Lessons

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Building the Foundation for Edit

we will take a look at a recent uh film that we produced and then we'll break it down will deconstruct it and we'll kind of constructive back together well color corrected and we're going to some college radio waves to live you okay born can you believe the big day is finally here can't begin to tell you just how happy I am to become your husband don't tell you this often but sometimes I have to pinch myself because I can't seem to believe just how lucky I feel feel like I've won some giant lottery life throughout everything we've been through you've always reminded me of what's important in life can't imagine anyone it makes me feel the way I do when I see you walk through the front door after a long day it's like you like tyra and suddenly everything is okay wait you have a way of sound of wayne e throw back your head the way you always reach for money when I get out of it if my dad was with us today you tell me something that I've known all along he'd say his daughter found the ulti...

mate for me to find love thank you for always standing by my side and for showing me every day your unwavering loyalty love and support for defining what it truly truly means to stand by someone's side you inspire me every day make me one of all the girls in the world I'm so happy you're absolutely best best way beautiful let's go you you wait lauren moved to new york city after college it was only a couple months after she moved there and she called me on a sunday morning she said mom I met someone and with those four words I knew it was different friends I know you realize what an incredible woman you have married today but I don't know if you realize that you have been the one responsible for making long and incredibly happy every day since the day meant and for that I am truly grateful lauren it is with the greatest pleasure that I welcome you and your family to ours I hope that you like sukiyaki and teriyaki way born and bred the authority vested in me by the state of california I now pronounce you husband and wife kiss your bride all right thank you stuff harder we dio can't staff good audio good video do you think we're efficient weii did all the right things right so when it all comes together you can come up with a very stunning film there were some obstacles along the way on the day of the shoot mixed lighting things like that like we discussed but we dealt with them the best we could and in the end the final result was pretty good okay so let's break it down a little bit what's the first thing we're doing when we come back to the studio and we have all this hopefully great footage number one how many times at least twice at least twice exactly definitely back up the footage is is very important this is not like the days of tape where the tapes just kind of sat around and stacked up real high in the closets this stuff is very very sensitive because you can have corrupt cards things like that you can have deleted files accidentally deleted files your worst nightmare if you're shooting with these types of cameras is the leading these falls even when we back up a wedding two or three times whenever I have to delete the original media from the cf cards I'm still nervous I'm still double checking I'm still ensuring that whatever of chance should transfer from the cards to the hard drive matches in size so I'm definitely checking the size just to make sure that all the fouls have transferred over because if some of your big files did not make the transfer generally there the big falls they're goingto be ceremony and speeches and things like that so it's very critical that you're very careful with the transfer of these original files okay so we have everything backed up um are we editing right away probably not because we have a little bit of backlog so maybe they'll sit a little bit but as soon as we get ready to edit what's the next thing we're going to do you would think of all the shots using paralyzed plug in exactly we could use paralyzed the first thing that we like to do is kind of identify what we have so we'll go through a rough cutting process and we'll not only identify the shots that we have hopefully we'll get a good job we have plenty of content but we're also going to start organizing ourselves and we're going to start creating sequences hello put up here and if you look in the bin here amusing final cut seven I am not on premiere sorry adobe people and I'm not on final cut ten not yet so I'm still on seven it's very easy for us and it gets the work done for us so we really haven't of thought too much about the change hopefully we'll keep supporting it because we actually love final cut seven so you see here I've uh I've organized some clips here if we got a sequence um with the bride prep stuff that we've shot and the sequence is just as you can tell I have about and these air very clean very usable shots that I've gotten together which is about it's about four minutes of very very usable shots and you gotta figure there's probably about twenty thirty shots per minute so I'm looking at about one hundred and twenty very very usable shots just from broader perhaps this is not including groom preps jessica will be over at groom preps and hopefully as you can see here she was very efficient and she's got she's got me a lot of content and actually she also came up with about four minutes of very very usable shots so now I've got one hundred twenty shots she's got about one hundred twenty shots and now we're kind of ready to roll so we'll uh we'll definitely take a look at that but then what's the next most important thing who's going to tell the story during our film who's gonna be the storytellers