What do you do when someone buttonholes you with “My son wants to get into editing. Can you help? How hard can editing be?” This new, short animated video, So You’re An Editor, describes what editors do and provides some ammunition.  Consisting of static, talking heads done in nauseating Necco wafer pastels, it involves a union TV editor but applies to all editors.

Warning: Video includes a short rant on the virtues of Avid, guaranteed to po Final Cut Pro users.

admin Editing and life, Editor’s role, Humor, Television

This blog suffered for a month while I packed up and left LA after 31 years. It was hard to leave friends, family, neighbors, and my LA life but time for the third act of my life. I have returned to northern California to a different county than I left 31 years ago and with a spouse. Now we’re unpacking to a new life in a grove of CA oaks and seeing longtime friends.

A feature editor and commercial producer bought our house. The house is registered as an historic home. (Only in LA is something considered historic after 65 yearsJ.)  They’re gaga over it and will take great care of it which helps take the sting out of leaving it. We connected to the point of inviting them over for dinner and I still hear from them.

So I am back now and will be posting regularly again. Talk soon.

admin Editing and life

paper cut. Ouch, damn, now there’s blood on my document or book.

paper cut. Outline that provides the initial plan of attack for editing a documentary or other non-scripted piece.

I’ve always been amused by the double entendre of this phrase, appreciated only by those in our business.  A paper cut is a linear ordering of topics, lines, shots, and sounds to include. I am also amused by the fact that we create from a linear piece from a linear paper cut yet we edit on non-linear systems. Having created a lot of online training courses, I know that viewers can absorb material in a non-linear fashion. I also know that films are linear in the end; no matter how much they jump back and forth in time, viewers watch them as they’re intended to be seen, from first frame to last.

In this time of sped up editing schedules and mountains of footage, many editors (especially on scripted shows) have little or no time to screen footage – they just plunge in and start cutting. So paper cuts may be going the way of the synchronizer and the splicer. Also, as we know, the footage does not always cut together the way a paper cut calls for, just like a script.

Questions

How many of you make index cards and lay them out on a table or pin them to a wall so you can organize your doc ahead of time? Do you make notes on a transcript? Make your own outline and/or use the director’s/client’s/producer’s?

To mischievously mix meanings: In this steadily “going green, paperless” world, will there will be no more paper cuts?

admin Editing and life, Editing practices

Spent new year’s in a small town snowy Vermont where the blue moon on new year’s eve was invisible and it was impossible to upload posts…So here’s hoping your holiday season was swathed in caring and close times with loved ones, accompanied by great food, exercise, and sufficient time alone to contemplate, appreciate, and absorb the events and the year.

May 2010 move us all closer to peace, connection, and good work.

admin Editing and life

There’s No Business Like Soul Business by Derek Rydall is the best book I’ve seen on how not just to keep yourself together, but to grow and get your creations realized in Hollywood or anywhere. While I wish I’d had this book when I started out, one of its strongest attributes is that it works for those who just got off the bus at Hollywood and Vine and those who’ve ridden the line for a long time.

Although this 235 page book is aimed at those seeking artistic success in Hollywood, it applies to creators of any kind – editors, videographers, writers, artists, inventors, woodworkers, etc. – who desire to break through personal and corporate barriers and get their work noticed and sold.

Rydall advises that you “gotta know the territory” as Professor Hill from The Music Man would have said. He lays out Tinsel town’s mindset in a down-to-earth way, puncturing the myths about how to secure success in Hollywood with solid advice and a series of practical, soul-probing, self-reinforcing exercises.

admin Editing and life, Jobs

At the Learning 2009 conference I went to last week in Orlando, there were several video workshops as well as a multitude of seminars on all types of subjects: eLearning, virtual classrooms, global learning & collaboration, learning via mobile devices, to name but a few of my faves. Speakers and participants were from all facets of learning life: Corporate, non-profit, academia, government,  technology, and non-governmental organizations.

In one seminar, education professor Stanton Wortham, U of Penn, discussed the behavior theory of learning which boils down to this:

Learning = a change in behavior

What is changing in your neighborhood? What can you change?

Here’s a great video (not fancy in the editing or shooting) that shows how behavior can be changed and thus becomes part of the change itself.  Maybe a few people will be trimmer for it. Maybe it will inspire you to create simple yet powerful videos for change that advance greener, healthier, more cooperative ways of living.

admin Editing and life, Editing practices

In addition to writing books on editing and blogging, I also create training materials and sporadically edit videos for a major insurance company. Last week this company sent me to Orlando for Learning2009, a conference on learning in these uncertain times.

I feel very fortunate to have gone to the conference – more about it in future blogs. And to have a job in these tough economic times.

But how is it for all of you in your twenties trying to break into film work? It has always been a challenge to break into Hollywood and maintain a career, not to mention a life.
I went to a seminar titled, “The Unemployed College Graduates: A Perspective from the Class of 2009.” Due to their dismal prospects, this gen is now being called the Lost Generation. This is the second gen to receive this chary title. The first Lost Gen came of age in the 1920s after WWI and is the great-grandparents to the second.

