Tag Archives: Shawn Montano

You Better Know Your Trim Tools for Video Editing

Anatomy of an Edit, , , , ,

I’ve been editing on non-linear systems since 1997.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Learn your trim tools.  Please learn your trim tools.  Make yourself a better video editor.

Every time I learn or re-learn an NLE, I make sure I understand the trim tools.

I don’t care which NLE you’re on.  You better have an excellent grasp of trimming.

I think this is THE MOST essential set of tools on an NLE.  Are you with me?  I’m trying to make you better.

I use the trim tools every time I edit, EVERY TIME. The trim tools make an editor’s life easier. Trimming is polishing your edits.

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I think trimming is one of the hardest concepts to grasp when you’re learning about non-linear editing.

What is trimming?  I took this definition from Final Cut Pro HD Hands-On Training by Larry Jordan.

“Trimming is the process of removing, or adding, frames to the beginning and end of your shots so that the edits flow naturally, maintaining your story, without calling attention to your editing.”

So why should you trim?  What’s a great benefit?  These are the tools that make your edits better, and it’s quick.  Eventually, it’ll make you better.

I’m going to speak about trimming in general and why and how.

I used to edit on a non-linear system very linear-ly.  Meaning I would mark an in and an out and place it into the timeline.  If I didn’t like the edit, I would undo and reset mine in and out.  THAT’S A WASTE OF TIME.  The material you want is already down in the timeline.
Once you place clips onto the timeline, you should never go back to the preview window or re-load the clip ever.

If you don’t like the IN, then trim it.

I’ll use the story, Swinging on the Trapeze on my YouTube site to show you how I utilized some trim tools in the edit.

 

At [:21] into the story, you hear the beginning of a sentence from the gentlemen helping Kellie with the harness.  He says, “It’s gonna be…, then I show him.

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I place the edit of Kellie and the gentlemen down on the timeline.  I then ripple the video of the woman on the Trapeze just over this new edit.  I made a J cut (Whoohoo!).

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Simply select the edit you want to extend.  In this case, the end of the clip that has the woman on the Trapeze (ONLY THE VIDEO). 

In Premiere Pro I love I can just hold down the option key, and I can select only one track (basically unlinking a video and audio track)

At [:35], I make another J cut.  You see other women on the Trapeze.

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And you hear Kellie say, “So this’ll keep..”  and then I cut to Kellie after that.

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Between these two shots, I select the edit.  I choose the rolling tool and drag that edit forward to where I want it to be.

At [2:06] is a match-action sequence of Kellie swinging on the Trapeze.

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The 2nd shot in the sequence is Kellie swinging from the platform and then all the way back to the platform.

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I’m confident the action is matched here.  But maybe I want to tweak it a few frames.  I like my duration of the clip (two seconds) I’ve laid down.  I want to slip it a few frames.

Meaning I’m going to change the in and the out with one tool.  I’m going to zoom in to the clip on the timeline,  select the slip tool, and drag the clip forward and backward until I like my new in and out point while maintaining my duration.

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The Slip tool works great for a situation like this.  Trying to help with your match-action in a sequence.

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Slip, roll, extend edits are the easiest I think to try and explain.  A ripple while isn’t any more complicated; it’ just a hard to explain in a blog.

What do I want you to learn from this entry?  The next time your editing and you want to change something, use a trim tool.  Sometimes just playing around with the trim tools are your best way of learning.  I still discover new uses for each trim tool everyday.

Play and learn.

Thanks for reading.  Don’t forget to like The Edit Foundry on Facebook

Imitate The Eye

Anatomy of an Edit, , ,

I first heard the phrase, imitate the eye, from Lou Davis.  Lou is a photojournalist in North Carolina.  “Capture the world as your eye sees it,” he’d say.  I’ve taken this and applied it to my everyday editing.

When you are at an event.  What does your eye focus on?  Put those same shots together on the timeline.  You’re now basically editing via imitating the eye.

Please watch Run Fast, Shoot Slow.  This is a natural sound video I edited several years ago.

Let’s start with the opening sequence. I’m trying to make edits as close to the action as possible.  So, a gun is shot, and it recoils immediately. Like in the edit at [:12]

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and the edit at [:15]

Notice I don’t sit on the shot for more than a few frames before the action happens.  Once the action happens, I move on to another shot.  I’m attempting to imitate the eye as best as I can. I still need the viewer to comprehend the shot.  If you were there at the shooting range, your eye would probably move faster.

