Tuesday 28th November 2017
Looking further into Video Editing techniques to see how I can improve my video editing for the final video piece. This may not be immediately apparent as relevant, however in my continuing learning curve in the realm of video, this is necessary to learn how to achieve the effects that may be required for my video piece.
Once you master the edit types and learn why each one is important in different circumstances, you can make your projects more entertaining and your editing more efficient, and you can create a whole editing style of your own that reflects your creative side.
- Standard Cut: This is the basic cut (also known as a hard cut) that puts two clips together, connecting the last frame of one and the beginning frame of the next.
- Jump Cut: This is a cut that pushes forward in time. It’s normally done within the same frame or composition, and many times it’s used within montages (see below).
- Montage: A montage is an editing technique that, again, signifies the passage of time or helps to give an overall context to the story with quick cuts.
- J or L Cut: J and L cuts are incredibly common. They get their names for how the clips line up in the editing software. An L cut is used when you want to have audio from clip A continue when clip B comes in. The J cut is the opposite, where the audio from clip B comes in when we’re still seeing clip A.
https://vimeo.com/blog/post/j-cuts-l-cuts- Cutting on Action: This is what it sounds like. You cut at the point of action, because that’s what our eyes and brains are naturally expecting. When someone kicks open a door, we expect to see the change in angle when the door is kicked, not after it’s flown open and swaying for a moment.
- Cutaway shots: Cutaways are shots that take viewers away from the main characters or action. They give extra context to the scene, and can create more tension and foreshadowing.
- Cross Cut/Parallel Editing: This type of editing is when you cut between two different scenes that are happening at the same time in different places. It can be great for adding tension (heist movies use a lot of parallel editing, like showing someone breaking into a safe while a security guard walks toward their location).
- Match Cut: A match cut is an edit that gives a context and continuity to the scene and pushes it in a certain direction, without disorienting the viewer. You use it to either move between scenes or move around a space, while keeping everything coherent.
- Smash Cut: If you’ve got a loud scene that immediately goes to a quiet scene or vice versa, this is where you’d use the smash cut. You want to use it when you’re transitioning between two completely different scenes, emotions, or narratives and you need to make an abrupt transition.
- Invisible Cut: You can really prove just how creative you are as an editor (or how organized you are in pre-production) by adding some invisible cuts in your video or film. The goal of these types of cuts is to keep the shot looking like one continuous take.
- Cross Dissolve: A cross dissolve can serve several purposes and motivations within the story. It can signify a passage of time or it can use the overlapping “layers” or dissolves to show multiple stories or scenes happening at once, but shot at different times.
- Wipe: A wipe is a transition that uses an animation (mostly digital these days) that “wipes” the first scene away into the next scene.
- Fade In/Out: Pretty self-explanatory. You fade out one clip and fade in the other. This implies a passage of time most often, like a night-to-day switch or someone falling asleep, but can be a bit jarring if not used properly.
https://blog.pond5.com/11099-13-creative-editing-techniques-every-video-editor-should-know/
Readers have enjoyed my past blogs on editing from home, making a better demo reel, and other video-editing articles, so now I’m sharing with you my favorite editing tricks that I find make for better cuts and ultimately make videos easier to watch.
I know the skill level of video editors can vary greatly, but I’ve found that on Fstoppers, many people are photographers who have transitioned into making videos, and therefore had to learn how to edit. You might already do some of these editing tricks, but if not you should definitely try them out.
- Shorter is Better, except when it isn’t: With the shrinking attention span of most audiences, and all kinds of media fighting for your time on the internet, it’s often a good idea to keep your videos as short as possible. This is true for most cases, but I’ve found that strategically placed pauses in videos can actually make videos easier to watch, and therefore maintain viewers for longer periods.
- Intro and Outro with natural segues: Following in the idea of using specific edits to subconsciously trigger an understanding in the viewer, editors will often use cross dissolves when starting or ending scene. Fade to blacks are used, as well as wipes if your name is George Lucas.
- Master the J Cut: A J-cut refers the shape of the letter J, where the lower part of that letter form goes further left than the top section. What this means in an edit is having the audio from the incoming clip play before actually seeing the video it corresponds to.
- Clean up your dialog: I’m surprised when I see great looking video that is fraught with interview audio that is full of “ummms” and other speaking errors. I understand that people can slur their words to a point where you can’t separate one word from the next.
- Add markers to your music track: When working with your clips on a sequence that has some music, most editors will have the waveform of the audio displayed, and try to match some edits to where the music hits on a beat or crescendo.
Tuesday 28th November 2017 – Out of Eden
Paul Salopek’s 21,000-mile odyssey is a decade-long experiment in slow journalism. Moving at the beat of his footsteps, Paul is walking the pathways of the first humans who migrated out of Africa in the Stone Age and made the Earth ours. Along the way he is covering the major stories of our time—from climate change to technological innovation, from mass migration to cultural survival—by giving voice to the people who inhabit them every day. His words, as well as his photographs, video, and audio, create a global record of human life at the start of a new millennium as told by villagers, nomads, traders, farmers, soldiers, and artists who rarely make the news. In this way, if we choose to slow down and observe carefully, we also can rediscover our world.
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk/#section-0
Walking is falling forward. Each step we take is an arrested plunge, a collapse averted, a disaster braked. In this way, to walk becomes an act of faith.
Paul Salopek | From To Walk the World
Michelle Wright, Fine Artist 