2009 grads I know and what they’re up to:

1) Lief, Computer Science grad from UCLA, had two well-paying job offers 10 months before he graduated. He’s loving working for Citrix in Sales and flying all over the country.

2) Sarah, a biology major at Wheaton, is delaying grad school and other options, and doing a year with AmeriCorps in Nevada.

She’s writing a poetic and brilliantly insightful daily blog and developing her photography skills. (Photo on left is hers.)

3) Casey, a music major at SUNY, Purchase, is working for J.Crew while waiting for his girlfriend to graduate and has formed his own band, Galapaghost  

He plans to move to Texas to join its independent music scene next year with his gf.

How is it for those of you trying to break in? Are you where you want to be like Lief? Volunteering like Sarah or in grad school? Tacking with a McJob and doing your thing on the side a la Casey? Comment here and perhaps I or a reader can help.

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Crossing the line is an extension of screen direction and one of the most challenging shooting and editing concepts to remember.  I like the idea of crossing the line metaphorically in terms of living one’s life. Visually crossing the line is becoming more acceptable and more frequently seen on screen and tube. So will I be writing more about it, but first let’s look at the rules so we know when and how to break them!

Definition

A car is traveling down a street and you shoot two angles, one from each side of the street. Perfectly valid angles but if cut together, the car appears to be going the opposite direction.  Why? Because there is an invisible line in every camera set up that bisects the scene horizontally at 180 degrees.

The 180 Degree Rule: How to observe it

If two people – pawns in the diagram below – face each other, the 180 degree line runs across their heads. When editing, if you cut to the angle behind them, the person on the left now appears to jump to the right and your audience may become disoriented.

The Rule
When shooting and editing, Person A should be looking Left to Right and Person B should be looking Right to Left.

Example
Sports events are shot from one side of the field only. This way there is no chance to cut to the other side of the field and make the soccer players appear to be running toward the wrong goal.

To learn more about the rule and the line, read Chapter 1 of my book, Cut by Cut: Editing Your Film or Video.

For a superb dissection of a complex scene from Twelve Angry Men where director Sidney Lumet fastidiously observed 180 degree rule in order to avoid throwing off the audience and puncturing the drama, turn to Chapter 8, Knowing the Camera in NY writer-editor Bobbie’s Osteen’s 2009 book, The Invisible Cut: How Editors Make Movie Magic.

In the future…

…I will have more to say about crossing the line but for now, consider yourself introduced. And please report back here: How often do you notice a show crossing the line? Does it bother you? Does it have symbolic or metaphorical meaning? Why do you think the filmmaker crossed the line?

admin Editing and life, Editing practices, Technical and process

In August a creature I never saw bit my foot when I dipped it into a salt water estuary at in the Florida Keys. The episode contained all the elements of an action drama:

Accident scene with spurting blood, a vivacious Good Samaritan with her parents and kids, a burly female sheriff, and two paramedics.

Highway scene as the ambulance headed north toward the ER in Miami and was halted by a fatal motorcycle accident on the Keys highway.

Hospital scene with male and female nurses and doctors, and surgical and social challenges: Would the surgeon be able to fix the tendon, ligament, and nerve damage? Would the hospital personnel recognize my same-sex marriage partner and give her updates and access? Would I be able to walk, dance, hike, and do all the things I love to do?

It was my personal version of My Left Foot crossed with Jaws 3D.

So this relates to editing, how…?

There were fades to black as I lapsed in and out of conscious from the anesthesia, flashbacks to the bite brought on by the sudden tightening of the anti-blood clot cuff on my “good” leg, and the blurry superimposition of hospital workers buzzing my room at all hours.

Also, when I tell my tale – as I have many times now – I change the POV to include others (surgeon, my partner, kid-bystanders, etc.). As time goes by, I compress or lengthen the story by judging the level interest of my audience. So yes, the accident also relates to editing by how clearly I communicate the story, the order in which I tell the events, the weight (time) I give each event, and the way I end the story.

Speaking of endings…

The surgeon was able to fix most everything and determined the perp was a barracuda (not a small alligator or a shark – the prime suspect). The Floridian medical personnel provided tip top treatment to me and my spouse. The Good Samaritan was a director /producer who is shooting her own videography and she snapped a photo of the scene with her cellphone so now have footage (Did I mentioned I love puns). And, in time, I will be able to walk and, as the medical saying goes, “resume all activities.”

Conclusions

In editing as in life: Tell your tales well; put them in the order that makes most sense, use the POV(s) that the filmed material demands, and create the ending that best and most truly completes the story.

admin Editing and life

Our perfect director who art in heaven,

Showered with Oscars be thy name.

Thy Lifetime Achievement will come, thy will be done

In the editing room as it is on location.

Give us this day our daily film and

Forgive the missing footage as we also forgive

the person in charge of continuity.

Lead us not into frustration

But deliver us from the talent free director,

For ours is the splicer, the mouse,

and the objective eye.

Forever.

Amen.

admin Editing and life, Editing practices, Editor’s role, Humor