Video Editing: Go with the Flow

Bill Davis
July 2002

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Have you ever been hypnotized? If you've ever been to the movies and found yourself completely lost in the story, you have. A well-edited movie does exactly that, and it's not a bad thing. It captures the imagination in a way that virtually takes over the brain. We surrender to the story and forget about reality until the credit roll brings us back to earth.

In fact, this hypnotic effect is often so powerful, that if the progression of images is interrupted if things don't flow smoothly from one idea to the next we experience a shock.

If you're ever in a movie theater and the film unluckily breaks, you'll know the feeling. From total immersion to a big, blinding white screen in an instant; the groans that follow are the sounds of pure frustration.

So, when you start to edit moving pictures on your own nonlinear editor, it helps if you pay attention to the techniques that have been developed over time that encourage the audience to engross itself in the flow of action.

Many techniques that encourage visual flow come under the heading of "matching action." They are really nothing more than a set of simple rules that help keep the viewer oriented and the action flowing from one scene to the next.

One of the most basic types of matching action is simply making sure each shot follows a logical progression.

Consider the traditional sequence of a person walking through a door. The usual progression one would use might be :

Shot 1 - A wide shot of an actor approaching a door.

Shot 2 - A closeup of the door handle and a hand reaching out to grab it.

Shot 3 - A medium shot of the hand pulling the door open and the person walking through.

Shot 4 - A reverse angle from inside the door showing the character entering the new room.

Shot 5 - A wide shot showing the door close and the character established in the new room.

This shot progression is basic. We know what it's like to enter a room, so everyone has the same expectation of which scene follows which. What makes the difference between good and bad scene flow is the precise timing of each scene; how much footage you allow before and after each central action.

Look at the sequence in Figure 2A. There is a deliberate error in the In and Out points between the two shots to show a common editing mistake.

Notice that at the Out point of the first shot, the character's hand is just beginning to rise toward the door handle but at the In point of the next shot, the hand is already on the handle. A straight cut at these points in action would yield a jump that would feel rushed.

Instead, an experienced editor would either allow the action in Shot 1 to continue until the hand reaches closer to the door handle , (Figures 2B) or would move the In point of Shot 2 ahead in the action in order to put some buffer between the scenes. Cutting to the door handle prior to the hand entering the frame, then letting the hand enter the scene and grab the handle, would match the action the audience expects, even if the time between those actions is less than real time.

And that's an important point. Cutting between expected scenes in a flow doesn't mean you always have to maintain a real-time relationship between them. The audience often won't notice if you cut time out of a sequence as long as the action is smooth and flows logically from one scene to the next.

The overall goal of every editor should be to understand what each scene needs to contribute to the program and to make sure it remains on-screen exactly long enough (and not one frame longer) to accomplish the scene's objective.

One clear sign of amateur editing is scenes that run too long. The rule of thumb for scene pacing is the same as in all good moviemaking: if it doesn't help the audience follow the action or help move the story along, get rid of it.

If you watch first-class editors at work, you'll notice their obsession with trimming scenes to perfection. They'll typically set an initial edit point, then set up a playback loop that runs through the edit point. Then, they'll play the transition over and over while using their Trim Edit keyboard commands to lop frames off the head and tail until the edit feels just right and every unnecessary frame is gone.

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