“Foundations of Video: the Art of Editing” Instructor: Norman Hollyn Date Taken: May 2019 Published on July 9, 2019
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Notes on the online course “Foundations of Video: The Art of Editing” Instructor: Norman Hollyn Date Taken: May 2019 Published on July 9, 2019 A. Overview An important part of filmmaking after the camera stops rolling is editing your footage to tell a story to your audience. There are some foundations that must be learnt before starting the editing process. For example, how to examine a script, review the materials, and shape the raw footage into a work of art. The course starts with an overview of concepts such as the rule of threes, review a sampling of footage from films past and present, and then dive into script analysis. Find out when and when not to cuts, how to collaborate with clients and directors during recutting, and how to ground the emotional backdrop for your piece with music and sound. The course closes with a look at adapting to different genres and filmic styles. The Learning objectives of this course: Exploring the history of video editing Controlling what the audience sees Identifying the logline Performing script and scene analysis Coming up with an editing plan Cutting from on-camera to off camera action Understanding the value of recutting Shaping moments with music Working in a specific genre Mixing editing styles together The reasons behind taking this course is to learn WHY because other courses can teach me HOW, and also it provide an understanding of story before as an editor start editing. B. Introduction Defining terms The beginning of the course defines some terms, so the instructor used it in script analysis later. The SHOT term, in editing a shot is defined as the footage between two edits. Types of shots are (Appendix 1): Wide Shot (WS) Medium Shot (MS) Medium Wide Shot (MWS) Extreme Close UP (ECU) Medium Close up (MCU): The size of this shot is between a medium and a close up. Camera movements are: Dolly Shot: The camera goes alongside the subjects. (Dolly front, behind, or diagonally). Zoom in/ out. Pan: the movement of the camera side to side. Tilt: the movement of the camera up and down. Shots can be defining by the height of the camera in relation to the subject. A high angle shot means the camera is above the subject. A low angle shot looks up at a subject. Slate: it's used to create a sync point between the picture and sound, but it's also used to identify the take that we are about to look at. Name of the production project Director name Cameraperson name Shooting date/time/interior or exterior If there's synchronously recorded sound then that's also a good thing for us to know, so the word sync should be circled. If it's silent, then the letters MOS will be circled Roll represents digital card number New scene number means the script moves to a new location or a new time. What’s that letter E all about? Well each time that you change the size of the shot, like when you go from a closeup to a wide shot, or change what's in front of the camera, you are creating a new setup, which is kind of short for camera setup. And each time you create a new setup, you should label it with a new setup letter. Each time you roll the camera on that particular setup, that's called a take. Dana Haddadin 2 Dana Haddadin 3 Shots that are meant to match each other are called complementary angles. Dana Haddadin 4 1. Introduction to the Editing Process The instructor dive into the history of editing so as editors can understand how the storytelling has developed and have affected audience mind. I quote parts of the video tutorial named “Exploring the history of editing”. “Edwin S. Porter, figured out how to combine that idea of a close-up and the idea of editing different shots together and created an end to his movie, The Great Train Robbery, which apparently drove audiences crazy. The film is mostly those same wide shots which tell the story of a group of bandits who rob a train and are chased by a posse. The shots go on very, very long by today's standards but at the very end, Porter cut to a medium shot of a bandit who raises his gun, points it straight at the camera, and fires six times. That shot changed cinema to such a degree that several filmmakers have included shots in their films as an homage to it.” “The camera could move around and create different size shots that could be attached to each other to create a very specific reaction from the audience and that is the foundation of everything that we will learn in the course to get a very specific reaction from an audience.” “Attaching different angles and different shots to each other will always affect an audience. And this is what those early film making pioneers discovered”. Norman then moved to explain a crucial concept which he says that controlling how the audience feels is to control what the audience sees. The Neuroscientific studies using eye tracking have proven that our eyes will tend to go to something that is different. So we know that we can control the audience's eye through changing something on the screen, size, color, movement can all pull your viewer's eye to a very specific part of the frame. Another important concept is how we can shape an audience's reaction to your material. How to control the mind's eye. This is really the key to all of our story telling. The instructor invents a simple scene to explain the Rule of Threes and here what he concluded: “we need to know what Brian is going through and what we want the audience to experience. In our script, Brian is supposed to be scared about seeing the money because he didn't expect to see it there. he has enemies, sure, but he didn't know that they had come to his work. When he sees the money he is going to worry if this is a trap. If we want the audience to be scared from the moment he walks in the room, then we might choose the version where we see the briefcase first. If we want the audience to be surprised like Brian, then, the first version is perhaps the best choice. The most important thing to understand, is that we had three different reactions, depending upon only one thing. How we arrange the footage. And that's editing.” Dana Haddadin 5 “The Rule of Threes means that the impact of a shot is completely dependent upon the shot that came before it and will indelibly affect the shot that comes right after it. This concept is also known as the Kuleshov effect after the early film making Russian pioneer Lev Kuleshov, who experimented with cutting an impassive actor's face.Next to a person in a coffin, a bowl of soup, and an attractive woman. When he showed each of the three versions, he got three different reactions to what the actor must have been thinking.” A concept called the Lean Forward Moment. This is perhaps the key concept that will help you when you're editing no matter what type of project you're working on. Lean Forward Moments are the moments when the audience will emotionally lean forward and pay more attention. So in order to understand the concept, the instructor screened an old film directed by Sergei Eisenstin named “Battleship Potemkin” and here what he concluded “We can see that we are coming from chaos. That is shot on a lot of quickly cut wide and medium wide shots. We are not really focusing on any one person in particular, and the music is quite busy. As we move into the area, where Eisenstein wants us to feel for the mom and her son. He and his editor started to slow down the pace of the cuts. We are also starting to see more close up shots, right? So, Eisenstein has changed the pacing of the editing, the size of the shot, as well as focusing on just one major character. But something also changed around here. The music.As we'll discuss in a later movie, music is one of the most powerful ways of attracting the audience. So the fact that the music changes at this moment, also helps us to lean forward and pay attention to his message. This is the beginning of building the tool set, that editors use to manipulate the audience to feel what we want them to feel, to convey our message. But this only makes sense when we know the story we want to tell. When we know that overall story, we can figure out what each individual scene needs to do, to tell that story. And then we can find the Lean Forward Moments in each scene, that will help the audience to focus in on them.” Finally in this part Norman explained the Logline (arc of the film). It is the tool that you'll keep returning to again and again, during the editing process. What's great is that it lays out what is important about the film. And it applies whether you're doing a feature drama like the Godfather, a music video, a documentary, a short film, anything. Dana Haddadin 6 A short student film called Magellan, directed by Sebastian Davis Dana Haddadin 7 “So, we've learned that the movie focuses on Magellan, and as he makes the transition from awkward, frightened, loner, to engaged braver friend.