Would your eye capture everything from the beginning?  You would catch several things in mid-action.  Just like many of my edits.  Go back and look at my edits from [:10] to [:16].

Notice some of the shots the action of the gun being fired has already begun.  Imagine if you were there.  Wouldn’t your eye ping-pong around the shooting range just like that?  Q

Please watch the story again and notice just how often I take an edit right on an action of just after the action has started.

Here are a few examples;

at [:17], the car door is already opening.

At [:27] running onto the firing range.

At [:41] going over the obstacle course.

The shot at [:47] I start the edit well after the participants have started running.  If you were on top of the hill, watching this is where you head my turn and pick up the action.

 

Not every edit in this story follows the imitate the eye concept.  I still have to tell the story.  I do back-time natural sound moments, and I’m going back and forth with the interview, and there are a lot of other elements to the edit.  For this post, I just wanted you to pay attention to your eyes the next time you are out shooting.  When you come back to edit, try thinking about this concept.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

I’ll Have Your Eyes Exactly Where I Want Them

Anatomy of an Edit, , ,

Do you think an editor can make a viewer’s eyes move?  Yes, they can.  It happens all the time.  The next time you watch a movie, think about precisely what you’re looking at on the screen.  Chances are an editor is using eye-trace to get you to look at precisely what they want you to look at.

Our story for this post is Joe’s Smile

  

Over the years, I have done research on eye-trace.  It’s a simple concept, to begin with, and if you think about it in your everyday editing, it’ll improve so many little things.

In this post, I like to bring your attention to what is going on in the shots you choose.

  • The action affects what the viewer is looking at

  • Eye trace sends the viewer’s eye where you want them to go

  • You can control what people are exactly going to look at

 You cannot think about every edit and what’s happening in every shot, quite often there isn’t time in your projects.  The more you keep eye-trace in mind, the easier you are going to make several edits in your story.

I want the viewer to look at certain things.  My edits are going to help.  In Joe’s Smile, you may see more example of eye-trace, I’m only going to point out some.

Eye-trace has two primary objectives.

  1. To keep the eye focused on the same point on the screen (or close to there as possible) as the last frame of an edit ends, and the new frame of the next edit starts.  Confused?  I was too.  Here’s an example.

In the shot above at [:15] in the story, Joe looks up and turns his head to the right (our left).

Then, I make an edit as he’s in mid-turn.  He completes his head turn in the next shot.  Your eye catches his head moving, and then in the next shot, I have your eyes exactly where I want them, to the left of the screen focused on Joe.  Your eyes followed Joe through the edit and didn’t scan the screen for something else to look at.  That’s eye trace, putting the viewer’s eyes where YOU want them.

Think of it as you are a magician.  A magician’s job is to get the audience to look at what he wants them to look at.  Like that ball in his hand and not the other hand in his pocket getting the next part of the trick ready.  Your ideal job as an editor, keep the viewer’s eye where you want them.

The edit’s also hidden by Joe’s movement.  Meaning you don’t really realize there is an edit there because the action looks natural.

Here another example at [:21].  Your eyes go to his head as he starts to move his head I cut.

His head movement completes this shot above at [:22].  Your eye’s stayed on the left side of the screen in relatively the same place.  I kept them there using eye-trace logic.

Think about editing on movement the next time you’re doing a story.  Think about keeping all that movement on the same point on the screen.  Break your screen in 4 quadrants.  Try keeping the movement in one of those quadrants for 2 edits. It’s not that easy and won’t work ALL the time,  but it’s pretty when it does.

Here is an entirely different example of eye-trace.  People will always look at the eyes of whoever is in your shot. Everyone’s natural curiosity is to wonder what he/she is looking at.  So, if you show a shot of someone looking at something, your next obvious shot is what they are looking at.

At [1:22], we have a shot of the dentist looking down.  Notice the dentist is predominately screen left. What’s he looking at?

We should show the viewer.  He’s looking at Joe’s teeth, or lack thereof [1:23].  Notice Joe is predominately screen right.  This is another example of eye-trace.  If you were to follow the dentist’s eye’s down from the shot of him to the next shot of Joe, you’d trace his line of sight almost entirely. 

