Lessons

Lesson Info

Trimming

You know jim, one of things that we've spent a lot of time talking about is the process of getting ourselves organized and editing clips we haven't really talked much about the craft about it but I want to spend a couple minutes setting up this next section which really focuses more on craft and emotion then it does on what buttons to push what I want to talk about it's the whole process of trimming where two clips touch we think about it this is a clip number one our first clip and this is our second clip on where those two clips touches thea did point the other point is the point of transition between the first and second clips recently I was given any a grant twenty five million dollars to explore the dynamic ramifications off the juxtaposition and the existential meaning off trimming so this is your tax dollars at work pay attention this is our outgoing clipped the last frame of the outgoing clippers called the out this is the incoming clipped the first frame of the incoming clippe...

rs called the in and where those two clips touches the other point there's three sides to another point we can trim the out we can trim the in what we can trim both ian and the out I can trim one side another side or both sides that's all trimming is trimming is simply adjusting where one clip ends and the next clip starts but in that adjustment lies a ton of emotion let me illustrate as part of my twenty five point seven one million dollar any a grant it inflated over the last five minutes I was able to afford to take two shots the first shot is a wide shot of me walking up to a door my hand touches the door handle I open the door I walk through the door that is the wide shot now shot number two tight shot of the door hand I walk up to it off camera my hand reaches into this frame I open the door ah body passes through the frame and the door swings shut boom so now I have to edit those two shots. Well, obviously it starts with the wide shot of me walking up to the door in my hand touches the door handle when I cut to the tight shot of my hand reaching an opening the door the body passing through the door swinging shut boom except when I play it back my hand is touching the door handle here on on a second shot I'm two steps back from the door I have violated the laws of physics which we can only do on star trek and instead of me being at the point of the actions that transition from one shot to the next I'm in the right shot order but the motion doesn't flow smoothly. I've got a trim the end of that second shot should that my hand is touching the door handle on the out and it's touching the door handle on the end that is a ripple trim to the end of the second clip. To get the action to flow smoothly, we use a ripple trim trimming just thie out or just the end. We use the ripple trim when we need to get two clips in sync, but now we have an emotional decision to make let's go back to those two shots if I cut early before my hand touches the door handle, this builds a sense of anticipation comedy does this all the time person starts to walk down street cut too tight shot banana peel, cut back to person walking. You know before the actor does that that actor is going to slip on a banana peel and the humor becomes magnified because of the anticipation built by cutting early to the banana peel or cut on the action documentaries do this all the time. Cutting on the action is emotionally neutral. We just simply want to show what's happening there's no emotional loading one way or the other or same shot I opened the door on the wide shot I walk through the door on the wide shot, the door swings shut on the close up. The shot cut is late building a sense of suspense horror uses this all the time the door swings shut just before the screaming starts same two shots same shot order but where the cut occurs totally changes the emotion of the scene for being anticipation too emotionally neutral to building a sense of suspense that's why trimming is so important you'll spend more time trimming your clips and trying to figure out the exact spot where that shot change needs to occur then you'll ever spend in editing the clips it's easy to figure out the shot order but then the emotional content I've spent forty five minutes trying to adjust one shot going to another shot was a guy in a snowboard jumping off a mountain and I wanted to cut toe a tight shot as he was falling down the face of the mountain but where that caught occurred took me forty five minutes to figure out because there was always a different feeling as you were switching from one shot to the next so remember what we've got here we have a ripple trim which trims justly out or just ian ripple means one sided and it always affects everything which is downstream a role trim trims both the enemy out ripple trims one sided trips are used to get the action to match role trims are used to get the emotion to the level that you want ok still with me all right so how do we do this? Well, that's, a part of the interface that we have not yet talked about, so let's, take a look. Oh, jim asked me if I have something that helps to illustrate the power ofthe trimming and editing, so we would like to know if you have anything powerful to help facilitate the trimming in the editing, maybe a tool or interface. Well, I couldn't have asked that better. I want to show you the exact same scene three different times. I'm indebted to norman holland, who is a professor at the usc film school for the concept, and he and I worked together on a podcast called