uh those who speak or speeches or official efficient or any oreo basically exactly anybody that spoke at the wedding because what are they essentially doing uh by speaking at the wedding what are all these words about hopefully they're about this beautiful couple that's exchanging vows and getting married so usually all the words are related tio this couple so you're going to utilize these these people that gave these speeches or red at the ceremony there basically going to be your storyteller's so now we need to start identifying some audio before we do that we need to get everything sunk up so we will go into and I've already does everybody here have paralyzed everybody using paralyzed if you use india solares I definitely how they recommend using plural eyes here you can see we've got three different camera angles for speeches and we've already done a plural eyes so everything's everything's already sunk up and if you notice down here for the audio tracks these these audio tracks here that are great out these air the actual in camera audio that was recorded and this truck that's highlighted was actually a direct feed that we had to the soundboard yes quick question for you my one limited experience with video I ran sound for a documentary crew and they really emphasize doing the kind of snap in front of the camera mike along with the external mic to make sure things sync up do you ever find a need for that or is it just the ambient picks up on everything syncs up really well of plural wives you know what happens is if you notice we probably should do a clap or something like that but if you notice on the timeline here there's so many starts and stops that would literally be clapping you know a lot way we do a lot of blabbing so we don't generally do it we probably should do it at some point you know especially for the longer files but as you can see here we're stopping and starting quite a bit and the reason that we stop and start like this is will always want to be able to check focus it's just I tell you guys it's critical because these cameras they record such beautiful footage if they're in focus but if you're slightly out of focus and I know guys trust me I know I know shooters that go out and they just hit record and they never stop until the ceremony's over or the speech is over but what happens is if you're out of focus that whole time just slightly out of focus you know you're just looking at a very small viewfinder but you know how it is when you get back to the edit now you have it on a big big laptop or a big cinema display and now you really seen that this footage was not sharp so I would definitely recommend just check focus as many times as you can because you're always going to be able to go on post and not do much work manually you're just going to use a program like paralyzed that's going to do all the work for you and sync up all those clips so we're kind of spoiled you know we could just keep stopping and recording relying on hopefully we'll be able to rely on a program like paralyzed to do all that work for us all right so we've sunk up all the speeches here are we gonna be ableto also get audio in studio like when I'm running the timeline okay that about that he's always been someone that I've looked up to you but just as importantly he's been a supportive friend or a pledging event when we're wearing our fraternity's lavender ties I just don't remember it I'm sorry I really tried I really was trying to place I couldn't find it but from a moment of relative insignificance that friendship has grown over the years so how much how much dialogue do we have on this on this time line quite a bit it's it's quite a bit to get through so the first thing that we do is we listened to absolutely everything because there's obviously a lot of words have been spoken spoken but there's words kind of nestled in between all that that really have some strong meaning and that's what you're trying to identify your not just tryingto true's random sentences or random words you're really getting in there and you're listening to the words and how they relate to the footage that you shot throughout the day so here I'm going to show you some words that we've identified and how we used it uh to begin the process of um creating this film when lauren moved to new york city after college it was only a couple months after she moved there and she called me on a sunday morning she said mom I met someone and with those four words I knew it was different okay good strong words good strong word so we said okay this has potential to make the edit so we want to show some other characters as well because it wasn't all about the bride's mom so now we have a maid of honor and we kind of identify some some words that are pretty strong brent I know you realize what an incredible woman you have married today but I don't know if you realize that you have been the one responsible for making long and incredibly happy every day since the day you met and for that I am truly grateful okay any time they're talking about the bride and how happy she is remembered you should automatically start thinking how happy she is you can automat we now tie that into some footage where she looks happy and we've evokes some emotions just in case she wasn't looking so happy right we gotta connected we got her in the zone and here we highlighted the father of the groom and we kind of gave it some balance because what happens when you start producing a film you have two sides right so if you show one side of the family too much maybe the other side kind of feels a little bit left out so if you can introduce one I mean as ah as um a za rule of thumb for us at least we try to give it a little bit of balance you know so the groom doesn't