RGB light with controller
There’s a lot of unending talk about the tech used to support video editing from software updates to video cards to codec support; however, not much is said about the creative side. While software developers scramble to write programs that can automatically edit footage, it seems like the creative side is more important than ever. Everybody approaches editing a little differently, but here are a few ideas that anyone can use to help keep their cuts creative.
1. Get Inspired
Editing is a part of storytelling that often goes unnoticed. It may not be as easy as it sounds, but think about the story you’re trying to tell and think of another story that has a feel and flow that you’d like your project to have. If it’s a TV show by Rod Serling (Night Gallery, Twilight Zone), a movie by Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Hugo) or a music video by Spike Jonze (Beastie Boys’ Sabotage), watch it again. Think about the ways you can tell your story in a similar fashion.
Editing is a subtle art that draws you into the story. When watching your inspirational TV show or movie, don’t feel bad if you have to watch certain scenes multiple times to see the style and techniques used in the edit. That’s a sign that the editing is good. Unlike part of a musical score or a camera shot, it’s rare that an edit can both support the story and draw attention to itself at the same time.
Don’t worry about copying the style of another editor or director. Editing is just one part of the storytelling processes of a film or video. It’s unlikely that the acting, cinematography, production design, sound design and editing in your finished story will directly match Million Dollar Baby. If it does, you’re likely to be praised for making a great homage to Clint Eastwood’s work.
Maybe there’s a rhythm used in one of the films you like and a placing of reaction shots that you favor from another. Don’t be afraid to use both of them in your edit. Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained) is known for taking stylistic elements and storytelling techniques from different popular works and combining them in his films. This process combined with the director’s unique vision creates a new and original style of storytelling.
My desktop inspiration and toys
2. Create Your Space
The mood of your workspace can be very helpful in fostering your creativity. If you work in a corporate office, it might be hard to convince your boss that you need to fill your workspace with bead curtains, black light posters and lava lamps. Likewise, it can be difficult to change the whole decor of your office to match the project you’re working on even if you do work from home.
While at work, you probably spend most of your time looking at your monitors and the area right around them so that’s a great place to start. With just a little bit of time and money, you can transform the area around your computer into an inviting and inspiring space.
Take your desk lamp with its CFL bulb that’s been spewing soul-crushing, dingy, yellow light upon you and replace it with an RGB LED bulb. You can buy them from online retailers for less than $15, and they come with remotes to change color and mode. They are not production quality lights, but they’re good enough to help change the tone of your desktop. Just remember if you’re doing color correction work, you’re going to want to turn that RGB bulb off so it doesn’t through off your monitor calibration.
Take the area underneath your monitor screens and fill it with toys, action figures, old ticket stubs, or whatever peaks your interest. You may want to change these items out on a regular basis so they don’t become too familiar. While these items can distract momentarily, they probably won’t hold your interest for too long and can provide just the redirection your creativity needs.
3. A Beginner’s Mind
If you’re editing footage on a project you shot or directed, it can sometimes be very difficult to look at the clips objectively because all the memories of the production can just keep flooding in. The editing suite is not the place to beat yourself up over an actor’s performance or the soft focus of a shot. Your job is to tell the best story with the footage you have. When you’re editing, you shouldn’t think of how hard it was to get a shot or how much a shot cost. You have to stay focused on telling a story and picking the clips and scenes that best support that story.
Even if you weren’t there for the production, directors, producers, actors and clients will often try to sway you to make decisions based on what they want and not what the story needs. The more you can stay focused on viewing the footage from a fresh, objecctive perspective, the more story-driven your cuts will be; likewise, the easier your edits will be.
For stage plays, the written word of the playwright is sacred. For video and film work, the script is a guide, not doctrine. An outline or a script should be viewed as a road map of the story. It will give you the shape and form of the project, but the detail and nuances of the story are captured with the camera and refined in the edit. You may find from your edit that you need to change the story requiring re-shoots or altering the order of the scenes. The film The Constant Gardner, which was nominated for an Oscar for best editing and won one for actress Rachel Weisz, was completely rewritten in the editing suite. Don’t be afraid to become an author in the edit.
