Getting your film in the can is a major accomplishment that gets you one step closer to a final product. What you’ve accumulated, however, is nothing more than a plethora of puzzle pieces. Your next job is going to be assembling all of those pieces into something meaningful. And you do this with film editing.
Like most disciplines in feature film production, film editing has both a creative and technical aspect to it.
You’re going to piece together your film in a way that makes sense, is appropriately paced, adds visual interest, and keeps the story moving forward.
So, you need to know what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. That is to say, you’re going to make creative decisions that require technical knowledge to execute.
I’m going to tell you everything I know about the creative and technical aspects of film editing.
The Creative
Unless you’ve captured your feature film in one long, continuous shot, you’re going to have to make some cuts.
A cut is simply where you end a video clip. Then you can either add a fade or some other effect to it or put another video clip after it.
I’ve heard of a feature film being described as a juxtaposition of images that keeps the story moving forward through a logical progression of sequences. And the way you go about getting those images is by making cuts. But how do you know when or where to make a cut?
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to film editing, but there are some agreed upon conventions that will never steer you wrong.
For example, when making a cut, you should cut either on a “look” or on an “action”. What do I mean by this?
The Cut
Well, let’s say you are cutting back and forth between two characters who are sitting on opposite sides of a desk. They’re having a conversation and you are looking for logical places to cut back and forth between them.
Let’s say one character is looking off to the side because he or she is upset with the other character and doesn’t want to look at them, but then, the character finally turns back and looks the other character in the eyes.
The moment that happens is a good place for a cut. You are cutting on the “look”.
Now, we’re on to the second type of cut. Let’s say he or she gets really heated and the dialogue ends with a real dagger and the character slams his or her fists down on the desk.
As soon as the fists impact the desk is a good place for a cut. You are cutting on the “action”.
Hidden Cuts
To add visual interest, you can also use hidden cuts in your film, if you so desire. What do I mean by a hidden cut?
Well, let’s say two characters just finished talking in the living room of an apartment and now they are heading out the door. Rather than follow them with the camera, however, you zoom in on a television that is turned off until you’ve filled the entire frame with black.
Then, you zoom out from another black television screen, only now we’re in a restaurant where our two characters are being seated at a table.
I have used hidden cuts in a few of my feature films. One time I had an actor walk toward the camera until his shirt completely blocked the lens.
Then, I turned him around and put the lens into his back, blocking out all of the light, and then I told him to walk forward.
After I put the two shots together, it looked like the actor walked right through the camera and then went on his way.
Cutting on a “look” and cutting on an “action” works really well when the actors aren’t moving. You could even call these stationary cuts. But what about when an actor or actors are in motion.
You can’t really cut on an “action” because movement is action. But you could cut on a “change in action”. You could even call these moving cuts.
Let’s say you have an actor who is walking down a hallway and he or she is approaching a corner.
You could film them from behind and right as they hit the edge of the corner, you cut to a shot from the end of the other hall just as they round the corner. You are cutting on a “change in action” because a change in direction is technically a change in the action.
Another example of these moving cuts deals with fight scenes. A fight scene is all about action and the actors are in constant motion. A “change in action” here could be the moment one of the actors kicks, punches, or body slams the other. So where do you cut?
Cut on the impact. As soon as a fist meets its target, make a cut. If one of the actors picks the other one up and slams them, cut as soon as the other actor’s body hits the ground.
Pacing
Another great thing about film editing is that you have total control of the pacing. You decide how long you are on one of the actors before cutting to the other or others. You decide when to speed things up or slow things down.
If you are editing an action sequence, you are probably going to have a ton of quick cuts one after the other. You are quickening the pace.
If you are editing an intimate dialogue scene between two characters but the actors run through the dialogue too fast, you can always slow things down with reaction shots or some other type of coverage. This really helps to lessen the pace.
The bottom line is to remember to piece everything together in a way that makes sense, is appropriately paced, adds visual interest, and keeps the story moving forward all the way to the end.
Now that you have a better understanding of the kinds of creative decisions you have to make when editing a feature film, the only thing left to do is to acquire the technical knowledge that will allow you to carry out these creative decisions.
The Technical
I do all of my film editing in Adobe Premiere Pro CC. I’ve already written about the importance of organization and how I do this in the Project Panel before I begin any project.
I’m going to write exclusively about the editing process, so, let’s imagine all of the files have already been imported and that all of the organization is now complete.
Workspaces
When it comes to Adobe Premiere Pro, you have several different Workspaces to choose from.
A Workspace is just the way in which the panels are arranged and what panels are open in the User Interface (UI).
If you choose Window on the menu bar at the top and then Workspaces, you will see all of the options available.
You have the option of creating and saving your own Workspace, along with: All Panels, Assembly, Audio, Captions, Color, Editing, Effects, Graphics, Learning, Libraries, Metalogging, and Production.
A lot of my films have contained chapter titles, and I do all of the production credits myself. When I do this, I use the Graphics Workspace.
When I’m doing color correction and grading, I use the Color Workspace.
I use the company, Rev, for closed captioning and subtitle creation, but on occasion I do create my own closed captions, and when I do this, I use the Captions Workspace.
