Edit Suite: Aesthetics of Editing

Have you noticed how some videos move from scene to scene so smoothly it's almost as if you don t see the edits? Your mind can recall only the story, the images or the music from these great programs. Of course, you ve also seen videos that look so disjointed and "choppy" that the story never gets going, and the images don t pack their full emotional punch. What separates these two kinds of videos is aesthetics--specifically, editing aesthetics: how pleasant or unpleasant the arrangement of the pictures appears to the human eye.

Mastering editing aesthetics is more art than science, but there are some rules that most editors agree will help you tell a better story using moving images. Follow those simple rules and you can make the story in your next video flow effortlessly across the screen.

In certain ways, editing a video is similar to building a house or a piece of furniture. To do the job, you need a certain set of tools. To do the job right, you need to know how and when to use those tools. To edit video, you have a set of editing tools called transitions. The secret to making great video is learning when and how to use them.

Transitions help you tell a story with video. Each video transition sends the audience a subconscious message about what's happening on screen. By choosing an on-screen transition that supports what's happening in the story, you make the video easier for an audience to follow.

The cut is the simplest of these transitions. It inherited its name from the way film motion pictures are edited: by physically cutting the mylar film and reassembling it using splicing tape. On screen, a cut appears as an instantaneous change from one scene to another within a program. Your mind reacts to a cut the same way it reacts to eye blinks. Each eye blink clears the current mental image, and prepares your mind to process a new one. Blinks punctuate your visual study of the world around you. The cut edit mimics that behavior. It uses a familiar visual technique to present a story to your audience.

Cut edits are still the tool of choice when you want to tell a story with moving images. They ve survived the tests of technology and time for one major reason: they re invisible. Sure, you can spot when one scene cuts to another in a video, but notice that the cut itself has no tangible characteristics. Because it's hidden, it's less intrusive aesthetically than other types of transitions, and perhaps less likely to distract the audience from your story.

In addition to cuts, many special effects generators (SEGs) and switchers let you create more elaborate visual transitions to get from one scene to the next in a video. The dissolve is the most popular electronic transition. It's a gradual blending of two images as they transition from one to the other. In visual storytelling, dissolves most often mark the passage of time, or a change of location. The duration of a dissolve will affect how the audience reacts to it. Longer dissolves will slow the pace of the video, shorter ones will keep it moving quickly. The choice for you depends on the mood and pace of your project.

Fades are a type of dissolve that typically mark the beginning or end of a scene. The fade has roots in theater, where stage lights slowly turn on and off to signal the start and end of acts in a play. In a video, fading "up" from black to a title or moving image often signals the beginning of a sequence. Fading "down" from a scene to black commonly ends one.

Wipes, which are animated geometric patterns that work as visual transitions, give you a creative way to get from scene to scene. Instead of blending images together, like dissolves or fades, wipes use moving shapes and geometric patterns to reveal new images. The patterns may be simple, such as horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines. On better switchers or SEGs, you ll find more complex wipes. Venetian-blind wipes and circular clock wipes are good examples. Some SEGs may also let you use shapes like stars, hearts or other objects as wipe shapes.

As transition devices, wipes work best when they accent or enhance the action in a scene. In a wedding video, for example, a heart-shaped wipe is perfect to signal the emotions of the event. For videos about cars or motorcycles, circle wipes between scenes can suggest the spinning wheels of the vehicles in your program. You can use vertical wipes like theater directors use curtains to mark the beginning and end of a segment. Wipes from left to right across the screen can communicate the passage of time. Think of this technique as the visual equivalent of saying, "Later that day...."

Digital special effects encompass an incredible array of transitions, including slides, squeezes, zooms, page turns, strobe and mosaic, to name just a few. Each can have a pronounced visual impact on your story. If you choose a digital transition that fits the mood and pace of your story, it can add just the right amount of spice. If you choose an effect simply because it looks neat, you ll probably wind up confusing the audience. And be careful not to overuse digital effects in a program. Too many squeezes or strobes can completely distract the audience from your story. In most programs, a handful of digital transitions is all you need to add some sizzle and move the story along.

• Digg This!
• del.icio.us
• Technorati
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit