Video Clinic, Part 4

Editing Your Video
     On a two-day dive trip, I'll shoot about 90 minutes of video footage. And I'm quite selective about when I turn on the camera. But even the people who hope to inherit my fortune when I die won't sit for the whole 90 minutes. So I edit a typical dive trip down to about fifteen minutes.

Ways to Edit:
     There are three ways you can edit your video footage. What you can accomplish with editing depends on which method you choose. There's in-camera editing, sequential editing, and non-linear editing.
     In-camera editing is where you start, stop, and rewind the camera as you film, hoping to have a complete yet brief video sequence that requires no further editing. The advantage to this method is, it's cheap and requires no further fussing with the tape when you get home. But I always found several minutes of footage of my fins when the camcorder turned on accidentally, and video sequences I thought fascinating were voted "most likely to bore to death" by my viewers.
     Sequential editing, at its simplest, is two VCRs hooked together. You pick a scene from your master tape, record it on your editing tape, then stop the recording to find the next scene on your master.  A microphone patched through your boombox gives you audio input.

With a video editor, you can add fades, wipes, and titles. You cut out the boring parts and determine the right length for each scene. You can add music and narration. This type of editing is less expensive than computerized editing, because anybody can borrow a couple of VCRs from their friends. This is my sequential editing system, with three superVHS decks, an 8mm deck, microphone, Panasonic video mixer, and a title generator.

Your choices are limited to the capability of the hardware. Titles tend to be "boxy," with only one font and a few possible text sizes. A fair number of "wipes" between scenes can be created. The wipe is controlled by a joystick. Coordinating the video fade-in, title fade-in, music fade-in, vocal dub, and special effects means I'll usually make ten or more tries at the title sequence before I get it right.

     Sequential editing is not as exact as non-linear editing, because you can't make the cuts as perfectly. And if you don't notice you made a mistake -- tough. You can't just go back and fix it.

Non-linear editing means computerized editing. (A good video input-output card for your computer will cost at least $600. While you can get by with a standard IDE hard drive for standard VCR resolution (320 x 240), you'll need a SCSI hard drive to get broadcast-quality output. A twenty minute video will chew up about 5 gigabytes of drive space.) You hook the camcorder up to the computer, and capture the individual scenes you'll want in your final video, saving each scene as a file. This is my Pentium system with 15.3 gig in 2 IDE drives, 9.1 gig in the SCSI drive, and miroVideo DC30 video board. I burn the video clips to CD-R for safekeeping.

      After capturing the individual clips you want in your final video, you fire up the video editing program. I use Adobe Premiere. Drag each scene, in the order you want it, onto a storyboard. Clip each scene precisely. Add special effect transitions and titles.

Computerized editing allows unlimited types of transitions between clips, like the barn doors at left. Titles can move, spin, grow, and shrink, and your choice of fonts and colors is unlimited.

     You record your narration by plugging a microphone into the computer's sound board. Save the narration in pieces as individual files. By recording the narration in small chunks, you can easily shuffle your voice-over around or re-record a segment if you want to make changes.
     It's best to plan for a "fade-to-black" every three or four minutes in case your hard drive can't keep up with the video output. This lets you "stop and start over" periodically when outputting the final video, getting voice and video back in sync.
     After your video is perfect (or you're just tired of working with it), you "print" the video tape back to your VCR from the computer. Don't skimp on tape quality here. Because a lot of work has gone into creating the video, I save the individual video clips and the Premiere storyboard to CD-R discs. I can reload the clips to the hard drive any time.
     The advantage of computer editing is: you can fiddle to your heart's content. You can adjust every scene length and every transition until you're absolutely convinced your video couldn't be better. It's easy to "steal" a scene from later in the dive trip (if it "completes" the dive sequence you're working on) because the scene is sitting on the story board in front of you. You can speed up slow sequences, or slow down the motion. You can apply gamma correction or color correction.