to really guys, and this is an illustration from that if we can look at the computer screen for a second, this is silent, but I want you to watch this without me telling you what's going on, and then I'm going to give you two different variations on the same thing. Enter danielle now, the reason that's a little out of focus is because we should probably set that to full. I call this the dead body seen danielle enters blissfully unaware of what she's about discover when she looks down, sees a dead body lying on the floor, and the audience is as stunned by the dead body as daniel is well, here, the audience discovers the dead body. After danielle reacts, look at where her reaction occurs, she looks down sees it, reacts and then and only then does the audience know what she's reacting to take the exact same set of shots and this time we see the dead body first and then then the scene plays we know daniel is going to discover the body are emotional response to this is totally different because we already know what daniel is going to see what she what we know that she doesn't her husband lies dead on the floor because we've changed exact same two shot orders but an entirely different emotional effect because the audience knows the body is dead before danielle does now remember up in version one we saw daniels reaction first then we saw the body inversion three look it's slightly different look at the timing of when danielle's reaction occurs blissfully ignorant body danielle's reaction we are now reacting at the same time she does same two shots all I did is I changed the position of one shot the dead body shot does the dead body shot occur after daniel's reaction before daniel's reaction or before we see danielle I just put it in three different places just those two shots and two a three totally different emotional shadings magnify this time's a dramatic movie and you begin to understand the complexity of trying to decide exactly what you want to trim because every time you shift something you're going to get a different emotional shading I simply mention this because one of the things that people say is I should match the action we're not trying to match the action we're trying to guide the audience into following our story and like a good photograph for like a good graphics design a graphics designer that understands aircraft knows exactly where on an ad the viewer's eye is going to go first they also know where the eye is going to go second they also know where the eye is going to go third and then after that they don't care because they've been able to control the flow of the eye through that adds they go first to the picture second to the headline third to the body copy and then they'll look for the phone number of the website to go to learn more we have exactly the same power to control the viewer's eye to control the viewers emotion to control the story in moving pictures as you would with still pictures and trimming is at the heart of it which is why we care about trimming so much so with that as a preamble and really to drive home the fact that when we're editing we're building the content and when we're trimming we're building the emotions I want to talk more about how trimming works so it's closed this project and let's open this one notice that I have two different sequences open at the same time I can toggle between them by simply clicking on the tabs inside the timeline you can only have one project open at once but you're gonna have an unlimited number of sequences open in the timeline and you toggle between them by simply clicking on them here I have a set of four oh shoot hang on a second all right let's just do this remember that check box that I said that if you're working with still images you want to check it's this one which is default scale to frame size what it did is it dropped all of those images in full screen and it didn't frame them for the video so let's try this again wait so this is shot number one just build this one here due to do uh there we go shot number two and we'll do a third one that's different will do an insert at it put it right down ok trimming adjust where two clips touch where two clips touched is called the added point and this is what a noted point looks like when you're inside premiere the wave forms sorry the thumbnails were built when I had uh preference set incorrectly which is why you only see a portion of the image had that preference mints that prior to building the thumbnail it would've been built where I'd see the entire image that system preference setting and nothing for us to worry about. We've talked about how we can select individual clips, but now I want to talk about where two clips touch and hear. Adobe has spent a lot of time, and in every release of premier adobe has continued to improve trimming. In the past, we had to select a training tool that we had to do right mouse clicking to be able to select it. Now, with the sisi release, adobe has given us the ability to do what's called dynamic trimming the cursor is context sensitive. Let me illustrate if I grabbed an edge of a clip notice that I've got that red angle bracket the red angle bracket pointing to the left means that I am trimming the out of the outgoing clip as I dragged this left or right noticed that what I've done is I've made my first clip shorter, and in so doing I have left a gap or I grabbed the out of the outgoing clip and I can make it longer up until the touches. Another clip. This is called a trim a trim, adjust the length of the clip but always leaves a gap. Wonderful