Video Editing Principles for Benevolent Propagandists
CJFP 04 - June 28th, 2024
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Read to the end to get a recommendation for a tool that cut my editing times in half.
As promised, this week has nothing to do with Apple or Artificial Intelligence.
This week, I’m returning to my roots and discussing an art form that can often be dismissed as overly technical by those who have never done it and overly simple by those who do it masterfully.
From an abstract perspective, what is video editing? Film, the ability to project and display moving images allows us to relive moments out of time. Through the power of editing, we can shape those moments and effectively display our dreams. That’s what a movie is, the director’s dream. However, while a stationary camera pointed at unfiltered reality can convey meaning, that image shown in conjunction with other images can convey additional, surplus meaning not present within either.
Let me explain.
The act of editing is so ubiquitous today that it passes by us unnoticed, but I think it’s always worth remembering that every piece of writing, imagery, film, etc that we come into contact with has almost certainly been adjusted to more closely align with a purpose or message meant for us to absorb without being consciously aware we are doing so. Insofar as we are rarely given “raw” glimpses of art, editing represents a form of meta-art. It stands as the mediator between us and an artist’s first attempt at conveying the human experience. Just as painters for millennia have practiced their masterpieces on alternative canvases or covered blemishes with new coats, the art of editing is used to bring an artwork more in line with its creator’s original vision.
In 1929, the soviet filmmaker and film theorist Lev Kuleshov conducted an experiment on the effects of film editing on meaning conveyance. The experiment was relatively simple by modern standards. Lev had a single, tight shot of an expressionless man which he would play for audiences. However, for different audiences, he would intersperse this scene with others such as a bowl of soup or a woman laying in a coffin or sitting on a sofa.
After each projection, when the audience was asked to describe the man’s expression, if shown the bowl of soup, would respond “hungry,” or if shown the woman would respond “grief” if proceeding the coffin and “lust” if proceeding the sofa.
What this experiment showed was that a sequence of images can carry not only explicit meaning but also implicit meaning. I mentioned this phenomenon a couple of newsletters ago, but it is one that anyone working with video should be aware of lest they accidentally give the impression their subject is lusty when they were meant to convey hunger.
A shot of a man looking directly into the camera and a shot of a bowl of soup each individually convey explicit meanings: “This is a man on camera, he is the subject of this scene. His gaze is mysterious” and “This is a bowl of soup sitting on a table. Its origins are unknown.” If shown in sequence, implicitly a new meaning is conveyed: “This man is gazing at this bowl of soup” and invites speculation. Does he want the soup? Did he make the soup? What is the soup making him think about?
That curiosity gap is where all creative marketing lives, but perhaps that is a subject for a future newsletter.
This phenomenon is often called the “Kuleshov Effect” or how the interaction of two images can convey meanings that are explicitly contained within neither.
In no particular order, what follows are some ideological tricks of the trade I’ve picked up over the years regarding video editing that I believe can help anyone who works with video take their art to the next level. This won’t be about what software you should use or the fine points of a cross-fade, but rather how a professional editor should think about what meaning their work conveys, unconsciously, without explicitly meaning to and how to use this effect to their benefit.
Jump and Mash Cuts
The general rule of thumb in editing is that each shot should contain some kind of continuity to the preceding shot. Each scene should be more or less in the same location, utilize more or less the same characters, and have more or less the same tone from shot to shot. Deviating from this rule, “jumping” to a shot that has nothing in common with the proceeding one can be disorientating, or can signal a scene change. Or if done mindfully, can express symbolic meaning.
Putting an image of a fireplace after an image of a tree signals destruction. Be mindful of this and never do it accidentally. Don’t cut from a children’s playroom to a fireplace if shooting a real estate video. If shooting a commercial for a hamburger, never cut to cows. If shooting a documentary on climate change, consider contrasting a shot of a traffic-filled freeway with one of a flash flood or wildfire.
A Shot’s Length Conveys Meaning
The final shot of the film The Graduate holds uncomfortably long. This is done on purpose to convey a meaning, a sense of unease. Wildlife documentaries hold on shots as long as possible so the viewer can soak in their majesty and appreciate their difficulty. If you’re cutting your shots short to save time, you are losing meaning and signaling to your audience, “This image is not meant to be considered.”
