Whether you prefer the quick-cutting MTV style, a more traditional feature film-cutting style, or something you come up with all by yourself, the goal of editing is to successfully tell a story. In this regard, editing can be considered a continuation of the writing process: now that the film has been shot, the editor needs to do a “rewrite” of the script using the footage that exists. Because the footage has already been shot, this rewrite, or cut, will be limited to what was recorded by the camera. The editor might find that he can’t always remain true to the original story—the dialogue that looked great on paper seems long and tedious, the “montage scene” that was supposed to play for several minutes ended up consisting of a mere three shots, and so on. The editor’s job is to use the screenplay as a blueprint for the final story that will emerge from the footage that was shot.

Applied Three-Act Structure

If you’ve studied screenwriting (or read Chapter 2, “Writing and Scheduling”), you’ve probably heard the phrase three-act structure tossed about. Three-act structure originated with the plays of ancient Greece and is the basis for most Western visual storytelling forms. Three-act structure, put simply, means that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In a typical feature film, the first act, or beginning, ends about 30 minutes into the story; the second act, or middle, ends 45 to 60 minutes later; and the third act, or ending, comprises the last 30 minutes.

When editing, three-act structure can be applied to each scene and each sequence of scenes, as well as the film as a whole. The beginning, middle, and end of a scene are referred to as beats rather than acts. Another way to think of these three beats is the setup, the action, and the payoff. A typical chase sequence might start with a burglar breaking into a convenience store and setting off the alarm (the setup); he flees and is chased by the police (the action); but he escapes by gunning his car across a rising drawbridge (the payoff ). Sometimes, there is an additional half beat at the end for comic effect—a shot of the frustrated cops sitting in their car on the wrong side of the bridge. If a scene is missing one of these elements, it might seem odd, nonsensical, or boring. Keeping the idea of three story beats in mind can help if a scene or sequence you’re cutting seems awkward or unwieldy.

Building a Rough Cut

Doing the first cut of a film requires juggling many different elements: visuals, performance, sound, story, and music. And that’s just the start. There’s also pacing, tone, and structure. The first cut of a film or scene is called the rough cut because it’s pretty much impossible to get all those things right the first time. Rather than attempting perfection, its better to just take a stab at the material and worry about making it perfect later.

There are several ways to build the first cut of a scene using editing software. The simplest method is known as drag-and-drop editing. If your shots are named by scene number, shot number, and take number, sort them in that order. Select the good takes of each shot, and drag and drop them into the timeline in your editing app. The result will be a rough stringup of all the good takes of your scene in the order you selected them. If your software allows, switch to a thumbnail view in your bin and arrange the shots visually in an order that you think will work, and then select and drag and drop them into the timeline. If your scene is a complicated montage or action sequence, you might want to use three-point editing to create a more refined first cut of your scene.

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Watch Everything

Back in the heyday of Hollywood filmmaking, during the shooting process, the film stock would get processed overnight and the next day the director, cast, and crew would watch the “dailies.” These days, directors can watch their footage on the set, so dailies are rarely screened the way they used to do it. However, it’s common for the director and editor to screen footage in the editing room after the shoot.

Some people like to spend the first half of the day cutting new material and the latter half of the day watching footage for the next day. If it’s a documentary, the watching footage process can go on for weeks. However you decide to work, you’ll need to watch all the footage in order to do the best possible cut of the film.

Take Notes

You’ll never get a second chance to have a first impression of the raw material of your project, so take notes the first time you watch it. You don’t need to write down much—just ideas, things that stand out as great or problematic, and so on.

Radio Cuts

If the scene you’re cutting is based on dialogue, interviews, or a voice-over, a good way to build the first cut is to create a radio cut. The idea of a radio cut is to create an edit that sounds good first, without worrying about how it looks. You don’t have to avoid editing the visuals during a radio cut—it’s just not your first priority.

This method works equally well for scripted and unscripted projects. Using three-point editing, you can watch your footage, select the inand out-points for each line of dialogue, and then press the Edit button to add each line, in order, to your sequence in the timeline. Once you’ve created a rough string-up of all the dialogue, go through the scene and make sure all the dialogue edits sound good and that you’re happy with the overall flow of the dialogue. Now is the time to trim out extra lines, or add a pause where you think the content of the scene calls for it— such as after a particularly emotional, funny, or shocking line.