4. Find a Rhythm
The rhythm of your edit can come from many different places: the style or setting of your story, the movement of the camera, the cadence of the dialogue spoken, or even a piece of score you know you’ll use. Director David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Lost Highway) is known for picking out pieces of music in advance that he wants to use to score for a scene of his film. When he goes to shoot that scene, he’ll listen to the song on headphones in between takes so he’s sure to match the tone and rhythm of the scene with the song.
Having a rhythm to your cuts not only helps the flow of your scenes, but it will help when you need to place more emphasis on something within the story. If you have an established rhythm to your cuts, as soon as you break from that rhythm, the shot that follows will stand out. This technique is best used when there is a dramatic change in the story, and the less you use it in a piece, the more impact it will have.
5. Change the Way You Rough Cut
Traditionally, the first cut of a project is the longest cut. The editor or his assist will drop in any footage that matches the script or outline as well as anything that might help the story or the characters. This can lead to an edit that is so long that it feels like you’re watching raw footage. Cutting down an edit like this can feel like a Herculean task, unattainable by mere mortals. If you’re faced with an edit like this, it’s time to switch things up.
Try doing a cut that uses as little as possible to tell the story. Make the cut fast and furious. Instead of spelling it all out for the audience, assume that they will figure things out; omit the details you think they already know. Make the edit as fast paced as you can while still telling the story. Leave out anything that doesn’t directly drive the story. Then slowly add in footage to support the story, flush out the characters, and even the pace. Make sure you have things like establishing shots and cutaways to drive the environment of the story in the edit. Now, when you hold on an emotion or transition in the story, you’ll find it has much more impact. Sometimes you’ll find you really can do more with less.
6. Don’t be Afraid to Work Like Thelma
Thelma Schoonmaker has edited almost all of Martin Scorsese’s films. She has won Academy Awards for Raging Bull (1981) and The Aviator (2005). When she started editing The Departed, Schoonmaker told director Martin Scorsese that he needed to do re-shoots for the film. Once the re-shoots were done, they went back and edited them into the film. When they got a cut they were happy with, they showed it to some friends. Then Schoonmaker and Scorsese went back and re-cut the film based on the reactions they got from the screening. The screening and re-cut process continued multiple times. In the end, both Schoonmaker and Scorsese respectively won Oscars for best editing and best directing for The Departed.
One of the best things you can do to help your edit is to have other people watch it and give you feedback. Ideally, you want someone who’s not involved in the project and preferably not a friend. It’s hard for people directly involved in a project to look at it objectively. Even, if they’re just familiar with the story, they might not notice if parts of the edit are not clear. Friends want to be supportive and typically will say nice things, so they may not always be completely objective or honest with their feedback. When you are too close to a story, getting honest feedback from people who are not involved in the project can help you view your edit in a new light.
7. Determining When Your Edit is Done
Sometimes it’s hard to let go of an edit. Deadlines are great and really help facilitate this process. If you don’t have a deadline for an edit, create one. If you’ve turned in an edit and wish you could have made just a few more changes, you’re not alone. Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now are two great films where different edits were released long after these films initially debuted. The inherent desire to want to continuously improve an edit is admirable, but once a deadline passes, you need to focus your creative energies on your next project.
Bonus: 2 Tech Tips to Help You Stay Creative
File Template for editing projects
1. Keep Your Files Sorted
You can lose a lot of valuable, creative time by looking for files in a big editing project. If you build and use a standard project template for all of your editing projects that already has the bin/folder structure to import your footage into and to keep it all organized, all you have to do is open the standard project template, hit “save as”, type in the name of your new project, and you’re ready to go. When it comes to keeping your source files and renders organized, now you don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time you start a new project.
The intricacies of the bin/file structure of the template you create depend upon the complexity of your typical project and what best serves your needs. A good place to start is by having a bin for source footage that contains bins for audio, video and stills. Next, you’ll want bins for renders, graphics and sequences. That may be all you need, but if not, it’s a good place to start.
2. Save a Master File
For editors, it’s all too common to find out long after a project is complete that someone needs another render of the project in a different format. It can take a lot of time and trouble to re-open the project file, re-associate the media files and render out the file or files needed. If you save an uncompressed master of the final edit of each project for at least a few months, it can save you a lot of time and trouble. That way when you get that call, all you have to do is transcode the uncompressed file. You don’t even have to open the editing project the file was created in. An uncompressed .mov or .avi file will take up a good bit of storage space, but it will transcode faster than a compressed file allowing you return to your next creative endeavor.