feel that his family's been left out or anything like that so here we highlighted his dad saying something that was a little bit funny and lively and we thought it it uh it went well with the sound truck that we had lauren it is with the greatest pleasure that I welcome you and your family to ours I hope that you like sukiyaki and teriyaki and this was cool because the song actually called for something that was a little bit goofy you're funnier livelier and this was a good ending point for the speeches as well you know it kind of closes out the speeches because you had the mom and there you have the maid of honor and now you have the dad kind of closing out the speech segment but as you can see here these little pieces that were extracting are just a fraction off the natural audio that we have so we were literally have so much to work with here you know and sometimes you may be at a wedding or maybe there's not a lot of speeches or maybe there's just not a lot of dialogue and you're kind of stuck in a position like while what am I going to do with this so anytime that we have a situation like this we have a lot of dialogue one word when we're choosing our soundtracks maybe we're thinking about mohr instrumental type of sound trucks because it's going to allow for more dialogue you know we're not battling the lyrics of the song or anything like that so for this particular for this particular film we chose a song from the music bed which the great resource for our license music what are you looking for right now what's that what are you looking for right now oh I'm gonna get into the soundtrack that were chosen for the works and how much time do you spend looking for songs so much time how much time how much time it depends sometimes you get lucky because I tell you with this wedding um we literally logged onto music bed and it was one of the first songs that we ran into doing the search so and it's pretty cool the way the music that has it broken down because they have genre the style of music that you're looking for so you can really kind of break it down you know if you're looking for some more fun upbeat or something that's instrumental something that's happier something that's more dramatic you know so they have all these different types of searches that you could do that make it a little bit easy but sometimes it's just you guys know you know if you've been on one of these sites you know searching for music is just it's so difficult because you're really trying to find ah song that's going to match what you have visually and if you don't have that you know if you're just using just a random song they didn't put much thought into and it it just doesn't flow with your visuals maybe it's really going to start to disrupt the flow of the film you know and just maybe even become annoying to the viewer and how much editing do you do before you look for the song you don't pick this is we don't do any editing so basically what we do is we try to identify okay do we have a good strong dialogue like what kind of song is this wedding gonna call for you know like how are the visuals are they more fun upbeat are they more laidback subtle and romantic you know because sometimes you have couples that are just crazy they're just plain crazy they're very upbeat they're fun that brought a party's fun and then you have some couples that are maybe you know a little bit older and they just want to kind of enjoy the day and relax and just be beautiful that way so we look that you know so maybe a more fun upbeat song for more fun people and then maybe more a laid back song for more laid back people you know we just try to fit it that way so so makes sense no because if the visuals aren't keeping up with the soundtrack or vice versa is just kind of it's going to throw you off as a viewer you know it's just gonna be like this doesn't really this this footage doesn't really blend with this upbeat music that the footage is just so subtle on you know relax and just slow and the music is very fast and upbeat so we try to we try to definitely matched the visuals to the soundtrack and it's very important and we also try to choose a soundtrack that's not you know a lot of music may sound cool tow us but people in general you really want to try to choose music that's kind of neutral you know when you watch a film in the theaters you never remember the music that was playing but music was generally playing in the background it was just kind of like a bed of music but it was so subtle and it didn't take the focus off the film you know you never want the music to take the focus off the story that you're trying to tell you know if it's doing that because the song is just it's just too hard core and maybe it's just too much you know for somebody to bear and they kind of lose track of the story no should definitely be careful with music and dance your question yes it's very difficult so you shouldn't put house songs on every single video I love house music you know I love freestyle music from the eighties but that probably wouldn't work with you know yeah little t k and you know stuff like that is probably not going to work with my with my clients you know from miami so we're definitely into base music and house and and freestyle in all this so but enforcing that stuff doesn't plan to well the wedding wedding footage okay so let's take a look at let's take a listen to the soundtrack that we've chosen way ahead wait kid no on no no okay so this song here we felt was a little bit it was kind of fun and quirky you know it had some fun a little bit of quirkiness to it and I really felt as though this couple they fit that they were fun and they were a little bit there were so innocent you know if you if you saw the groom in the