ASIDE: how to find an editor

Should eventually make this into own tome, but for now will leave it here. if you’re seeing this, it probably means you have already been confirmed to have all of these things. Good job.

1. Ask around
2. Judge punctuality, personality, and strong character.
3. Judge relative skill with the specific project you’re working on
4. Dig into some of their past work (look up project from their reel, figure out their exact role on it

HOW WE EDIT NON SLATED CHEAP SHIT PROJECTS

Disclaimer, this is intended for editors who are completely new. If you’re being brought on with some degree of industry experience already under your belt, parts of this will likely seem somewhat condescending. I’m sorry about that. You still have to read it, as this is how we work.

FIRST STEPS

1. Log the Footage, Build the Stringout

Rename every shot in the NLE (not the actual file), starting with the camera letter, then a number of numbers equivalent to the order of magnitude of the total number of shots coming from that camera (so if there are 200 shots, you number each one starting with 001, then 002, then 003, etc.), then a simple description (I’ll be calling it a “slugline”) describing the shot, and use hyphens instead of spaces, keep everything lowercase.

For a good example of logging, say you have 30 shots, you’d rename the first clip in Resolve by pressing F2, typing 01, then using dashes instead of spaces to write out the slug. The slugline should be a basic summary of the action and relevant info, noting things like the camera angle and any slow motion (I personally just type slo). The full template is:

(camera letter)(shot number)-(slugline)

So the first shot from the secondary camera on a real estate shoot with 60 shots on that card might be logged as “b01-wide-living-room-pan-slo” or something. The numbers at the front make the name unique, and the description/shot codes help you know what you’re looking at when you see the list of files, and make clips searchable. Do this with every shot.

If there’s raw unsynced audio, use the auto-sync feature on your NLE to try and sync it (you should just be able to select everything, all the audio, all the footage, and then right click and select “auto-sync audio -> based on waveform”, in Resolve at least).

Add in and out marks to cut off the unusable footage only. That means you don’t set an in point after footage that is bad, but only after footage that is unusable (insanely shaky, crew or film equipment in shot). So, you set the in point after the slate is pulled, but before the subject burps for 30s. I still want to see the burp. Or for non-slated, you’d set it after the camera stops shaking so much, but before anything actually happens. Same goes for the end, set the out point either all the way at the end if the shot is good to the end, or slightly earlier if the sound guy starts hitting the talent with the boom mic (add that to bloopers)

Now you build the stringout. Take everything, from every camera, and dump it all onto one SD (1280x720) timeline, put all the unaccompanied audio at the end, and add timecode and clip name. In Resolve, you do that by going to “workspace -> data burn in” and in the popup you check “record timecode” and “custom text 1” and in the field that you get you enter “%clip name” and select it with the tab. Use the options there to make it look pretty and position the text in one of the corners, then render it out on the cheapest, fastest settings you can find. Then send it to me, or whatever Director you’re working with.

2. Watch it All

I/the director will also be watching through everything. You need to at least once-over all of the footage, and the director will do the same, and then they’ll give you notes. The shots they like, the timecodes where good reactions they want included are, etc.. Ideally before this you also got a general outline and creative brief telling you the general vibe and bplot beats the director wants from this footage, so these notes should really build off of that.

DRAFTS

THE ROUGH CUT

At this point most of the due dilligence is done, and your personal editing workflow can start to take over. There will likely be stipulations about what shots you need to use, from both the the specific category tome and the director, and it will be up to you to build out a rough cut that integrates all of those shots, falls within the designated timeframe, is in spec (proper resolution, sound is at least partially mastered) and fulfills the clients needs, without being pretty (just yet).

One thing you can start working on is systems. So for RE videos, for example, you want the shots to generally line up with the layout of the house and any applicable narration from the realtor, so a common pattern is to take a wide shot from a particular room and pair it up with 2-3 narrower shots that show specific features. Put a bunch of those “mini stories” together and you have a complete, cohesive video. This also allows you to cut much tighter, and spend less time on each shot, because the change between shots is less drastic. This will allow you improve the pacing and show much more in less time. Every type of video will have those patterns, they’ll all be given general outlines in the tomes,

Don’t worry too much about the fine-grain edits or nitpicking just yet, your goal here is to get the video made in very broad strokes. So, reusing the RE video example, you might just start by placing a wide shot for each room and featured exterior on the timeline, then ordering them in a way that flows well, then adding in the detail shots. It might be that simple.

Knowing how to use hotkeys and 3-point editing is a must here, as well as having a mind for systematizing (as described above with the RE example) this is just the broad strokes of the final product, you don’t need to get super in-depth here, just tell the story in as simple and no-frills a method as possible.

Then you leave the data burn-in, export at a low resolution, send that off to the director for notes, COPY AND REPLACE THE TIMELINE (so that you always have a first draft to go back to just in case something goes wrong, probably also a good idea to back up the actual project file at this point), and relax for a bit.

THE REVISION

The director will send back notes, with the intention of bringing the project, still in broad strokes, back into line with his vision (if they start getting nitpicky here, lmk). You’ll make those revisions, and now you’ll start focusing on the details, just a bit.

So now that you know the footage, have a general draft outline for the video, and can see what the problems are, at this point it’s good to start fixing the main ones, filling out the b-roll, etc.. Ideally with these systematized productions, you won’t need a second major revision, and from now on we’ll be doing tweaks. As a general rule, the first 80% of the editing job should be done in the first 20% of the time (thanks Pareto). So hopefully, after you make the changes, and you repeat the process of sending the director this second draft, at this point it’s just a couple more rounds of minor tweaking to get the video extremely polished. This is where you get to try out the fun stuff.

Again, of course, you backup the project, and copy everything into another timeline, so you still have this draft to fall back on in case the experimentation you and the director do from this point on goes horribly wrong.

THE TWEAKS

So from this point on the director should just be nitpicking, and every once in a while you or they will get an idea and you’ll be experimenting with alternative methods to tell the story. Your goal is simply to get it as clean as possible, have it flow as efficiently and smoothly as possible, and make sure all the main beats get hit, and doing final checks to make sure the specs are all met.

I’m not giving as much instruction here, because this is really your time to shine, provide input and ideas, and help make the project better. My lack of words doesn’t mean this portion will be short. If this process is done correctly, the majority of our time with you will be spent on this section.

Once it’s clean and set, the director will call picture lock, and it will go on to sound and color, and you will get paid.