Master Shot—Style Coverage

If your scene was shot master shot–style (that is, a wide establishing shot and series of cutaways), you’ll want to set up a series of multiple tracks. Start by editing the entire master shot into your sequence as a guide track. Your scene probably has a selection of camera angles that can then be worked into your master shot. By adding extra video and audio tracks, you can edit other shots into the sequence by laying them in higher tracks, rather than by cutting up the master shot.

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Figure 14.2

Your settings should match this figure when you create a new project in Media Composer.

STEP 2: BRING IN THE MEDIA

Your new project will open and a bin called “Salsa Dancing Bin” will automatically be created. Bins work like folders: they contain clips and edited sequences. Double-click on the “Salsa Dancing Bin” to open it and then go to File > Import and navigate to the media that you downloaded from the companion Web site. Select the files and tell Media Composer to transcode the media to DNxHD 36 (see Figure 14.3).

STEP 3: WATCH THE FOOTAGE

The first step in editing is always to watch the footage.

But first, a little back story: this is a scene where James is trying to practice some salsa dancing steps in the mirror. He is embarrassed when Sherrie, his roommate’s mother who is visiting from out of town, walks in on him. Sherrie offers to help James with his dancing and uses it as an opportunity to grill him about her daughter.

Now that you know what the scene is about, go ahead and watch all the shots that comprise the scene.

Figure 14.3

Import the media and transcode it using the Avid DNxHD 36 codec.

Select the Script tab at the top of the bin. This will show you a thumbnail image of each shot and also let you take notes in the text area (see Figure 14.4). To watch a shot, double-click to open it in the source viewer on the left side of your screen and then press the spacebar, or click on the Play button.

As you watch, you can also add locators (Avid) or marks (Final Cut Pro). Locators are a way to make a note that stays associated with a specific frame in a shot. So if you want to make a note of the moment that a character enters frame, for example, adding a locator is the way to go. The locator button is on the far right under the source display and when you click on it, a dialog box will open that lets you add a comment that will stay on that frame until you delete it (see Figure 14.5).

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Figure 14.4

Select the Script view tab at the top of the bin to see thumbnails for each shot and a text entry area where you can take notes.

Figure 14.5

Locators let you make notes on a specific frame in your shot.

STEP 4: BUILD THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR CUT

Now you’ve watched all the shots, and you have probably developed some opinions along the way. Hopefully, you’ve taken notes or marked the takes you liked as good using locators. As you watched the raw, you probably noticed that there was a bit of a plan in place, in terms of the coverage. The scene is intended to begin with James dancing in the mirror and then cuts to Sherrie as she enters. They dance and end up at the mirror, where Sherrie grills him about her daughter.

Here is a list of the coverage for the scene:

nWide-master-LR.mov is the wide master shot, which covers all of the action in the whole scene.

nMed-master-LR.mov is the medium master shot. This shot favors “James” and covers the entire scene with a medium-wide 2-shot.

nSherrie-single-LR.mov is a single on Sherrie as she enters, and it only covers the beginning of the scene.

nJames-single-LR.mov is a single on James up to Sherrie’s entrance, and it also only covers the beginning of the scene.

nCutaway-feet-LR.mov is a cutaway of that actor’s feet during the salsa dancing portion of the scene.

nTwo-shot-LR.mov is a two-shot of James and Sherrie’s dialogue in mirror.

As you can see, there are two master shots of the scene—the wide master and the medium master. Even if you have an idea in your head of how the scene should be cut together, the wide master shot provides an easy way to create a very simple cut of the scene. You’ll have all the action and dialogue in one shot.

Double-click on the wide master shot to load it into the source display. Press Play and find the start of the scene. Set an in-point by pressing the “I” key and then set an out-point at the end of the scene by pressing the “O” key. Click on the “Overwrite” button in the center of your screen and the master shot will be added to a new sequence in the Timeline (see Figure 14.6). Note that the new sequence will appear in your bin as “Untitled Sequence.” Give it a name and save your project.