in the main film in the bright there was just this innocents there and there's this innocence about this song you know just a fun little innocent quirkiness about this song and I really felt as though it fit like a glove you know for the visuals that we had now if you notice at the beginning what was I playing I was playing an instrumental track of the same song so instead of having words playing in actual lyrics battling with this dialogue that I want to drop into beginning of the film now I just have an instrumental track and we're actually mixing it with the actual track with lyrics so whenever there whenever there wasn't dialogue right it went into the lyrics and whenever there was dialogue it blended into the instrumental which was a great mix and some songs you could do that you can find songs where you know you have the lyrics and they also have an instrumental version of that same song so it's really cool the way that we were able to do this so now we've got the song we felt very strongly about the song and now we're going to start introducing some of this dialogue that we've ified from the plural eyes sequence oh god why should I think there's a better sequins here okay to spare with me were there any online questions or yeah we have a couple of really great questions so this goes actually part of a question that I have it's from fashion tv while doing the editor how do you decide what makes a perfect beginning and ending of the film from a scent from a soundtrack standpoint on I'd like to know also do you edit do you find your music and added to that or vice versa do you do your editor and then match the music to your film we we do just as I'm showing you know we'll we'll assess the wedding we'll see if there was there was a lot of dialogue if there was a lot of dialogue then we know we're going to have to start introducing some instrumental types of soundtracks just the way that we do you know it's it's it's our particular style I'm not saying that has to become anybody style that's just our way of doing things but we love instrumentals for weddings that are just packed with beautiful words because we don't want anything to kind of lyrics to kind of take away from that natural audio that we have so that's kind of how we choose our music and kind kind of lay everything down now what what's one of the things that we do with our films to add interest you make a point of once the music is selected to make the cut points along beats in the long meaningful plots in the soundtrack but what are we what are we doing with this natural audio that we're identifying in our in our footage what are we using that for we call these people the storyteller but how are we utilizing these storytellers like where we positioning them and why are we position in them in a certain way and if in the film maybe um most emotional things are more important things goes at the end is the crescendo yeah so the storytellers we need to position within the film and that's that's that's where we get into time shifting right because just as you saw here the film kind of opened up with them already dressed in a tuxedo and the wedding dress but now they're kind of opening up this film eso were actually shifting we're doing the time shifting have we all heard of time shifting because and why do we do time shifting why do we shift things because most of your dialogue that were recording at the wedding day happens in the ceremony which is halfway through the shoot right this is the reception which is the end of the shoot so we don't always have dialogue for the first third of the day so we need to bring dialogue sooner in the edit bingo exactly so we're shifting the stuff forward to do what to add interest to the film because what would what would happen if the first first third of the film had no natural audio no dialogue it would just turn into a music video it would just be a music video for ten minutes which could kind of get a little bit stale you know and there's really no emotional connection to the film if it's just kind of music and lyrics and visuals that type of thing so I think that's why we as cinematographers filmmakers moviemakers we've gotten into this whole time ship thing thing because we need somebody to kind of help us tell the story of this couple in the film a kind of narrate the film if you will so that's why we're kind of shifting these things around but you'll notice now how many people here know howto properly time shift are there rules what are the rules well I would definitely say one of the rules is just not leaving the viewer hanging too long without actually giving them a reference of of where this audio is coming from so you know doing a two minute radio edit without actually ever showing who's talking you need to give the viewer some payoff at different points in the film so that they can appreciate who's saying this audio where's coming because sometimes people can identify just by the voice who is saying it you're right they visually it has to make sense to the viewer and there's a lot of curiosity especially they start hearing a voice they're as viewers you're gonna want to know where is this voice coming from the where my where am I at right now where am I hearing this voice but as far as the rest of the edit preps first looks candid ceremony receptions is all that stuff going to remain linear now or we also doing some time shifting in there if you notice most of the films the only thing that we're shifting is the storytellers but everything else you're pretty much seeing as it happened you know you're seeing prep shots you're saying first look shots you're seeing procession you're seeing ceremony you're seeing reception the dancing the cake cutting and then at the end you have another