Editing
General
As with camera movements, all edits should be motivated: there should be a reason for every edit. A new shot should contain new information. The better the edit, the less it is noticed. These are the tried and tested general practices which editors have used over the years.
It can be useful when you are editing to try and imagine how a reporter would voice your pictures. This will also help the flow of your script.
When camera operators have produced good long shots, don't shorten them. This can happen either in bureaux or in London, and in some extreme cases, in both. Shortening such shots makes it difficult for broadcasters to re-cut and it is one of the biggest problems we have when we access video from broadcasters who cut very tightly. There has to be time for the viewers to take in the information contained in the picture otherwise it is a waste of time showing it to them. But if in doubt, err on the side of leaving the shots long.
Providing plenty of varied shots of a usable duration is one of the essentials of what we do. These pictures, when used with a couple of well chosen sound-bites, are the basis of the final package. However, don’t become obsessed with editing by numbers. When people are told that a shot should be about six seconds long, they start to cut every shot to the target duration rather than trusting their instincts to let them last as long as they sustain interest. Active, busy pictures need to last longer than pictures of static things like newspaper cuttings. But sometimes even when a picture is not static, but where there is not much variation in a shot as with some mass demonstrations, it can pay to keep it reasonably short.
There is no need to start every edit with an exterior of a building or a few ‘establishing’ shots of a location. Use your discretion as to whether you think you could start the edit in a more interesting way. Choose a picture hat captures the essence of the story, or, if that is not possible, a wide interior of the Security Council session works much better than showing the exterior of the building.
As always, there are exceptions. If two world leaders are to meet for the first time then the chosen location could be worth a shot so clients can refer to it and explain why it was chosen for such an historic event. It may be that an exterior of the location could be included elsewhere in the edit if you feel it would be useful to clients. Watch what our clients do with our edits – they rarely start with the exterior.
Give some thought to the construction of the edit rather than compiling it on the basis of when the pictures become available. Stories are usually best told chronologically, but not always. It is acceptable to begin with later pictures, especially if they are the best and most dramatic, and return to earlier events further through the edit, e.g. to provide the background to a riot which started as a peaceful demonstration. However if you do this, to make full use of the better riot pictures, you must ensure that the shot-list makes it clear that the peaceful demonstration preceded the riot. The clients can then clarify the timeframe in their voice-overs.
It also helps if you think in sequences. Many clients will only use part of our stories, so it's of great help to them if each sequence in your edit is a self contained section and easier for clients to lift out. Each sequence should have a strong "in" shot and the final shot should be of a reasonable length.
Use the pictures that best illustrate the story and edit them in an orderthat best helps tell the story.
Sound and Vision in Editing
Reuters producers are trained on the basis that sound and vision are partners, not rivals. Sound must be edited with the same care and attention to detail as the vision. Your ears and eyes work in unison, supplementing information to each other, so any conflict between the two will cause confusion. Aural information should extend and expand the message of the pictures. It should give information which enforces and supports the pictures. In its most simplistic terms, it could be said that an editor should NEVER have a picture with sounds that do not match. The reason for this is that sound can more quickly create reality than vision. The eye tends to take what it sees factually, whereas the ear can stimulate the imagination in a more direct way.
When editing, it pays to remember that sound and vision are tools, that a picture can kill sound and that sound can kill a picture, that either can dominate, but neither should cancel the other out. Mixing sound is often desirable (eg: applause to silence, or music to silence), but make sure the mixing or "rubberbanding" as it is known on Newscutter is completed before he vision cut. This allows a clean "in" sound on the next sequence.
- A final, practical note - before you begin an edit on Newscutter, it's important that you satisfy yourself that the correct sound and vision are being recorded fro the start by opening a bin and checking the incoming material.
Zoom
As our eyes do not zoom, the lens movement can seem unnatural and can break the visual flow of an edit. In News, detail of content is motivation to use the Zoom, but if the content of the shot is static - say, a building - then using static shots may be better.
Close Up
The close up is a dramatic shot which emphasises and magnifies facial reactions, or draws particular attention to a specific thing. The problems encountered in editing a close up are few. You should pay attention to any subject movement and edit out of the shot before the movement alters the shot for the worse.
Medium Shot
In editing for News, the medium shot is the most commonly used shot. When the shot is used for a person, you must look at both the headroom and the looking room. The bottom of the shot is framed roughly where a jacket breast pocket might be. With a woman, it is just above the elbow joint. Headroom is the distance between the top of the hair and the upper frame edge.
Variations can take place: maybe the subject is wearing a hat or a head-dress. Looking room is required to ready the viewer's eye to move to the right or left when the picture is going to be cut to another person. If the looking is on the left-hand side of the first picture, then it follows that the next picture will have looking room on the right-hand side so the two people are turned towards each other.
