The Videomaker's Journey: part seventeen
Editing Principles for Beginners Use the links in the text to move between
sections.
B: ADVICE FOR BEGINNERS ON TRAVEL AND FAMILY VIDEO
Good editing requires patience.
Beginners should keep to the minimum requirements that will provide the movie
they want. I include all the popular rules but I have also added a few advanced
features that I use - these are easily handled by the average amateur movie
maker.
If you have travel and family video shots: trim and adjust them with
a simple edit operation, make DVD copies for easy viewing and archive them
for safe storage. At a later date, if you wish, you can then edit them down
to a series of short movies.
If the old stuff is really bad - maybe you can convert it into a series of
stills.
If there are short clips that are not too bad you may be able to make the
scene watchable like this: convert the first frame into a 3 second still,
then let the video run for a few seconds and finally convert the last frame
into a 3 second still.
Examples of how to do this are shown in Clip 1 Problem Video and
Archiving
These notes will help a beginner to get started, they describe in detail
the system I use. After you have edited a few movies, you can then move onto
your own preferred system.
Load the video shots to your computer.
Trim the material to remove the accidental shots of the ground and the sky.
Trim the start and end of each shot to remove dead time and shaky bits.
Insert title cards throughout the video so as to identify the various locations
and the people in the video shots. Do not superimpose the information on
the video - this makes those shots unusable in future edits.
Archive the video clips to MiniDV tape or a spare external hard drive. I
put them on both so that I have a backup. Refer to
Part 19 "Archiving".
If you want to, you can later edit it down into short movies so as to provide
an easy-to-view reminder of the various events.
You should add a black leader and a black tail at the end of the movie. These
bits of video should be about 5 seconds long so as to make it easy to make
copies on a DVD recorder.
I have two friends that have a lot of trouble with black leader. Sometimes
a DVD recorder or a computer will not recognise that there is a video signal
there and will not start loading. If that happens to you - roll the tape
forward to the first couple of video frames with pictures, and then see if
it will load from there. [A practical work-around is to make your own "black" by shooting a black
card with one tiny white spot on it near one edge of the image, or creating
a still image in a paint program, import that and stretch it for as many
seconds as you need. Some systems also require soundtrack before they
recognise the existence of the video. Copy any old soundtrack under the black
leader but make sure the volume level on it is set to almost zero.]
When editing such short movies, the editor has to hope that the camera operator
got in close and also took some cutaways and reaction shots. Use the rules
as set out for dramas, where appropriate.
Refer to Clip 1 Problem Video and Archiving - (see above)
Problem video - Oberammergau, an Austrian town in Bavaria
Raw video which has already been trimmed as suggested in steps 2 and 3 above.
First system fix - edit a "Series of stills" - where the video is really
bad.
Second system fix - edit a "3 Seconds still + moving video + a 3 seconds
still" - where the video is not too bad. Separate the clips with a bit of
black as shown in the example.
Archiving - The Lake District, UK - Grasmere and Ambleside
An extract from travel videos in Britain with a title card describing the
locations.
Exercises
If you don't have any raw video, now is the time to start practising the
video shots and do some editing - refer to Part
1 and Parts 4 /
5 / 6 /
7 / 8 /
9 - just reading about it is not good enough
- you will forget some of the information and suggestions.
Editing Short Movies
That is if you have a lot of video that you want to reduce down to something
that will be watchable. The length of the edited clips should normally be
as shown below, but when on the site take longer shots - remember to look
around for close-ups and cutaways:
Average clip 3 seconds to 4½ seconds, or 3½ to 5 seconds with 1
second cross fades.
Long clip 9 seconds, take care - keep it shorter rather than longer.
There will be special situations where you will want to take longer shots
of family situations, parades, school concerts and other events.
Reaction shots and cutaways - length to be a minimum of 1¾ seconds ie.,
one second and 17 frames. If you want to edit your travel and family videos
to a more advanced state - browse through the "Further Advice For The Making
Of Dramas" - then select the features you want to use.
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Art work by Tony Kendle.