[Mark Suszko]

Ah, memories…

I can recall that the overall design of many of the early edit rooms evolved from live-TV Control Rooms, where the multiple workstations for audio, switcher, edit controller, and graphics, etc. were arranged in one or more “trenches” or rows, all facing a wall of monitors, very much like a “Mission Control” room in rocketry. And this type of arrangement was carried over to posting rooms for some reason I still can’t fathom. It was just how people thought a control/edit room was “supposed” to look like. One effect of this was that the clients were always sitting *behind* you as you edited, as if passengers on a bus, and you were the driver. It made feedback more difficult because you had to strain and crane or swivel around to make eye contact and read their expressions. And it tended to make the producers talk to the back of your head like you were just a human remote control unit.

I also remember those big suites having very comfy couches and chairs for the producers/clients, and desks and tables that featured a lot of snacks and drinks., because you were spending a lot of time and money there. There used to be lavish photo spreads in POST magazine back then that looked more like something from Architectural Digest, showing off the client amenities of competing suites, LOL. That was when budgets were still fat. By the eighties, a lot of that was going away, fast. The tech made suites cheaper but yet more capable, the budgets kept shrinking, and the rooms got smaller. But it also signaled a shift in the layouts. The client/producer seating areas moved from a peanut gallery in the back to a seat next to the editor, a change I welcomed for it’s effect on collaboration.

With the 90’s, that client seat started to become vacant more often, because, as the article points out, it became easier for a client or producer to see your progress remotely. I don’t think I’ve had a live client sit in on one of my actual edits in over 6 years. In a way you can’t blame them. Sometimes (who am I kidding, it’s all the time) watching an edit in progress is boring and tedious for the “passenger”, especially when you’re building graphics or tweaking the colors, logging shots, adjusting audio, etc. It’s a bit more fun when you’re actually, actively massaging a cut, and they’re giving direct input on those decisions.

That can be wonderful if they know what they’re talking about, and it can be pure hell if they’re clueless. In my linear-editing days, I remember an inexperienced client that spent 90 minutes at my side, having me re-render the same Chyrons in various shades and re-editing the same, lengthy, A-B Roll sequence, over and over, until choosing the original default color we’d started with.

“Ok, here’s the text with the new color, this is a preview; you’ll see what it will look like if we commit it to the master, ready?”

“OK”. (watches preview) “OK.”

“Okay, if you liked that, I’m going to commit it to tape now so we can move ahead.” After this point, any changes here are going to force me to re-do all the following cuts, because they overlap in a six-dissolve sequence.”

“I understand. It’s fine now.”

(One, maybe two A-B roll multi-dissolve sequences later)

“Let’s go back and change that font again; I still don’t like it. Try the next shade darker.”

(*sigh*)(Looks at clock)

I thought she was going to make me wear a hole in the one-inch master. Then she complained to my boss that I was “slow” in editing the project. I explained what she’d done. She was pulled off the project and I was left to cut it by myself.

To get back to my point, while that was hell to go thru in the room with one person, I sometimes get the same scenarios now, only it happens over email, and I have to wait, sometimes for a day or more, to get that key decision made now so we can move on. Or I can risk going on ahead while I wait, trying to anticipate the client’s changes and approvals, only to have to trash a lot of stuff when they do get back to me.

Non-destructive, non-linear makes all that easier to do. To the point that maybe people are more careless about the decision-making on every cut, because everything is fluid, malleable. And they’re not in the room with the editor any more, so they don’t feel guilty putting them thru the strings of endless changes.

Real-time remote client collaboration and review tools are coming into increased usage these past couple of years. I have to wonder if they will make these editing relationships better or worse, to be “in the room” with the editor, yet not.

All I know is, they’ll be leaving me out of the catered lunches.

[Mark Suszko]

This is a fun and educational thread and I appreciate the discourse.

As you talked about going to and from low and high “energy”, and gave examples, I could think of a few more: the use of color, and the use of overall brightness. Some of this will be “baked-in” by the art director and the cinematographer; an example that comes to mind is the use of the color red (and it’s the -same- shade of red, every time, no matter the location) in the background of the most emotional scenes of “Broadcast News“. Once you notice it, you can’t stop noticing it.

But the editor of course controls the sequencing of the shots and can decide when to go from a shot with a limited color palette, to one that’s vibrant, or the reverse. And of course the famous lit-match-to-desert-sunrise cut in “Lawrence Of Arabia” shows something of the power of cutting between dark and light.

Maybe a case could be made for choosing the relative angle of the shot as well, changing from high or low to eye-level, etc.? Again, much of this is pre-set in the way the DOP chooses to frame and compose. But framing is half the answer; the other half is the sequencing and timing,.