How to edit:
     Editing assumes that you've recorded the scenes you'll need. If you didn't follow the earlier instructions about viewpoint consistency, varying the view, and filming transitions, editing will only make your bad film a shorter bad film.
     Be ruthless. You have many beautiful scenes that will be hopelessly boring to anybody else. As you consider each scene, ask yourself: is this scene necessary to tell my story? If the answer is yes, include the scene. Otherwise, toss it.
     Cut sequences to the bare bones -- unless your object is to create a calming video of fish swimming around to music. For most videos, think of yourself as a rock-video director. Trim each clip so it's just long enough for the viewer to understand what's happening. Assemble many short clips that maintain the rules of viewpoint consistency (discussed previously), rather than a long clip of a single view. So keep the individual clips short, but make each "piece" of your dive sequence complete by using multiple clips.
     Never make a cut without changing the view. For example, let's say the beginning of a garibaldi feed is great, but it goes on for three minutes. So you need to end this piece of your dive sequence and transition to the next piece. It's visually jarring to cut directly from long view of diver feeding garibaldis to the long view as he turns to swim away. So find a clip that's a closeup of the diver's face with fish swirling around. Paste a few seconds' of it between the beginning and end of the feeding.

Whenever you break out from a clip, cut to another clip that shows the action from a different distance, or from another viewpoint (one you've previously defined, of course).

     Don't get hung up on the true timing of the events on your tape. You'll have a stronger story line if you condense and "merge" to create complete single events rather than sketchy multiple events. For example, to provide a transition from a great dive sequence to lunch on the boat, there's no law that says you can't swipe a "diver crawling up ladder" shot from that worthless dive the next day. And move that isolated shot of the diver being startled by the kelpfish to another time where it makes better sense in your story.

Organizing the Stories:
     Complete every story, with a beginning and an ending. There's the big story ("our dive trip"). There are sequences ("the night dive"). And each sequence has individual pieces ("Fred catches a lobster"), each of which should tell a complete, although brief, story. For all -- the big story, the sequences, and the pieces -- you must create a beginning, tell what happened, then provide an ending or transition.
     The introduction to your video tape is not necessarily the beginning of your "big story." For example, you can show footage of fish with glorious background music while you show the tape's title. But you must begin your "big story" with something else. A good way to begin the big story (the trip) is a "leaving home" scene. Make it brief.

Here's an example of a "big picture" beginning. Six seconds of my teenager throwing his gear in the car, followed by five seconds of my business partner driving, then five seconds of divers unloading gear at the dock. This introduces the main characters and lets the viewer know what the video is about.

     Your smaller stories (sequences) must also have a beginning and an end. Steal footage from other places as needed. Most videographers compile the footage from several dives to create one "composite" dive that has all the required scenes. Show the beginning of the sequence -- such as divers prepping, then jumping into the water.

Try to find a clip showing each diver's face in closeup. These are very useful shots, functioning either as a transition clip or as a character introduction.

     Each subject (piece) within a sequence is also an independent story. The piece must have a beginning, or a transition from the last segment, such as a shot of divers swimming. Pick short scenes of the action, varying the viewpoint (within the rules discussed elsewhere). For example, show five seconds of sea lions zooming around the divers (wide view). Interrupt it for four seconds of a diver's face watching the critters. Resume your wide view for four seconds, then cut to closer view as camera tracks a sea lion, seven seconds. Back to three seconds of the divers face with a "wow" expression. Resume the wide view as the divers make a move to swim away. The story piece is complete.

You'd be surprised what you can get away with when you've got a few years' worth of video footage. The three clips (safety stop, grabbing the ladder, water exit) are from three different years, with three different divers. But nobody (not even the participants) notices this because the clips are short (4 seconds) and they tell a seamless story.

     After assembling the pieces, end the sequence. Show the dive ending with divers reaching for the boat ladder, or topside as divers climb out.
     If you're showing more than one dive sequence, create a break between them with topside action. Show divers playing cards, cleaning equipment, carving fish, and swapping tales.

Putting  up-top activities between dive sequences provides a natural separation between them. The clips can be brief, but they should give a sense of passage of time.

     At the end of your tape, show the end of the "big story." Patch in a few seconds of divers greeting their spouses or washing their gear back home.

A good ending should include packing the gear from the boat. You haven't finished the story until you're home. Brief clips of divers discussing their trip work well. A picture of "diver greeting family" is even better.

     You can roll your ending credits over scenes from the trip home, or use a picture-in-picture for "outtakes," or go back to some beautiful but "too long" underwater scene. Make your ending as interesting as your beginning.

Click on the garibaldi for the next lesson.

About the author: Bruce Argyle dabbles at dive videos and dive photography. Listen to him at your own risk. Even his wife knows better than to consider him an expert. Remember the dweeb farm boy with the tape on his horn-rim glasses? Yep, that was him.