Painful Edit: Closed Eyes

Editing is feelings based. A bad edit will be painful to watch. Not necessarily a slap-across-the-face kind of pain, but you will feel it. A good edit will slip past, unnoticed.


Yellow Flowers

Yesterday, while playing around with a little practice flick we were assembling, one edit wasn't feeling right. We were cutting from a shot of yellow flowers, but it didn't work. My editing partner suggested it was because the shot was too brief. But I felt the length was just right. The problem was what we cut back to...


Closed Eyes

When we cut to a person, we want to look into their eyes and see what they are thinking. The actor had his eyes closed for this part of the clip, and so the edit didn't work.


Fruit

We added an extra shot of some fruit and the yellow flowers felt perfect.

The lesson: There are many elements that make an edit hurt. Duration of a clip can certainly be one of them. But pay attention to other things too, like blinks and camera motion and lighting changes and position. As you edit, ask yourself if any of the edits are painful. If so, you know you have a problem. The more you edit, the easier it will be for you to see the subtle things that make these edits not work.

Want to see the final product? Enjoy!

The Mysteries of Wildlife

 ~Luke Holzmann
Your Media Production Mentor