[Mark Suszko]

My experience is largely based on cutting for news, public affairs talk, and commercials, though I’ve dabbled in documentary formats as well.

There are natural and artificial patterns in human conversations. Listen for them and when you know the visual cues, the “tells”, you can develop a reliable instinct for the timing of the cuts. I feel this most clearly when live-switching a conversation between two or more cameras. I can successfully switch the show without even hearing the dialog at all, though changes in pitch etc. do give clues. But watching the micro-expressions and breathing and postures of the people talking, I can tell when someone is going to interrupt or take over the conversation, even in a foreign language, and I can cut to them or another shot, the beat before they actually move their mouths. And you want that, you need the audience to see the face, the split second before the words start to come out – sometimes, even a few beats more, because you’re also showing the face demonstrating recognition or understanding or reacting emotionally in some way. An exercise I recommend to beginning editors is to watch TV interviews and dramas with the sound off, and just count the different camera angles, and try to snap your fingers at the place where you anticipate the cuts will happen.

The show “Dragnet”, especially in the beginning, had a peculiar style of cutting that was very mechanical: Guy talks, finishes talking. Camera switches to Joe Friday, Joe talks, etc. and there was little overlapping, everything was straight A, B, A, B….. giving a stilted, artificial feeling. The relatively few cut-aways I saw were just as likely to be there to cover a mistake or script change, as to convey reaction from whomever wasn’t talking. That style loosened-up as the series progressed, but you can see beginner editors doing a lot of “Dragnet Cutting”, until they get more used to using L-cuts and J-cuts and overlapping dialogue and pushing reaction shots more.

When I do training videos, where it’s mostly lecture with slides, (what I call “radio, with pictures”) I choose to impose an artificial pattern or rhythm of shot choices, that subliminally guides the viewer. It goes something like this:

Slide full-screen, long enough to read it twice,
medium shot of the speaker,
close-up as they hit the main point,
tighter detail on the slide with voice-over,
back to the tight shot of the speaker, finishing that thought,
wider shot as they recap.
Rinse and repeat. It’s a visual version of a 12-bar blues riff.

In a nod to Murch’s theories, I’m placing the cut points in a way where the eye/brain is startled, and attention re-acquired or forced, at the point where the narrative is most important, the key idea. Subliminally, after this pattern repeats over a few slides, the viewer is almost conditioned to expect the shot and make note of the information at those points where I’ve forced the attention.

I don’t *have* to cut this way. It does take a little more time. I could do a really minimal job and just leave a locked-off medium shot the whole time, and pop the slides in and out as needed, and call it done. Other editors I know will do that. But I don’t want to bore the audience more than they already are. So I punctuate the sentences visually with pops to tighter and wider shots, as I feel the need. I wouldn’t cut like this for everything, of course. For dramatic readings or story-telling, that’s too constrained an approach.

[Mark Suszko]

Indeed I did read it; it’s very good and accurate IMO.

I think if you polled pro editors 90 percent of them have had *some* musical training and/or talent.

[Mark Suszko]

Rhythm.

So much of the “Art of the Cut”, is a difference of 1 to 5 frames, or an extra beat here, a shortened one, there. And having the courage to -NOT- make a cut, sometimes, because the particular moment is telling so much of the story. It really helps to have musical experience to understand the pacing and timing of cuts has a rhythm.

[Mark Suszko]

I still want my hula-hoop:-)

[Mark Suszko]

Frankly, a pan head and a 2×4 would do as well for that… might not look as sexy but the price is right…

https://www.tested.com/art/movies/454928-low-budget-camera-tech-sam-raimis-evil-dead/

[Mark Suszko]

I know nothing of that product so couldn’t say.

If stiffness and horizontal, jib-like uses are your main goals, and the way you use it 90 percent of the time, why not skip a monopod altogether and just buy some wide diameter thin-walled aluminum pipe and a pan head? Maybe also a clamp so you can attach it to a light stand? You could customize the length then. And add an adjustable hand grip at the balance point for pure hand-held use. That could be just a twisted rag, or something a little more elaborate, like an additional piece of the tubing with a slit cut into it so it can slide up and down the length, add a handle to that… If it were me, I’d also put a screw eye in the base so I could hang a ballast bag off of it if needed, or just a strap to step on. A cradle/fork used by boom mic guys would help.

[Mark Suszko]

In your price range, I’d look at Benro. But I think you’ll be happier with something in the $200- $300 range, pwrsonally.

[Mark Suszko]

FF-Works is, if I understand it right, a GUI front end on the older but loved ffmpeg, which was powerful and flexible but command-line-based, and thus intimidating and opaque to some folks.