Edit Suite: Real is in the Eye of the Beholder

From time to time we’ve shown you how to create program elements in post production that couldn’t be recorded during shooting because they weren’t there to record. In one example we had a performer get out of a truck that didn’t exist. In another, we faked the arrival of an actor by helicopter. Strictly speaking, these tricks didn’t create trucks or helicopters; they merely suggested their existence, using careful framing and sound effects, and let the audience do the creating.
The power of suggestion is one of an editor’s most versatile tools. To fully understand how to use this tool we need to go beyond specific truck or chopper effects to discover the principles that lie behind them, the principles of juxtaposing, layering, and timing. You can use each of these principles to add elements to programs; and when you can orchestrate all three at once you can get away with murder (in some fiction videos, literally).
For simplicity, let’s say that juxtaposing means placing one thing after another. Layering means stacking one thing on top of another. Timing means deciding how long each thing stays on the screen (or audio track).

Juxtaposing

To make sense out of what they’re seeing, viewers instinctively organize visuals by relating them to one another. If a very low angle of a toddler teetering on a window ledge is followed by a high angle of an adult looking upward in horror, the audience will mentally connect the content in the two separate shots and conclude that the adult is reacting to the baby’s plight.
Juxtaposition is commonly used to play tricks with space-to suggest that the baby is on a ledge "way up there" and the adult is "way down here." In the real world, the toddler may be a foot above the waiting arms of its mother, just out of frame below (see Figure 1). In fact the window ledge (chosen because it’s safe enough for the baby) may be miles from the main location; so the actor reacting to the child may not be able to see her at all.
You can also juxtapose separate shots to suggest an action. I once had to show an eight-year-old boy trying to drive a sports car in a high-speed chase. I had lots of footage of an adult driver (invisible behind the car windows) slamming the speedster through its paces on a mountain road. I also had shots of the boy behind the wheel, with the background framed to conceal the fact that the car wasn’t moving. (The front end was up on jacks so he could easily turn the wheel.)
The editing trick was to match the action. When the actual chase footage showed the car swerving around an obstacle I cut in a closeup of the boy yanking the wheel left and then right again. When an obstruction loomed ahead, I dropped in an insert of his short legs straining to reach the brake pedal-and so-forth. The moral is that just intercutting the boy and the car would not have sold the gag. The juxtaposed shots worked because they suggested cause/effect relationships between the separate pieces.
Finally, you can juxtapose separate shots to suggest thought or feeling. Imagine a shot of a performer looking expressionlessly at a line of foods before him on a buffet table. Cut to a point-of-view shot as the camera pans across: carrot sticks...cucumber slices...celery stalks...sinful chocolate pie...crackers... then pans back to that pie and stops. Cut back to the performer and the audience knows exactly what’s been running through his head.
Juxtaposing separate shots so that 1 + 2 = much more than 3 is a simple, powerful way to use the power of editing suggestion. The next step up is to use this technique on two or more program elements at a time. You could call this layering.<…