storyteller that closes it out with the pronouncement and that was just for this particular film but do you understand what I'm saying as faras keeping the rest of the stuff as it happened and just shifting the storytellers in the film if you look at most of the films that do the storytelling onda time shifting properly you'll notice that there's not a lot of confusion in their as of you because you still want to see a beginning a middle and an ending as a viewer but the only thing that you're shifting now is your storyteller's which I think is visually okay yeah do you refine yourself when you're going through the edit let's say you're a lot of your best audio's from your ceremony piece and you've caught up in your actual story up to the ceremony once you've caught up to wherever your main audio is coming from will you go back to a previous point or do you have to kind of stay with where you've gotten up to if I'm asking that right as a general rule we do not we kind of tried to keep everything leonard the only things that will sprinkle around in the edit our visual candy shots you know if we have candid shots of the couple we can literally sprinkle those anywhere in the film especially like ever narrator speaking about the couple and you dropped a couple candy shots of the couple themselves that kind of connect well with the words that are being spoken I think you're ok I think where he end up in a problem is for instance if you're if you're editing a film and you've time shifted to keep interest but then your actual visuals maybe you go from uh perhaps candids first look processions ceremony reception and you show the dancing than you show the cake cutting and then towards the end you're back at bright prep showing some bride prop shots you know I've seen that before you know it it just visually as a viewer it just completely threw me off so I was like wait a minute you know it's flowing along the wedding was flowing and then all of a sudden I'm back at the beginning of the wedding you know like what's going on here so time ship things very cool because you can create this very interesting compelling film we have to be careful and you have to make sure that the film's still makes sense and that you really don't do you don't do anything to disrupt the flow of the film andi I still do believe that you know a film does need a beginning a middle and an ending and only reason as wedding cinematographers were doing this time should thing especially just to really keep the interest in the film and like you said avoid having the first third of your film have no dialogue yeah okay so let's go back to the timeline now we've got a pretty cool soundtrack and we've identified some words in our um our paralyzed sequence and I will take a listen lauren can you believe the big day is finally here I can't begin to tell you just how happy I am to become your husband don't tell you this often but sometimes I have to pinch myself because I can't seem to believe just how lucky I feel I feel like I've won some giant watering life through everything we've been through you've always reminded me of what's important okay and if you look at the visuals on top I can't begin to tell you just how happy I am to become your husband I'll tell you this often but sometimes I have to pinch myself because I can't seem to believe just how lucky I feel I feel like I've won some giant lottery life throughout everything we've got so so what you notice here is when he did the reading to his future wife he he read a lot more than what we showed in the film and basically what we're able to do was extract basically the most important most compelling parts of what he read and piece them together so basically what you're seeing here is you know he read one sentence that had a lot of meeting meeting and then maybe we skipped over you know some stuff that was just you know it was still nice but it was generic for the film and we found something else that had a lot of meaning because we're limited by time you know we're trying to fit ah segment of time and our edit so we have to be very picky with words that we choose you know want to be able to choose the strongest words the words that have the most meaning and fit them into maybe that fifteen or twenty seconds that we have the beginning of the edit before that crescendo happens you know and I think somebody mentioned the the music markers like marking to the beat and things like that we don't and this is just us and we used to do it trust me I think everybody at some point has edited to the beat of the music I think the only thing that happens with that is that you know if you have four seconds between your markers or five seconds between your markers sometimes you get in the habit of leaving a clip up there too long you know maybe a clip that should have been two or three seconds is now being kind stretched out for four five seconds and now the viewer is kind of you know the viewers have very short attention span so what happens is once they've kind of like been fed the information the information process and they digest information they're kind of ready to move on to the next clip so very important is how long should your clips exist on your timeline or in your film it just depends but generally speaking it's probably about two or three seconds sometimes just a second you know if you're just trying to piece of visuals together and create little many sequences but you have to be very careful editing to the beat another problem with editing to the beat of the music is what can it become very jarring sometimes with the beach and it also becomes very predictable so now the viewer almost gets to the point where they know at every certain beat there's going to be a cut every certain beat