Section 10.2. Popular Editing Techniques

10.2. Popular Editing Techniques

Variety and pacing play a role in every decision the video editor makes. Here are some common tricks and techniques professional editors use, which you can adopt for your use in iMovie editing.

10.2.1. Tight Editing

One of the first tasks you'll encounter when editing your footage is choosing how to trim and chop up your clips, as described in Chapter 5. Even when editing home movies, consider the Hollywood guideline for tight editing: Begin every scene as late as possible, and end it as soon as possible.

In other words, suppose the audience sees the heroine receiving the call that her husband has been in an accident , and then hanging up the phone in shock . We don't really need to see her putting on her coat, opening the apartment door, locking it behind her, taking the elevator to the ground floor, hailing a cab, driving frantically through the city, screeching to a stop in front of the hospital, and finally leaping out of the cab. In a tightly edited movie, she would hang up the phoneand then we'd see her leaping out of the cab (or even walking into her husband's hospital room).

You might keep this principle in mind even when editing your own, slice-of-life videos . For example, a very engaging account of your ski trip might begin with only three shots: an establishing shot of the airport; a shot of the kids piling on to the plane; and then the tumultuous, noisy trying-on-ski-boots shot the next morning. You get less reality with this kind of tight editing, but much more watchability.

10.2.2. Variety of Shots

As described in Chapter 2, variety is important in every aspect of filmmakingvariety of shots, locations, angles, and so on. Consider the lengths of your shots, too: In action sequences, you might prefer quick cutting, where each clip in your Movie Track is only a second or two long. In softer, more peaceful scenes, longer shots may set the mood more effectively.

10.2.2.1 Establishing shots

As noted in Chapter 2, almost every scene of every movie and every TV showeven the nightly newsbegins with an establishing shot: a long-range, zoomed-out shot that shows the audience where the action is about to take place.

Now that you know something about film theory, you'll begin to notice how often TV and movie scenes begin with an establishing shot. It gives the audience a feeling of being there, and helps them understand the context for the medium shots or closeups that follow. Furthermore, after a long series of closeups, consider showing another wide shot, to remind the audience of where the characters are and what the world around them looks like.

As with every film editing guideline, this one is occasionally worth violating in special circumstances. For example, in comedies, a new scene may begin with a closeup instead of an establishing shot, so that the camera can then pull back to make the establishing shot the joke. (For example, closeup on main character looking uncomfortable; camera pulls back and flips over to reveal that we were looking at him upside down as he hangs , tied by his feet, over a pit of alligators.) In general, however, setting up any new scene with an establishing shot is the smart, and polite, thing to do for your audience's benefit.

10.2.2.2 Cutaways and Cut-ins

Also as described in Chapter 2, cutaways and cut-ins are extremely common and effective editing techniques. Not only do they add some variety to the movie, but they let you conceal enormous editing shenanigans. By the time your movie resumes after the cutaway shot, you can have deleted enormous amounts of material, switched to a different take of the same scene, and so on. Figure 10-1 shows the idea.

The cut-in is similar, but instead of showing a different person or a reaction shot, it usually features a closeup of what the speaker is holding or talking abouta very common technique in training tapes and cooking shows.

10.2.2.3 Reaction shots

One of the most common sequences in Hollywood history is a three-shot sequence that goes like this (Figure 10-1 again): First, we see the character looking off screen; then we see what he's looking at (a cutaway shot); then we see him again so that we can read his reaction. This sequence is repeated so frequently in commercial movies that you can feel it coming the moment the performer looks off the screen.

From the editor's standpoint, of course, the beauty of the three-shot reaction shot is that the middle shot can be anything from anywhere . That is, it can be footage shot on another day in another part of the world, or even from a different movie entirely. The ritual of character/action/reaction is so ingrained in our brains that the audience believes the actor was looking at the action, no matter what.

In home-movie footage, you may have been creating reaction shots without even knowing it. But you've probably been capturing them by panning from your kid's beaming face to the petting-zoo sheep and then back to the face. You can make this sequence look great in iMovie just by snipping out the pans, leaving you with crisp, professional-looking cuts.

Otherwise, it's safe to say that iMovie 3 fans create reaction shots far more often than they did when using, say, iMovie 1; now it's easy to cut to a listener's reaction as the sound of the speaker's voice continues. Creating this effect requires nothing more than a video overlay, as described on page 239.

Figure 10-1. Top: You've got a shot of your main character in action.
Middle: We cut away to a shot of what he's looking at or reacting to.
Bottom: When you cut back to the main character, you could use a different take on a different day, or dialog from a much later part of the scene (due to some cuts suggested by the editor). The audience will never know that the action wasn't continuous. The cutaway masks the fact that there was a discontinuity between the first and third shots.

10.2.2.4 Parallel cutting

When you're making a movie that tells a story, it's sometimes fun to use parallel editing or intercutting. That's when you show two trains of action simultaneously ; you keep cutting back and forth to show the parallel simultaneous action. In Fatal Attraction, for example, the intercut climax shows main character Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) downstairs in the kitchen, trying to figure out why the ceiling is dripping, even as his psychotic mistress Alex (Glenn Close) is upstairs attempting to murder his wife in the bathtub.

You may not have much call for intercutting if you're just making home movies, especially because it's deliberately artificial. Everybody knows you've got only one camcorder, and therefore the events you're depicting couldn't have taken place simultaneously. But even if you're making movies that tell a story, you'll find this technique an exciting one when you're trying to build suspense .