But maybe that’s what you’re aiming for! More on montages later.
Color Theory
While the science of color theory’s effects on mood is muddy, color selection’s impact on meaning can be easily observed. Consider movies you may have seen set in Mexico, what color comes to mind? Orange. What about movies set in the former soviet block? A pale blue. These color choices not only signal a particular location, but they also signal meaning: hostile and desolate or bleak and depressive.
Just like how films once could not rely on dialogue, films could not always rely on color to make an image interesting. Color is a privilege, use it to your advantage.
Don’t assume a particular color will automatically convey a specific meaning. You have to place that color in context in order to give it meaning. The green light across the lake in The Great Gatsby only symbolizes greed because of the greater context of the story. A green light in a Fast and Furious movie may symbolize ambition, for example.
Color is not a readymade power to be unleashed, it's a tool to be wielded or revoked as best suits your purposes.
If You Use Fonts, Know What You’re Doing
Something I was taught in an Advertising 101 class was that fonts are not arbitrary. This idea has stuck with me and gone on to inform how I see art in general. Digital fonts are the descendants of physical Typefaces which were letter stamps designed for use in printing presses. Various publications developed various styles of type for their distributions. Inherent in each font is an unconscious history, even if it is a digital replication. You may choose a font because it “looks nice,” but it may have been designed for a specific purpose and its design is meant to convey that meaning.
If undecided on a font, meditate on your project and seek out a font with a similar history. Even Comic Sans has a time and place.
You Probably Don’t Need Special Effects
The mark of an amateur editor is to lean heavily on graphics and special effects to make up for a lack of foresight. A steady, unchanging shot can easily be more impactful than one with several graphic overlays and effects if it’s framed well. The trick here is planning and knowledge of your camera. Make a script, have an idea before beginning production, and know how to achieve specific looks in-camera.
There can be merit in “Let’s just roll, see what happens, and fix what we need to in post.” But if you have the time, considering your shot selection and how to make a simple shot meaning-rich and well-lit will do more for you than an After Effects subscription ever will.
Your Audio and Video Should Stand Alone
As with color, the addition of audio to video was a revolutionary one. Before 1927, films were shown alongside live bands which would play their soundtracks. Spoken dialogue was rendered as text on slide cards shown after an actor moved their mouth. Taken for granted today is the fact that both audio and video are a single self-contained object rather than two independent mediums often shown together.
The trick here is this: Your audio and your video should be able to stand alone without the other. If you take away the visuals, your sound mix should be enjoyable to listen to and convey meaning even if it is only music. Your visuals should be interesting and meaning-laden enough to be shown silently without inducing boredom.
Much too often I see something that is shot beautifully but sounds atrocious. Don’t let the prevalence of silently auto-playing video on social media allow you to forget that audio is half of the video experience.
Effective Use of J and L Cuts
For the uninitiated, J and L cuts describe the direction of the offset when you purposefully misalign the video and audio on a particular cut. If your scene is ending and you bring in the following scene’s audio before the video changes, it’s called a J cut because of the shape it makes on the editing timeline. The opposite, bringing in the next scene’s video while retaining the previous scene’s audio is called an L cut for the same reason.
J cuts tend to be more common than L cuts, but both share a commonality in catching the audience off guard and forcing them to consider where they are in the story, what is going on, and why. These techniques can be used for comedic effect such as in the case of a character mentioning they need to use the restroom, the sound of running water, and then a cut to a river. It can also be used for dramatic effect such as with two characters sharing a tearful goodbye on a train platform, a cut to the train moving out of the station while their sobs from the previous scene can still be heard.
The underlying methods here are accentuation and contrast. Use J and L cuts creatively to explore scenes with iconic visuals or sounds and how they can be symbolically contrasted with one another. It’s usually said that when J or L cuts are done correctly, the audience won’t notice them. I think that’s true to an extent. The audience shouldn’t notice the cut itself, but they should have a spike in their curiosity even if they’re unaware of the catalyst.
