Video Editing

Shooting To Edit

Knowing how to edit informs your shooting

My very first photography course (1967) included extensive darkroom work. In 1967 learning about the darkroom was a normal requirement in a photo class. Knowing what happens to your film in the darkroom tells you how to expose the film when you shoot. One supports the other. I was always amazed to find some professional photographers who didn't have a clue about what happened to their film at the lab.

When I worked as a lab tech I soon knew which photographers didn't understand the darkroom. Their work was technically inconsistent and often required a great deal of effort on my part to make usable prints. But it was always a fix which is seldom as good. Photogs who knew darkroom work tended to shoot work which was consistently easy to print with good detail, scale and lighting.

For the same reason a videographer who knows how to edit video is a shooter who knows what to shoot in order to make the editing work smoothly. When you shoot you should be able to have and idea of what you will be doing to edit the work.

Visualizing how you will put your story together

The type of video you are shooting has a lot to do with how you see the story coming together.

Count to Ten

Editing will be much easier if you give your self a little room at the edges. When you find that you need to put shots together or need to blend the end of one and the start of another you will appreciate a little extra footage. There is a reason for that famous battle cry (?), "Roll 'em, action." Try to start your shot before the actual action. Several seconds is a good idea. Ten seconds is plenty of room. Then, when you consider the shot done, count to ten before pushing the button again. Leeway, is the way.

A basic set of shots

Even when you mean to "think outside the box" as far as possible, you still need to know how to highlight details, to focus attention and to establish a context. For that reason, as well as being able to talk to other videomakers, you need to know the standard list of shots. They range from far away to close in (note the difference between zooms and dollies).

Illustration	Shot	Description
These pictures are from an October 2, 2003 visit by Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to American Crane and Tractor to award that company the Kansas Exporter of the Year award. I used to work here. Photos © 2003 by Mike Strong.
	Long Shot (LS)	The overall picture. The view gets to see everything. This is the "environmental" view. The Long Shot gives the view a context.
	Medium Shot (MS)	Here we begin to narrow the viewer's attention. The medium shot zeros in on the action.
	Close-Up (CU)	Now we eliminate any extra material. We concentrate on the object of our attention.
	Extreme close-up (ECU)	Here we look at small details within the action.

Note that the distances to the subject shown here are not important by themselves. Calling a shot long, or medium or close is relative to the setting. For example, the second picture used here as a medium shot could just as easily have been considered a long shot if our medium shot was a bit closer to the principals in the picture but not so close as out CU (close-up). The Extreme closeup could also have been a tight shot showing just the face of one of these two persons or even just the eyes (or a nose hair!).

Long, Medium, Close are simply labels for a series of shots starting with what we want to show as an environment (our context) through details we wish to illustrate. Sometimes the closeup is the main detail shot and the extreme closeup functions as a cutaway. In the above example shots we are looking at just a portion of the entire visit.

For the overall piece We might just as easily have started with the governor pulling up to the business and then ending as she exits the business.

Establishing shot - start of visit	Medium	Close - Moves us to the next scene.
		The visit itself and all those handshakes.
Moving out - we establish the exit	Medium	Gone: Agrees with the first shot

Cutaways

Look out for anything else in the scene as a cutaway. This table is good. So would be an ECU on the picture on the cake or, even better, the clear acrylic award just behind the cake. Even the coffee pot. Anything.	The Channel 9 videographer (left) is not bored. He's already taken the "CU" to his left (the Governor looking at the terminal). Now he is looking for cutaway shots. Keep looking around. Those little extras will make your editing life much easier.

A full video is seldom limited to the "big" scenes. Small "cutaways" are good ways to bridge cuts and to change up the pacing. For example: as you look at the wide shot of a speaker on the platform it is nice to cutaways to a detail of his hands on the microphone or a cutaway to a closeup of an audience member listening (or not).

Build some supporting shots before the big event

Some events are well rehearsed ahead of time. This is especially true for theatrical events. Dress rehearsals are a great time to get the extra shots you won't have time to get during the actual performance. This is especially true if you don't have enough cameras to get different angles or cutaways during the performance.

Just make sure that what you see in the last rehearsal(s) is actually used in the final performance. You don't want to show someone or something in the performance video which was eliminated or changed after rehearsals.