, but it does preserve the non-linear aspect of editing, which is after all why NLEs were designed.

[Trevor Ward] “getting a transcript and trying to edit from that is NOT a good idea. You can’t just edit based on words or sentences in a paragraph. Speech patterns make this really difficult.”

A transcript can’t be used by itself, it’s used to in conjunction with listening to the speaker, and you use a highlighter to mark the best soundbites. On a huge project with massive volumes of interviews transcripts, especially with timecode reference, are essential, again so you’re not forced to actually play down audio or video to find things. The whole point is being able to jump right to things strored on disc rather than in linear fashion on a tape — i.e. the essence of non-linear editing.

However, if you can get the job done faster in a linear fashion, because it avoids logging, that’s certainly valid, especially on shorter projects. However, in long-form work, trying to create 60, 90, and 120 min. shows in a linear way, and without proper logging will cost you huge amounts of time.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.