Michael Gough's
Hawaiian Production Diary

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THE EDITING PROCESS

23/9/00 Rough Cutting

It is now late September and I am beginning to contemplate editing. I have watched the video material and made a few brief notes about what is on each tape. I used to fully catalogue each shot but I've got lazy recently and merely consider them in thematic chunks. Working on a computer (Adobe Premiere 5.1) I now tend to capture these whole chunks then rough cut them on the timeline and save the edited chunks on the hard drive for finer trimming when I come to join them all together.

So for instance I might have captured a 6 minute chunk called "Snorkling.avi" then cut out all the instantly forgettable shots, and any that were duplicated (obviously keeping the best one). This I then save as a new file called "Trimmed snorkling.avi". Since the trimmed file might only be 3 minutes long I will therefore free-up disc space when I delete the longer original file.

This method suits me for a number of reasons. It enables me to satisfy my excitement in seeing the holiday tapes quickly. At the same time I can reject material that will never work on screen and concentrate each file on the best material. The cutting points are not accurate (to give me some flexibility later) so the process is fairly quick. I seldom rearrange them on the timeline, mainly keeping to a chronological "tidy up" job. It is based on the instant response "Do I like that shot or not". When I later come back to the "trimmed" files my mind is not tempted to include "second best" shots because they are no longer in the computer. If there is a gap I have to cover it through more imaginative editing or scripting rather than including a less than satisfactory shot.

Rough sequencing

I then line these "trimmed.avi" files onto the time line in expected order. Although each sequence is unedited and at least twice the final length it gives a good idea of the final structure. It is very easy to rearrange "trimmed" files if the order doesn't seem to work. It also helps to give an idea of how to script the video, especially which sequences will need "script links" to hold them together.

Choice of music

It also gives an idea of which sequences will need additional music and can help in choosing the music. The trimmed files can be viewed quickly with different pieces of music alongside. Since there is no attempt to actually cut pictures to music (or vice versa) at this stage it is an effective way to see if a piece of music actually works with the mood of the pictures.

The actual choice of music is very subjective. There are styles that match a gentle pastoral sequence as opposed to a fast action sequence which would be recognise by most people. It takes a very brave movie maker to pick something totally unexpected. I like using regional music and always buy a couple of local CDs as my own useful souvenir.

Ruthless editing

I have now got a fair idea of which sequences are essential and which ones may provide some individual shots but will otherwise not appear in the final video. I am spoilt for choice for including a hula sequence since they appeared throughout the holiday. The same is true of beach shots. Each day we went to the beach there seemed to be a bigger wave and someone being a bit more adventurous while surfing. Each day I was tempted to get a better shot than yesterday. In the end there is far more material than I need.

Editing must be ruthless. It is always essential to create an appropriate pace to a video and that will be ruined if we include unnecessarily repetitive shots. Inevitably it will mean cutting out some shots that are of good quality yet they don't add anything to this production. I strongly believe that the quality of editing depends as much on what is rejected as what is retained.

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