Start on Action
This is one I learned in my undergraduate studies. It’s a great tip for really any kind of creative storytelling be it writing or videography. One hears often of “thumb-stoppers” today. That’s usually implied to be something random, shocking, or out of the ordinary. Something that breaks someone’s cycle of mindless phone scrolling.
I can think of plenty of uncouth things that would stop my thumb but certainly wouldn't engender me to a product or service so there must be more to it than that.
The tactic in general is a good one to keep in mind but can be approached in several different ways. One of which is beginning in the middle of your story as opposed to the beginning. Contrast a film like Star Wars which begins with a literal wall of text to an Indiana Jones or a James Bond film which cuts to the story “in progress” and gives a sense of liveliness.
Not only are you looking to stop their thumbs, but you’re also looking to pique their interest. Notice how medicine commercials almost never begin on the problem be it heartburn or depression. They begin on a birthday party or a game of catch, then disaster strikes.
Start your scene in the middle of the shootout and create a “curiosity gap.” An unspoken question that your audience can’t help but wonder. Who are these people? Why has this situation happened? Those are good questions. What is this and why do I care? Those are less good so make sure you give your audience something to latch onto like a name or a location.
Know your audience. If they’re short on attention span, forego an elaborate setup for dropping your audience right in the middle of the action in progress. Trust that they’re intelligent enough to orient themselves within the story and you’ll make something they’ll love.
Say it / See it
Another from my undergraduate studies. I was taught storytelling in regard to video journalism. In this field, one of the most crucial elements of video production is preventing your audience from being confused. You can do a lot to keep your audience where you want them by ensuring whatever is currently being displayed on the screen is being referred to in your dialogue. If you’re talking about it, your audience should be seeing it.
Now, this is not a hard and fast rule. It can be broken to great effect, but one should know what they’re doing if choosing to do so. If I’m talking about apples, but on screen, the audience sees watermelons, and in their minds, they begin to wonder what the connection is between apples and watermelons. That can be either distracting from your main point or if done purposefully, can be exactly what you want. If discussing heavy traffic within cities, for instance, an ant colony might do a lot to instill some emotion in your audience.
Continuity Cut
This is more of a mindset than a tangible technique. When on set, if looking for ways to spice up the creativity in your videos, always be looking for simple ways that you can connect themes or movements from one shot to the next. Ended one shot panning behind a wall? Begin the next panning out from behind a wall. Ended the previous scene with someone singing a song? Begin the next with someone turning off a radio. Ended a shot with someone flipping a pancake into the air? Begin the next with someone placing a hat on their head.
Continuity cuts can be continuations of movements or they can be symbolic continuations. They can be used to ease your audience into the next scene or to stir them from their comfort.
If You Use Default Transitions, Know What You’re Doing
If you’ve ever used editing software, you will have noticed that most come with a series of built-in transitions to use between scenes. In general, my thought is that these are overwhelmingly tacky for use in PowerPoint presentations, let alone your video projects. In my experience, 95% of the time, a simple jump cut works much better.
That said, similarly to font choices, these default transitions can have an appropriate time and place albeit few and far between. Watch the Star Wars films if you haven’t recently to see what I mean. They’re so full of card wipes and crossfades, that they look like someone’s first time using iMovie, but they practically invented that style. The Star Wars films owned that style so well that the reason they’re included in software today is as an homage to them.
The Montage
This is another thumb-stopping tactic. Of course, everybody knows the training montage from Rocky, that really is the epitome of a montage. A series of small vignettes can often do a better, faster job of telling a complex story than an in-depth exploration can. This is a thin line to walk however because you run the risk of belitting a large amount of your shots by exposing the audience to them before they’ve had a chance to appreciate them at length. I’ve really only used montages when editing sizzle reels or when I have a large amount of excess footage.
Consider the evolution of cooking videos. Cooking videos on today’s social media are typically many short cuts of various ingredients being prepared in various ways with a one-take VO playing over them. I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds these videos difficult to follow if I’m actually preparing the recipe. On social media just as on television, there are two kinds of cooking shows: those that are meant to entertain you and those that are meant to educate you. The entertaining shows are fast and pretty, the educational shows are slow and sometimes ugly. TikTok cook videos are hard to follow because they’re not meant to be. Rachael Ray’s show isn’t 30 seconds long because it’s not meant to be.