As for editing, I use the Editing Workspace. When you open the Editing Workspace, you’ll notice a specific arrangement of panels.
In the top left, you have the Source Monitor. In the top right, you have the Program Monitor.
Below those, starting from the left, you have the Project Panel, Tools Panel, Timeline, and the Audio Meters.
The Program Monitor and Timeline
The Program Monitor shows whatever is on your timeline. After you create a Sequence, you can drag files onto the timeline. From there you can move the video and audio clips around however you like.
You can expand them, contract them, cut them, along with a whole host of other things depending upon how you want to edit the clips.
These are all very useful things and I’m glad that you have these options in Adobe Premiere Pro, however, if you are doing any kind of professional editing and especially if you are editing a feature film, you really need to be utilizing the Source Monitor.
With professional film editing, precision is the name of the game, and the Source Monitor will allow you to be very precise.
Along with precision, the Source Monitor gives you more control over your clips and it can really help to streamline your entire editing process. So, how does it do that?
The Source Monitor
As previously stated, the Source Monitor is in the top left corner of the Editing Workspace.
It is used for viewing clips and choosing which portions of those clips are to be added to the timeline.
To add any file in the Project Panel to the Source Monitor, all you have to do is double-click the file and it will automatically open up in the Source Monitor. Or, you can right-click the file and choose Open in Source Monitor from the available options.
Let’s say you double-click a video file that also has an audio file merged with it and you open it in the Source Monitor. From here, you can push the play button on the Source Monitor to view and listen to the file.
Once you find a place where you want the clip to start at, you can hit “i” on the keyboard which is a keyboard shortcut for Mark In.
Then, when you find a place where you want the clip to end (where you want to make a cut), you can simply hit “o” on the keyboard, which is a keyboard shortcut for Mark Out.
If you make a mistake and want to start over, you can hit Ctrl+Shift+X on your keyboard, which is a keyboard shortcut for Clear In and Out.
You can then add the video and audio clip(s) to the timeline in a couple of different ways and I’ll get to that in a moment.
You can also use the keyboard shortcuts J, K, & L when working in the Source Monitor. K is the keyboard shortcut for Play/Pause. J takes the playhead backward or rewinds it, and L takes the playhead forward or fast-forwards it. Having these shortcuts can shave time off the editing process, which is helpful.
When working in the Source Monitor, you’ll also notice the Playback Control Buttons at the bottom of the Source Monitor Panel. Starting from the left, you have the Add Marker (M).
Then, you have: Mark In (i), Mark Out (o), Go to In (Shift+i), Step Back 1 Frame (Left), Play-Stop Toggle (Space), Step Forward 1 Frame (Right), and Go to Out (Shift+o). After that, you have the two greatest buttons known to man: Insert (,) and Overwrite (.).
Insert and Overwrite
Once you’ve selected your In and Out points for a clip in the Source Monitor, you have a couple of different options for getting that section of the clip onto the timeline.
You can Drag Video Only and/or Drag Audio Only onto the timeline where ever you like, although I rarely use this, I’m glad that it’s an option because I have used it in special situations.
The main two ways that I get video and audio clips onto the timeline from the Source Monitor is by using either the Insert (,) or Overwrite (.) buttons.
Insert performs as one would expect; it inserts the clip on the timeline where ever the playhead is situated and to whatever tracks you have selected as the source tracks.
Whenever you are working in the Source Monitor, you have source patching available for Inserts and Overwrites.
The first video track is selected by default, but you can change this simply by clicking to the left on any track beside the Toggle Track Lock icon on the track head.
The same can be done for audio tracks as well, but if you have more than one audio track per video file, multiple source tracks will be selected and you can specify which tracks you want the audio to go to.
Insert is also great because if you want to add a video and audio clip in between two other clips on a very busy timeline, all you have to do is position the playhead where you want to insert the clip and then select Insert.
What this does is to push all of the other video and audio files forward in perfect alignment without erasing anything and simply inserts the clips just as you planned.
Overwrite does just what you think; it overwrites or erases anything that is already on the timeline where you want the clip to go.
If you position the playhead over some video and audio clips on the timeline and choose Overwrite, instead of shifting all the other video and audio clips forward, they don’t move at all and the new clip simply takes the place of what was there before.
I use Overwrite a lot when I want to add a clip of audio to an empty track but I don’t want any of the other video or audio clips to move from their positions. An empty track is just a video or audio track you have added to the timeline that doesn’t have any clips added to it yet.
I do this by selecting the source track, which is empty, and then choosing Overwrite. It doesn’t erase anything since there was nothing there to begin with and all of the other clips stay in place.
You can also choose where specific clips go on the timeline using markers, but I don’t really use this method since Insert and Overwrite meets all of my needs.
You can fine tune an edit with the Ripple Edit Tool (B), as well, but I may write more about the tools in Adobe Premiere Pro in an upcoming entry and so I will save that discussion until then.
Film Editing is far more complex and technical then I had previously imagined before I underwent the arduous task of editing two independent feature films.
I hope this has helped to dissipate some of the mysteries and complexities surrounding film editing and that you now have a greater understanding of both the creative and technical aspects of the craft.