This is another example of eye trace.  The viewer naturally looks down, and as their eyes move down, you take edit and place what you want them to see in that next shot and that point in the frame, eye trace in action.

One more example.  Joe’s got his new teeth, and he’s smiling!  What’s he laughing at?  Again realize Joe’s screen right.

I know there are two women in this shot, but the women on the left are laughing and catch your eye first.  So, following Joe’s line of sight, it’s logical to think he’s looking at her.  With this edit, I make the viewer perceive that as well.  The women on the right looking at the women laughing helps as well with this.

I thought I’d show you an example of a bad edit too.  At [2:49], we have Joe smiling with his new teeth. Joe’s screen left as he smiles.

But in the next shot, he’s screen right smiling.  I didn’t put the viewer’s eye where I should of.  Like I said, it won’t always work.

Now go and practice eye trace in your editing.

Thank you for reading.  As always don’t forget about the Edit Foundry on Facebook

It Went Viral! But did the editing help?

Anatomy of an Edit, Blink Points, , , ,

In my post-news career in the freelance world, I do many different types of productions.  I do corporate videos, presentations, music videos, business profiles, and much more.  The rules of editing I learned in my news career I still apply as often as I can when I produce material today.

This production went viral.  This Ignite talk by Ash Beckham is the #1 Ignite talk viewed ever on Youtube. It’s been viewed over 550,000 times!

My editing had nothing to do with this video going viral.  The content drove it to be viewed by so many.  I do think my editing helped in the viewing and understanding of the content.  Yes, there is a logic in editing this video.

If you are familiar with Walter Murch, you know about blink points.  If you are not, allow me to explain.  When you listen to someone talking to you, your blinks may, in fact, coincide with your understanding of the information.  You quite often blink when you’re brain has processed some info.

Walter Murch has a theory that the human blink is emotional punctuation.  Murch found that nearly every single time he decided to make a cut, a character in a movie he was editing would blink very close to the frame he chose to make an edit on.  He concluded a person will blink every time they understand thought or emotion.
“So it seems to me,” Murch says, “that our rate of blinking is somehow geared more to our emotional state and to the nature and frequency of our thoughts than to the atmospheric environment we happen to find ourselves in.  The blink is either something that helps an internal separation of thought to take place, or it is an involuntary reflex accompanying the mental separation that is taking place anyway.”

As I was editing the Ignite Boulder presentations, I used this ideal.  The first sentence Ash says is, “My name is Ash, and I can say unequivocally I am so gay.” and right after she completes that thought, I make an edit.

I put her graphic on the screen full, and she says, “… eliminating the word gay as a pejorative from our lexicon.” She completes the thought, and I make an edit.

I am using her completions of thoughts to make edit decisions. I’m not using her complete sentences.  Quite often, you see multiple edits make before she completes a sentence.  Now I will sometimes use other cues to make my decision.  Perhaps I make a decision because I want to cut to the full-screen graphic. After all, she talks about it.  For the most part, in this edit, I used what I felt were thought completions. Here’s an example.

Explain to you the difference between what I just said and what this image conveys (CUT).  Now you may be saying Ash we live in Boulder we love gays here, (CUT) we have pride, we have BCAP all true, (CUT) but I guarantee you there are places you go every day (CUT).

As you can see, I’m not waiting for her to complete a sentence but a thought.  Watch the entire video and really concentrate on it when she makes a complete thought.  Watch how often I have an edit at that same moment.

Here is another example in the edit when I use blink points.  At [1:38] she says

“The top row they’ve all come out, (CUT) now the bottom row we cross our fingers but (CUT) until they do, their cartoons and muppets so at the very least they’re happy (CUT).  Now there is a long list of things that you should never call so gay (CUT); an assignment you don’t wanna do is not so gay(CUT). Someone’s new haircut is not so gay (CUT). A workout you don’t like is no so gay (CUT).  A test that you bombed is not so gay (CUT). Someone’s car is not so gay (CUT).   Now again, I may be preaching to the Boulder loving gay choir (CUT).”

Blinks point can be used in ANY type of edit.  Blink points should be used in EVERY edit.  Next time you are stuck with where to make an edit, think about blink points.

Thanks for reading.