Once again, try to know your audience. If you can’t know your audience, at least know your content and purpose. Understand what you’re offering them. Are you trying to entertain or educate? If the latter, perhaps a montage is not for you. If the former, consider the montage a tool to acclimate your audience to a long story very quickly.
Nat Sound / Diegetic Sound
Another consideration from my journalism days comes from television news. Many news reports begin with a soundbite from the scene sometimes referred to as “nat sound” or natural sound. If the story is about a car crash, the video package begins with the sound of a siren. If covering the local fair, they’ll begin with a mooing cow or the sound of carnival rides. The reason for this is to quickly acclimate the audience to the story’s setting. It unconsciously signals to the viewer that “I’m not just speculating on what happened, I was there” and does so in an interesting way.
There are two kinds of “natural sound,” diegetic and non-diegetic, or those existing within the context of the video and those existing outside of it. It’s easier to understand like this: imagine there’s a character and a radio on screen and music is playing. If the character can hear the music, the music is diegetic. If the character cannot hear the music, the music is non-diegetic.
More than just for filmmaking, this differentiation between sounds within and without the context can be applied to natural sound in any video project. The key is the separation between the inner and outer world of the video. Each signals something different to the audience.
What do I mean by this?
If when shooting on location, you find a guitar player who is willing to let you record them, do so without hesitation, and do so for the entire length of their song. In post-production, you now have a choice whereas previously you didn’t. You can always find music online to play under your video project, but using natural sound can add a level of authenticity that you wouldn’t otherwise get.
Sound design is a brilliant field, but the best sound designers work with natural sound.
Inverted Pyramid of Importance
Here’s another consideration borrowed from writing, don’t bury the lede. That’s to say if your story is about a town’s mayor announcing while visiting the local farmers market that he will be selling the library’s AC units to raise funds to buy rocket-propelled grenade launchers for the police department, do not begin the story by talking about the farmers market’s offerings or how nice the weather was!
Obviously, this is a funny example, but you’d be amazed how often I see this happen. Don’t bury your lede. Know what the most important aspect of your story is and move it to the front. When organizing your videos on a timeline, consider the Inverted Pyramid of Importance. Make a mental note of the importance of every clip you arrange. Then as you begin your first draft, move the most interesting shots to the front and the less interesting shots to the middle, but make sure to save a “keystone” for last.
Chekhov’s Gun vs. Hitchcock’s Bomb
This is a classic, but it always bears repeating. “Chekhov’s Gun” refers to an old storytelling rule of thumb that states if you show the audience a gun in the first act, then by the third it should be fired. This is a good way to check if your story has any extra fat that can be cut. Every scene setting should have a purpose. Every line of dialogue should drive the story forward. Unless deliberately creating a red herring, every reference to an object, person, or piece of hearsay should have some kind of resolution.
I love Alfred Hitchcock’s interpretation of this aspect of storytelling. He once said to imagine how one might make a boring dinner conversation more shocking. His answer was to show the audience that there was a bomb under the table that would go off in 5 minutes which the main characters were oblivious to.
Now every previously boring dialogue has weight as the unsuspecting character’s mundane dinner takes on a new dimension of complexity. They’re asking how the salad is and you’re screaming at the screen for them to get up and run!
As an editor, for the most part, you control the information that your audience has at their disposal at any given moment in time. Use that to your advantage, but more importantly, don’t use that to your disadvantage either.
Trust Your Audience
Contrary to popular sentiment I do not believe modern audiences are stupid. I think they can occasionally be lazy because they’ve been treated as though they are idiots for the better part of the last 40 years. You can see this in the pacing of films from even a couple of decades ago.
Claude C. Hopkins said of advertising in his classic book Scientific Advertising that one shouldn’t write copy that tries to convince someone why they should pay attention to your ad. One should write copy for someone already interested because if they’re reading your ad, they’re already interested on some level. I believe this is an excellent universal rule that can be applied to everything from web design to book authoring.
