Edit Suite: Play It Again!

Newbies make videos like photo albums with sound, discarding the bad pix and mounting the good ones in order. When they've pasted a shot in their "album" they think it can't be mounted again elsewhere because they've already used that "print."
But a snapshot album is a terrible metaphor for effective video. Your source footage isn't a record of reality; it's raw material for creating the appearance of reality. When you add a shot to your edited program, you don't "use it up" like a drugstore print; you just copy it, leaving the source available for re-use elsewhere.
Why would you want to use a shot more than once? By repeating footage you can fill program holes, adjust timing, create comedy, develop rhythmic patterns, and achieve all kinds of other unique effects.
Normally you don't want your viewers to realize that they're seeing the same thing again, so re-using shots takes finesse. We'll show you some tricks for getting away with it, and, more importantly, some good sneaky reasons to "play it again."

Procedural Stuff

In using raw materials more than once, traditional tape-based editing is just as effective as computer-based nonlinear. In recycling source material, you don't lose an extra generation because you always copy from the camera source. That way, the tenth appearance of a shot in your edit master is the same generation as the first one.
However, since most linear systems lack time code, it's important to log and track shots as closely as control track counting allows. Discipline yourself to establish a start point, zero your counter there each time, and roll down to the footage you want.
Digital systems take discipline too. In Adobe Premiere, for example, you can duplicate the same clip as often as you like, but the result is a bin full of clips that look frustratingly similar. It's a good idea to rename repeat clips, so you can keep things straight. Here as elsewhere, a good editor should combine the soul of an artist with the work habits of a bean counter. And you wonder why great editors are rare.<…