General View
If the subject is on the move, for instance, at walking pace, then enough looking room must be provided on the side of the frame towards which the subject will walk. This is especially true when the camera movement is a pan. Then the camera operator will lead the subject, rather than follow it. Consequently, the subject will, if walking right to left, be framed on the right hand side. If the subject is static, then this does not generally apply.
The Complex Shot
The complex shot has a lens movement, a camera movement, a simple subject movement. It should have a static start and a static end.
Elements of the Edit - Motivation
There should always be a good reason or motivation to cut. The motivation can be visual or aural. In visual terms, it could be an action - eg a body or a facial movement. It could be a sound, like a telephone ringing. The motivation could also be a combination of both vision and sound.
Information
Information is generally recognised to mean visual information, For the editor, this element is basic to all edits. This is simply because, if there is no new information in the next shot, then there is little point in cutting to it. The more visual information the viewer has and understands, the more informed the viewer becomes.
Shot Composition
Bad shot composition is a result of bad shooting, it doesn't stop the editing process, but it makes it more difficult. It is the editor's job to select the shots with the most acceptable composition.
Sound
Lack of sound can devalue an edit. It can be used to create atmosphere, a heightened sense of tension and many other emotions. For the editor, it can be one of the most exciting reasons to make the edit.
A. Continuity of Content
There should be continuity of content. For example, if a man has picked up a phone with his right hand in the first shot, then it is to be expected that the telephone is still in his right hand in any following shot. Part of the editor's job is to make sure that continuity is maintained each time an edit is made in a sequence of shots.
B. Continuity of Movement
Continuity also involves direction of movement. If a person or object is moving right to left on the first shot, then it is to be expected that the person or object will move in the same direction in the next shot.
C. Continuity of Sound
Continuity of sound is of importance. If the action is happening in the same place and time, then the sound will continue from one shot to the next. If there is an airplane in the sequence, then any reaction shots should have airplane audio also. Atmos should have continuity.
Types of Edit - Action Edit
The action editor movement edit can be made on the simplest gesture or movement. For example, picking up a phone. You have two shots - one a close up, the other a medium shot. A man is sitting at a desk, the telephone rings, he picks up the phone and answers. The edit requires all, or nearly all, of the elements: motivation, information, composition, sound and continuity.
- MOTIVATION - When the phone rings, we know that the man will pick it up and answer it. That would be good motivation to make the edit.
- INFORMATION - In the medium shot, we can see the office, how the man is sitting. The close up tells us even more about the man. We are now able to see in greater detail what he looks like and, more importantly, his REACTIONS to the telephone call. Therefore, the close-up gives us new information.
- SOUND - The editor must have an awareness for the continuity of sound.
- CONTINUITY - It will be possible to match the arm movement of the person picking up the phone in the medium shot to the same movement on the close up.
General Considerations
If the cut you have made becomes visible or noticeable, it is called a JUMP CUT. A jump cut will act as a break in a clean transition from one shot to the next. Regard the jump cut as an unsatisfactory edit. Ideally, each cut should contain all the elements, but not every cut will. A general guide is to include as many elements as possible, depending on the edit. The editor should know the elements by heart, so that when looking through material it becomes routine to check the shots for as many of the elements as possible.
Check-list:
- Before you begin your edit, try and imagine how a reporter would voice your pictures. This will also help with picture selection and sequence.
- Leave shots long.
- Provide plenty of varied shots.
- Don’t edit by numbers.
- Trust your instincts to let pictures last as long as they hold your interest.
- Pictures of busy scenes need to last longer than pictures of static scenes.
- Don’t automatically begin with the exterior of a building.
- Chose a picture that captures the essence of the story as the opening shot.
- Watch how our clients change our edits and try to work out why they were changed.
- Give some thought to the construction of the edit rather than compiling it on the basis of when the pictures become available.
- Stories are usually best told chronologically, but not always.
- If you don’t edit chronologically then the sequence of events must be made clear in the shot-list.
- Try to edit in sequences, or self contained sections which have strong "in" shots and reasonably long final shots.
- Use the pictures that best illustrate the story.
- Edit pictures in an order that best helps tell the story.
- There should always be a reason or motivation to make a cut.
- A new picture should always contain new information.
- Each shot should have reasonable shot composition.
- There should ideally be some form of sound continuity.
- Before you begin an edit on Newscutter, check that the correct sound and vision are being recorded by opening a bin and checking the incoming material.
- The movement or action should be both evident and similar in two shots to be cut together.
- To avoid making jump cuts, include as many elements as possible, depending on the edit. Know the elements by heart.