Less is often simply less, not more. Short TikTok-style videos briefly entertain but leave something to be desired.
They are consumed not digested.
It is the same with an advertisement that has minimized its copy in the belief that its audience is illiterate and in the process alienated anyone who would like to learn more about the product but can find no additional details.
The modern person is busy and strapped for cash, not stupid. They have a shortage of attention because they have a shortage of time because they have a shortage of money. But they will make time for that which puts time back into their lives, puts money back into their pockets, or puts grandiose dreams back into their imaginations.
I want to end this week’s newsletter with three of my favorite pieces of advice when it comes to the creation of art for public “consumption.”
Don’t spoonfeed your audience the message. Give them the tools and let them piece it together. Imagine a cartoon shootout wherein the bad guy has fired a hundred rounds at the hero, but miraculously missed each shot, leaving only a perfect outline of bulletholes on the wall behind them. That is the best way to deliver a message. Give your audience all the pieces of information they need to see your point, but let them make the final connection and they will remember your art forever.
Always give your audience something in exchange for their time. The best editorial advice I ever received on something I wrote was “Make me fucking care because right now, I don’t care.” Unfortunately, your creations will only be viewed out of obligation by some of your friends and family. To get the rest of the world on board, you have to give them something for nothing. It has to be more than just information about you or your product. Offer them something, even if that something is a simple idea or new point of view. Do the leg work. Research an idea or explore a problem they might be having and sympathize, don’t just sell. Give them something for nothing and trust that they will return the favor with their precious attention. Make them fucking care.
If you treat your audience like idiots, you will only attract idiots. Use literary references in your auto-mechanics ad. Sysiphus rolling tires up a hill will appeal to more people than you think. The classics are classics for a reason. Good motifs are good motifs. Don’t cut your script down to an arbitrarily short length if doing so omits good writing! Don’t believe what people say about today’s attention spans, people make time for what they need. Your goal as the creator of art should be to understand the habit cycles people find themselves in, why they place themselves in them, and then meditate on how you can break them out of those cycles and, critically, what you’ll do for them after they’ve been broken out.
Trust your audience and they will reward you for it.
Bonus Tip
In a past life, as I may have already mentioned, I was a full-time video editor. There’s nothing that allows a person to analyze their own workflow for inefficiencies quite like making teeny tiny cuts for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. If you’re also a video editor and you still make your cuts manually with keyboard shortcuts, I’m going to let you in on a secret that seriously quintupled the speed of my editing.
Tourbox Elite
This bad boy is called a TourBox. It’s a programmable USB editing controller and I used to use it every single day in both my video and my audio editing. For any task you perform that requires a lot of scrolling and clicking, this thing will double your efficiency, easily.
If you’d like to try one for yourself, CLICK HERE to use our Amazon Affiliate link and help support CaJu’s Fresh Picks!
It comes with a program that lets you easily customize what each of the buttons do. If you’re not into the whole customization thing, it also comes stocked with presets for all the major editing programs. For example, I used it a lot when editing in Adobe Premiere. I set it to where rotating the large wheel scrubbed quickly, the small knob scrubbed more precisely, a button would play/pause, a button would select all, a button would cut, a button would delete, etc. The kicker was that I could set it to trigger custom shortcuts, so instead of having to do the complicated shortcut for selecting all tracks to the right of the curser, I mapped one of the buttons to that difficult shortcut combo.
I know it doesn’t seem like much, but consider this: How many cuts do you make in a given video project? For me, I was making thousands. Most of those cuts would take me less than a second to make, but some of the more complicated ones would take me a couple of seconds. Over time, those cuts add up. Not to mention they’re awkward to make on a keyboard sometimes.
If you can make each of those thousands of cuts even a fraction of a second faster, it adds up. For me, I was saving roughly 15-20 minutes of time every couple of days. Hours are saved every month. You get the idea.
I’m not exaggerating when I say investing in a controller like this cut my editing time in half, no pun intended.
Until next time, stay fresh.
- Casey