there's going to be a cut every certain beat there's gonna be a cut and and I think by doing that this way you're kind of almost disrupting the flow of the film again you know if you just had a subtle cuts you know to where it wasn't on a beat and they really didn't notice it as much it becomes less predictable and I think a little bit less jarring and it doesn't disrupt the flow of the film so just with the with the beat kuts you have to be very careful now the crescendos would I would definitely use you know and you're going to take a listen to one right now you'll see a soon as the you'll see a soon as the groom stops talking here there's gonna be a build in the song and at that build we're gonna introduce something nice it's like you like tyrone and suddenly everything is ok lead time so what do we do with the opening crescendo will probably want establish the location a little bit now let's take a listen to her side of the reading you're absolute best and you'll notice what here and when they did the first look if you notice in the film they were kind of their their mannerisms were very corky and goofy and an innocent and you'll notice that part of the song was kind of like oh you know it was very kind of quirky goofy you know so you try to fit the visuals to the music as best you can and of course your always looking for beautiful crescendos and this part of the song we got into the speeches she said mom I met someone and with those four words I knew it was different friends I know you realize what an incredible woman you have married stay but I don't know if you realize that you have been the one responsible for making long incredibly happy every day since the day meant and for that I am truly grateful lauren it is with the greatest pleasure that I welcome you and your family to ours I hope that you like sukiyaki and terry so what do we have here now this is our soundtrack and this is our natural dialogue and these clips these clips here in the natural audio have just been extracted from our plural eyes sequences or suck up all of cameras this is not it doesn't have to do anything with all the shots we've gotten because you've got ben efficient we've got all these two three second shots we've loaded up on content this has nothing to do with that this is literally just the natural dialogue that was spoken at the wedding so if you look at the way it's set up here on the sequence what's the first thing that we've done we've gone in and we've extracted audio we've listened to you all the audio from the wedding we've identified the words with the most meaning and now we've selected a sound truck and now we've kind of place this dialog along this sound truck where we thought it made sense where there was kind of like the most connection there were there would be the most connection to the viewer so what's the next step I mean really it's just establishing the scenes that you've got that just by looking at the audio tracks there you can almost see the three specific cuts where you're going to transition from prep to you know speech last ceremony toe unending for it so it's it's got a framework of foundation for you to lay down you just said it it's a foundation we have built the foundation jessica calls it the skeleton we have we've got the skeleton now we just have to you know pack on the muscle you know we gotta pack on the beef you know so this is this is literally the the foundation of the film and you have to build this first build your foundation identified the audio you want to use to kind of help you help you tell the story of the day identify the soundtrack and now what are you looking for you looking for all that beautiful content right all that all the hard work that we've done in the entire day now it's going to come into play even when when jessica edits you know she'll build a foundation and she's like okay let's see how we did with the shots and now and the same thing when I'm building a film I'm psyched how did we do you know and now we rough cut everything we get everything organized we have are bright prep sequence groom perhaps details location shots you know just everything related to the film you know first looks candids whatever we have and we're hoping we have a lot of content and this is where the content comes into play because now you're just going to start fiddling on top of this foundation all this beautiful content that you have that you recorded from the beginning of the day the middle of the day towards the end of the day you're just going to start springing on top now are there any rules toe how you're supposed to apply this visual eye candy to your film no because what captivates you the story the story's already in place and now what do you think the visual eye candy's going to dio it's going to blow them away because you've shot it differently right you thought outside the box you've got all these shots where they don't know they don't understand what you've done to create these shots all they know is like wow I've never seen anything like this in my life and all the while what they're hearing our beautiful words being spoken beautiful soundtrack that makes sense with the natural audio and now you just really you have the workings right now without even dropping any visual eye candy on top you have the workings of like a really really compelling film and now when I get these this content on top of those beautiful words you're gonna end up with something really really special on dh and as you see here it's not that complicated you know we're just we're just positioning our storytellers along the soundtrack and now it's literally just going into our bag of content reaching for the best stuff that we have and just laying on top of this foundation like you said