except gaps cause flashes of black. Flashes of black is both of, you know, cause editors to get fired because producers hate flashes of black. What we want to do is we want to trim our clip such that there's no risk of having a flash of black notice. Now my angle is now a yellow angle, which means it has shifted out of trim mode, which is read to ripple mode. As I grabbed this edge of the clip and drag, the clip is getting smaller, but look what's happened up in the program monitor. The left hand picture shows the out the last frame of the outgoing image, which I'm changing by dragging it left and right. When I let go with a mouse, watch what happens in the timeline into one wolf all the downstream clips are pulled up to the left, making sure there's no gap or if I make that clip longer, all the downstream clips are into one wolf pushed to the right so that I could make my outgoing clip shorter or longer. And in so doing, all the downstream clips on all tracks are pulled up or pushed down. This allows me to very precisely determine to very precisely determine exactly where I want the outgoing clip to end. Now we can't see a whole lot because there's not a lot happening in the frame except the weed is moving in the shadows air planting but notice that the time code is also moving as I'm dragging this clip left or right if instead of holding our our mouse just to the left of the other point meaning I'm going to ripple to the out by hold just to the right of the other point and now when I click I'm now ripple trimming the inn and notice now are waterfalls are falling as I make the clip longer pushing all the clips to the right or shorter they're pulling all clips to the left a ripple trim to the inn changes the start of the incoming clip so that the action more closely matches with the out of the outgoing clip the yellow indicates that I'm doing a ripple toe one side of the edit or a ripple to the other side of the edit but when I am on the edit notice that now the simple changes to a two headed symbol arrows pointing in both directions this is a role trim when I click hold and drag left or right a role trim allows me to roll the added point and notice now the two pictures inside the program monitor are both changing the last train with the outgoing clipped the first frame of the incoming clip are changing as I'm moving those clips left or right when I let go, he added, point itself has moved a role trim is used to change the emotion of the edit. A ripple trim to the out or to the inn is used to change the timing of another eternally to get the action of two clips to match, we can shift between trim mode, which is the red arrow and ripple mode, which is the yellow arrow by holding the command key doubt when the command kiis held, I'm in trim mode and I leave a gap when the command key is not held. I'm in ripple mode and I don't leave a gap no gap on no gap, though if there was a gap there as there was, you would keep the existing gap is though it was a clip, this is the essence of trimming, trimming, adjusts the in or the out of a clip such that the action and the emotion of the scene matches the way that you want and it's really not that hard. If I select the out of a clip I contribute by holding the command I think I control of holding. Here we go, aiken true by holding the option key down and typing the left arrow option right arrow shift option left arrow moose five frames at a time shift option, right arrow moves five frames at a time there's also a very it's called trimming the top in the tail let's say that I want to trim the beginning of this clip put the play head or I want this in to trim two and type option q and it trims the beginning of the clip to jump to the position of play head or type option w and the end at it jumps to the position of the play head. This is a fast way to say I don't want to roll it to that point, I just want to trim it here option queue for the the editor there left option w for the added to the right trimming is now dynamic we cannot simply select by moving our cursor toe ripple, trim the out ripple, trim the in or ripple trim both the enemy out and the easiest way to trim it's just us. We've done here where I'm just worrying about the video or just worrying about audio, but what happens if I have both audio and video to work with that's what we've got here? The audio and the video are linked, which means that if I click on anyone off the audio or video tracks associated with a link clip and I start to trim all the tracks are trimmed by the same amount and if I put my cursor immediately on the edit point, it now turns into a role trim which I can use the mouse to move or aiken do option right arrow or option left arrow to move it one frame at a time or five frames at a time just an important note if you look up here at the top of the timeline you see this magnet this turns snapping on and off snapping should always be on when you are editing snapping should always be off when you're trimming and here's why when snapping is on and I dragged the play head slowly across the other point it snaps to the other point when it gets with about oh ten to fifteen frames of it this guarantees that two clips will actually touch like there's a magnet pulling them together but this is a bad thing when I want to move trim one frame or two frames so here you turn snapping off keyboard shortcuts letter s for snapping and now as I move close to a clip the play had doesn't snap to it at all which means that I can be very, very precise in moving and edit point without having to