File Footage
Using archive, or file footage can be a very good way of helping to tell a story which the new pictures may not be able to tell on their own. There are a number of occasions when adding file to an edit is a valuable service to our clients, but there are also times when it can be confusing and even misleading. We should not use file pictures if clients are likely to assume they are pictures of the actual event, and when we do use them, we should always make it clear they are archive pictures.
It is useful to clients for us to provide file pictures when stories need to be put into context, or they need some background to explain the relevance of a new development. For example, coverage of the funeral of purged Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang in Beijing would need archive material from June 1989 of the crackdown by troops and police on the student and pro democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. The sale of a famous singer’s clothes would need some shots of the singer in action regardless of whether he/she was at the auction.
Another good use of file is to provide pictures to give clients something with which to preview an event that has not yet taken place, e.g. file of the headquarters of a factory and its production line pending coverage of a news conference announcing the factory’s closure or expansion. In this case the file pictures are probably also going to be needed for the final edit.
A third category can cause confusion and so care should be taken when using file in these circumstances. This category is similar to the above when we provide file pictures as a substitute for the actual event. The difference is that pictures in this category can be mistakenly taken as coverage of the actual event, e.g. in the event of a plane crash, it is useful to provide file pictures of the same type of plane involved in the crash (in the correct livery if possible). However, these pictures MUST be clearly marked as file to avoid creating the impression that they are pictures of the actual plane taking off before the crash.
We should NEVER run pictures of a previous plane crash before we have run pictures of the most recent crash because clients will assume they are new.
An even more potentially confusing use of file is when we supply pictures of soldiers involved in an earlier incident to be used in place of coverage of the new fighting e.g. good file pictures of police attacking demonstrators which can easily be mistaken for new coverage. It is often better not to include these pictures as part of an edit. If the file pictures are considered to be useful to clients because they show a pattern of trouble or they demonstrate the development of the story so far, then it would be better to feed them as a separate edit, clearly marked as file.
Simply identifying pictures as file in the script is often not enough. Clients often receive pictures before they receive the script, and in the case of 24-hour stations, they often use them before receiving a full script. Clients could easily be fooled into using these pictures as actual cover before the full script arrives to clarify things.
When using file pictures, where possible, we should provide a month and year for the file footage used. If the exact date is important then we should provide day, month and year. This helps clients check they are using file footage appropriately. It gives them the option of referring to the pictures directly and linking specific events to their story with the knowledge that they are showing the relevant pictures.
This is best done in the shotlist, rather than in the data-block or in the template at the start of the story where ‘File’ is sufficient. The shotlist should follow this style:
Shows:
LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (FILE – AUGUST 24, 1998) (REUTERS – ACCESS ALL)
- MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT ARRIVING AT THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
- ETC
Broadcasters have a clear advantage over us when using file footage. They can put a caption on screen explaining the pictures are from the library or they can explain the archive pictures in a voice-over. A number of broadcasters will use file pictures in place of actual coverage and, while not claiming them to be new, will omit to mention they are archive pictures. This is a matter for them and their own editorial policy. We should not put ourselves in a position where we can be accused of misleading our clients or encouraging them to mislead their viewers.
Good, sensible use of file pictures in our edits is one of our strengths and can demonstrate our awareness of the needs of broadcasters. We should simply think about the images we are using to tell stories, rather than falling into a standard method of covering events according to some age-old formula. The file images should be both necessary to the story and should be relevant to it.
Don’t immediately reach for the archive tapes for every edit. Before sending an edit, either to London or directly to clients, please ask yourself: ‘Will broadcasters be able to tell this story using only the pictures we are providing or would some file footage make it clearer and easier to tell without being confusing?’ If you feel file pictures may be confusing then please talk to the Output Editor about whether they should be included, omitted or contained in a separate edit.
Checklist:
- Be careful not to confuse clients when using file footage.
- Don’t use file pictures if clients are likely to assume they are pictures of the actual event.
- Always make it clear that the pictures are from the archive.
- Consider using file to put stories into context, or to give background to explain the relevance of a new development.
- Use file if a key element of the story is not contained in the new pictures.
- Consider using file to give clients something to show to preview an event which has not yet taken place.
- Consider using file as a substitute for the actual event but be careful not to create the impression that they are pictures of the actual event.
- NEVER run file pictures of an event before we have run pictures of the most recent event.
- If we are providing file of previous events which could be confusing, then put them in a separate edit, clearly identified as ‘File’.
- Where possible, we should provide a month and year for file footage.
- Don’t immediately reach for the archive tapes for every edit.
- Ask yourself: ‘Will broadcasters be able to tell this story using only the pictures we are providing or would some file footage make it clearer and easier to tell without being confusing?’
- If a picture is more than 14 days old, it should be denoted as File in scripts and shotlists.
- If a picture is more than four days old, or if you don't know the date on which it was shot, it should be denoted as "Recent"