transitions...

ruester

ruester

Well-known member
Hey all!
It has been a while since I've been here, I have been busy being broke and taking large jobs for small pay, yay! You'd be surprised at how busy you become when you have no money - haha.

Anyhow, I just broke my violin so on to the question...

I recently completed a project that had quite a few interviews with musicians, and the interview introduced their performances. Of course I had to edit down the interviews to manageable chunks, and I only had one camera available. (Using Premiere, after effects CS4)

My question - I mostly used cross dissolves and additive dissolves between the edits, but that kind of got weird on heavily edited interviews - what do you all prefer when editing someone down. I know having a second camera would have helped, or footage to cut away to, but the format, and budget didn't support that, how might you have handled that? Are there schools of thought on this? (BTW - the show is destined for European TV, but my question is in regards to going forward, and who knows where the next project will end up - not even sure if that matters)

Thanks all
 
You just stated every editors nightmare...no shots to cut away too and no other shots of the interveiws. You will have to either create tricks in post or go shoot some quick cut-away shots, whether it's of instruments or CD covers or band member photos, something that would be easy to shoot and makes sense for the subject of the doc.
 
well, it's too late to fix what I have, they've already taken it... (but they were extremely happy with it, which is great, but I really need to avoid it in the future)

Kess mentioned something about creating tricks in post... what tricks?

The style of this show was documentary, and it didn't make much sense with the format (that was forced by the material) to cut away to something else (minus a different angle / size - which we didn't have)

What kind of post tricks can be used?

Thanks again
 
Planning is more important than anything else, and it depends on the project. Have an understanding in your head of how it needs to look before committing to the shots. Relying on post production tricks won't work in the long term.
 
I guess I should explain -

Most of the footage I got was already shot, minus the interviews. I asked for a 2nd camera and the client said no. There was nothing to use for B-roll that made any sense and wouldn't take you (the audience) out of the moment.... AND I have a feeling this may happen again, since this guy wants to throw me more work (himself and others) and will hopefully pay more, but at this point in my economical situation, I am not able to refuse much... soooo....

I would love to be armed with as many tricks up my sleeve as I can possibly have - so any little thing would help, I know there are proper ways to shoot and plan, but sometimes it can not be avoided and I certainly would like to add a little something to make it just that much better, under the circumstances.

What kind of tricks exist to help out in situations like these - just in case...
 
I was thinking of tricks such as taking shots and cropping, coloring, adding effects, etc. in order to make them apear as if they were separate shots...can be done, but those can shots can look forced. Sounds like they simply handed you some footage without your input. The key is that you knew what was needed, but the client did not allow it...and it's unfortunate.
 
Yeah, things mentioned above can help. Honestly, it might be best to just stick with jump cuts and make sure they know that you would have done it otherwise given the chance. Explain the advantages of different shooting before taking the job so they don't think it's just you. It sounds like, in this case, the client wasn't too concerned with it looking great, so they probably knew they were making a compromise in the first place.
 
If you've only got one camera and you want to cut it up smoothly or add fades, I've found that flopping horizontally and zooming in as much as you can get away with before the picture totally goes to $h:t can create the impression of a different shot. Or even just zooming in. Then some form of widescreen matte generally helps too.
 
I think we're all in agreement.
Long interviews + no cutaways = nightmare.

But, it' a nightmare we've all had to deal with.

Over the years I've done a number of things, some out of
plain desperation. Here are a few:

1. Do a very fast dissolve (like you mentioned). If the interviewee
doesn't move much, you can zoom in slightly (5%) to line up their
eyes between cuts. Makes the dissolve much cleaner.

2. You can "morph" between cuts. This can be very effective and
cool looking, depending on the subject matter. Here are some links:

http://www.debugmode.com/winmorph/
http://library.creativecow.net/articles/zwar_chris/morph.php

3. Zoom in and out very fast. Snap zoom in at the end of the first
clip (say 500%) and snap zoom out from the beginning of the
second clip. Takes a little trial and error to get the timing right.

4. When all else fails - grab images off the web.

I had to use that last technique on a recent project.
1 hour of interviews to cut down to 5 minutes. No
b-roll whatsoever. No budget for additional shooting.

I just grabbed some relevant hi-res images off the
web, added slow zooms or pans and voila! A complete
video. Desperate times...

I hope this is helpful!

Peter
 
Depending on the pacing, you can flip a shot horizontally and make is black and white. I see that a lot in edgier interviews. I've even had to use this trick once or twice for a BTS on my last film.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top