worry about snapping, jumping the selected other point ten frames my only wanted to move it one the magnet keyboard shortcut is the letter s when the magnet is dark snapping is on when the magnet is light snapping is off dark is on light is off we're going to leave it off for just a moment there's a couple of other ways that we confirm that I just mentioned we could select the trim tool this is the ripple tool in the c s five release this was our only option for ripple trimming I never used it the dynamic traumas much faster this is the role at a tool again same thing and c s five we needed it now it's dynamic we don't we can also right mouse click right mouse click on another point that we can select the tool rippled trim the in ripple trim the out roll or trimming and out this is the only option when we were in c s six seven gave us the dynamic trim tool which is just far superior and it's the only thing that I used when I'm trimming again for a graphic analogy just thinking of jim and his art direction um trimming is the process of cropping we crop images to reveal the essence of the image we trim to reveal the essence of our story trimming is essential jim but once you understand how it works, the time is spent not and understanding the tool but in understanding the emotional tool creates. I'm going to shift audio in just a minute, but before I do questions from everybody yeah so in your workflow do you tend to trim all your shots first or do you trim and build your sequins trim and build your sequence individually? Neither of those two fresh thing that I'll do is I will go through remember the story that I was telling of the thirty second commercial that launched a new product and in my mind it was perfect because I had all the materials that I needed in the reality I had three shots that ran eleven seconds well it was until I put those three shots the timeline that I could actually look at it and say ok, I've got to figure out a way to fill eighteen seconds of time with material that I don't have so the very first thing that I do is I do what's called the radio cut the radio cut is me just concentrating on the audio and any video that's associated with it but concentrating on the audio and building the whole story getting my talking heads laid down laying in the narration but building the story from an audio point of view the second pass I go through and I add b roll pictures that illustrate what the person is talking about the third pass I go through is once that's done I start to trim and get everything to time and then the fourth pass I go through an ad effects so I'm always going through multiple times first get the story done down enough that I could critique it then organized the story get a tightened up then add b roll then do trimming so that first time focusing on editing what's my shot order, then I'm focusing on illustrating and then I'm focusing on trimming so that I'm always doing the same thing. My mind is always thinking, how can I tightness or where do I need a breath or how to buy space this out? As opposed to having to shift between editing and perfection, editing and perfection? I want to stay in that one mode and focus on well, let's, tell the story and make sure we've got the story correct before I worry about trimming because if I don't have a story here and then I've got to fix the story before I can do anything else, so I do it in multiple passes and I never tried to do it all in one time except news I'll do in two passes news when I'm editing a news story, I will put all of my radio cut, I'll build the story together and then I just add b roll until the thing has to go on the air. I was doing news cutting a channel five in los angeles. I was doing the eleven o'clock news, I had the lead story and the lead story had come in eight minutes before eleven o'clock and it was going to air at eleven o'clock. And I was knew I was a part timer was the weekend as the director's always do directors are always nervous that's the definition of a director you can envision all the stuff that's going wrong and trying to figure out how to prevent it but they had the lead with this story it was a minute a half package voiceover from the announcer at the top sound bite from the reporter on the scene voiceover from the studio with the end around a minute twenty five seconds I remember it clearly to this day and I had finished the intro voice over I had finished the sound bites I had put enough b roll in to at least not embarrass myself in public but I still had twenty five seconds of video with the under ad for the announcer and they said whether it's ready or not we are airing the beginning of the new story so the beginning of my minute twenty second package was airing while I was putting the last twenty seconds of shots on at the end and I finished the last shot a second half before it went on the air. Needless to say, there was some nervousness in the control room as this was going on but here you got to focus on getting it done for the air as opposed to spending it all like doing a feature film which could take nine months to a year to edit so first pass, I tell the story. Second pass, illustrate the story. Third pass. I then tied it all up and get it to work for time at on. Lee. After the story is complete on ly, then do I worry about adding title keys and special effects. People will watch a story that has no pictures. That's. Why radio was so good, but you have perfect pictures and wonderful effects of no audio and nobody's going to pay any attention. Always get the story done first.