STEP 5: ADD SOME OTHER SHOTS

Now that you have the spine of your cut in place, you’ll build up the scene by adding coverage. The first order of business is to add the shot of Sherrie entering the scene. Double-click on Sherrie-Single-LR.mov and set in (I) and out (O) points for the part of the shot you want to insert into your master shot.

There are many different ways to build a scene, but one of the easiest is to roughly position new shots on different tracks in the Timeline. So this time, we are going to target video track 2 and some unused audio tracks by clicking on the V2, A3, and A4 track selectors on the left side of the timeline (see Figure 14.7). Press the Overwrite button and the new shot will be positioned around your master shot.

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Figure 14.6

Load the wide master shot into the source display, set an in-point and an out-point, position the cursor in the timeline, and press the Overwrite button to create the foundation of your scene in the Timeline.

Figure 14.7

Use the Track Selector buttons to choose V2, A3, and A4.

Don’t worry about the cut to the new shot being perfect. We’ll adjust that later in the next tutorial. For now, we’ll focus on covering the scene with the shots we like best. The medium master shot is the best choice for the dancing section, so double-click on it and use the same technique described earlier to select in and out points and edit it onto V2, A3, and A4. Next, move on to the shot that best covers the dialogue portion of the scene, Two-shot-LR.mov, and edit it onto V2, A3, and A4 as well. Your sequence should look something like Figure 14.8.

Figure 14.8

Use the red arrow to select the first shot on V2 and drag it to a good position in the Timeline.

Don’t Be Afraid to Try Different Versions

As long as you save copies of your sequences, you can always go back to an older version if you don’t like the changes you made.

STEP 6: ADJUST THE SHOTS

Watch your sequence. Remember that your editing software will play your sequence from the top down, so the shots on Video track 2 will cover up any video on the tracks below it, and so on.

Most likely, your cut is very rough, and the double dialogue is distracting. That’s okay. We’re not trying to make a perfect cut just yet. Instead, we’re trying to create a rough sketch of the basic structure of the scene.

Now we’ll use the Red arrow tool in the timeline to adjust the shots we added. Select the Red arrow from the Timeline toolbar and hold the Shift key as you select the video and audio for the single of Sherrie. The clips will turn a light blue color to indicate that they are selected. You can now drag and drop within the timeline to adjust the timing of each shot.

Notice that the displays above the Timeline have changed to Trim Mode. Drag the shot around until you think it’s in the right place and then do the same for the other shots you added.

STEP 7: COLLAPSE THE VIDEO TRACKS

Now that you have the basic shots of your cut in position, collapse the tracks by using the red arrow tool to drag the video on V2 down onto V1. Hold the Cmd key (Mac) or Ctrl key (Win) to drag the shot down to V1 without shifting its position in time. Your sequence should look like Figure 14.9.

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Figure 14.9

Use the red arrow tool to collapse all the video onto V1 in the Timeline.

STEP 8: CLEAN UP THE AUDIO

Now it’s time to get rid of the double dialogue. But we want to keep the audio from each shot available in our sequence in case we need it later, so we aren’t going to delete or overwrite any audio. Instead, we are going to use the Audio Mixer to turn down the volume of the audio we don’t need.

Make sure the A1 and A2 tracks are selected on the left side of the Timeline; then go to the pop-up menu on the Record display (see Figure 14.10) and find the Add Edit button (also known as the Razor button). Drag through your sequence while holding the Cmd or Ctrl key. The cursor will stop at each edit in your V1 track. At each edit, click on the Add Edit button to make a splice. Your sequence should look like Figure 14.10 now.

Figure 14.10

Use the Add Edit button to make splices in the audio tracks on A1 and A2.

From the Tools menu, select Audio Mixer. Position your cursor in the first place where you have double dialogue in the Timeline. This is the shot where Sherrie enters from the doorway. You want to keep the audio from Sherrie’s single, but turn down the volume on the wide master, which is on A1 and A2. Go to the Audio Mixer and drag the levels sliders all the way down (see Figure 14.11). Now do the same for the other place where there is double dialogue.