You may have done all the camera work, but your video's not finished yet. Now it's time to get down to a bit of serious editing.

Editing a video or film is not unlike writing a piece of music, if you regard each recorded take as a note or chord. They could be strung together into a seemingly infinite number of different sequences. Naturally, many of these would be non-sensical, but you would eventually come up with quite a few good 'tunes'. In film terms this is called making the 'structure' and should be completed at the script writing stage.

The speed at which your chosen tune is played (ie. the duration of each note or chord and the time between the change), determines the tempo of the piece, and this is the 'pace'. In making a music video, the pace of the video will be influenced by the tempo of the music.

The Gentle Art of Editing

But there's more to editing than being able to produce the desired structure and pace. There are many traditional rules of technique and style which exist within the editing profession, and these have served editors admirably for many generations. With the advent of the music video, many rules went out of the window. Whilst from one point of view this may be excellent news, you must still proceed with caution. The basic rules must be known first so that if you choose to ignore them, you do so deliberately, for a reason, and hopefully to good effect.

One of the basic guidelines is that as a rule, the pace of the editing should match the tempo of the music, which basically dictates roughly how often you can afford to cut without it becoming boring or frantic. Cutting to the first beat of every bar can be a successful technique, but doing this on the first beat of every bar will make it predictable. Another effective technique is to cut the beat either when the music hits an emphasis or the storyline hits an action point. Try cutting on the beat, and then just as the viewers will predict another cut, keep them on their toes by changing the timing of the edit.

Unless the style of the music dictates otherwise, try to keep an even pace. If you start cutting rapidly then suddenly slow down for no apparent reason, the music will lose it's form and become confusing.

Choosing The Shots

In order to choose the shots that you want, you'll need to know how many shots you have to choose from and on which tapes your chosen shots are. It's agonising to have to view all your tapes over again, each time you want a particular shot. So, the first thing to do is to sit down to a viewing and make a 'shot list' of the contents of each tape. Note where each shot is on the tape, either by using the footage counter or the time code read-out if available.

How do you choose the best shot out of several re-takes? Well I can't help you on this one, it's down to personal judgement and experience, but you will obviously reject out of focus, shaky or badly framed shots.

Let me give an example; for your first few bars you have available three wide angle shots, one from the left side of the stage, one from the right, and one from the middle. You have several mid-shots of the lead guitarist, and you have a close-up of his guitar. What might be the best order in which to place these shots?

Near the start of the video, we'll want to establish the band as a whole, in order that the viewer can see of each member within the group, and their location on the set.

You may be tempted therefore to start with a wide angled shot from middle stage, and then cut to the wide angle shot from the left. You could, but you would not have a 'good cut'; the cut wouldn't work. If you cut together two shots which are from too similar view points or contain too similar content, the cut just doesn't work. What's needed is a change, either to a closer or further viewpoint, or by a total change of subject.

So we need to cut from wide angle to either mid-shot, or close-up or vice versa. Personally, I like to start close, before moving out. This makes the viewers want to see more, then gives them more. So this would be my choice.

1. Close-up guitar.
2. Wide angle (whichever looks best).
3. Mid-shot guitarist.

I wouldn't use too many wide angles; they can be a bit boring.

Action Cuts

One of the trickiest cuts is the action cut: cutting from a movement to a different viewpoint. When done properly, an action cut adds a degree of reality to an edit. Several attempts may be necessary, trimming off a frame at a time, until the cut looks smooth. Cut too soon and you'll get a 'jump cut' cut, too late and you'll get a 'double take'. The correct cut will be on an exact frame; you'll have to find it.

We're in the business of 'lying' whether we like it or not and the saying 'The camera never lies' is the biggest lie of all. During editing we will take 'reality' and juggle it around to suit our own purposes. Often, we'll use a particular movement to suggest something that the preceding cut tells us. For example, we might have an amazing shot of the bass player lying on his back doing a terrific riff, but the start of the shot is no good due to camera shake and bad focus. We do however, have a different take of the vocalist during the same part of the song.

The lie would be to run the shot of the vocalist and cut at a point when he makes some movement of his head towards the bass player... just a flash of the eyes, or anything that points us in the right direction. We have suggested that something may happen, then we see it.

"The basic rules must be known first so that if you choose to ignore them, you do so deliberately, for a reason, and hopefully to good effect."

The Cut-Away

Another convenient way of bending reality is the cut-away, often an editor's last resort to get him out of trouble. In the demo video, the 'cut-away' will either be used to break the monotony of a long take or to cover the lack of any useable synchronous take.

But what exactly is the cut-away? The following examples should suffice to explain.

First example; the only good shot we have of one section of the song is 25 seconds long and consists solely of a mid-shot of the lead guitarist doing a so|o. After twelve seconds it just gets boring. So slot in any shot which doesn't include any movement which you would expect to be synchronous (for example; the drummer's face, the lead guitarist's face or a set of machine heads). Run it for about five seconds and then cut back to the lead guitarist for the remainder.

Second example; through bad planning or just mis-hap you have no useable synchronous shot at all for a particular piece of the song. You had not planned for anything other than a synchronous take at this point, so you're snookered, and feel like giving it all up in favour of stamp collecting instead. But before you take up terrapin breeding or become a traffic warden let me tell you that all is not in fact lost. You can take the easy option and use a non-sync cutaway as before, or you could 'sync-up' a non-sync cut-away. For example; you could use a shot of the drummer from a different part of the song (as long as the tempo is the same). You'll have to carefully match the drum beat of the music to the action of the drum sticks. You may find that the sync will only hold for a short while, and you will have to move on to another cut-away. Another possibility would be to use a reverse-angle shot, such as a shot from behind the drummer. As you may not actually see the sticks hitting the heads, the sync need not be so accurate and may run for a far longer time.

A Tale of Two Edits

There are two ways in which we can electronically edit a video. With assemble editing, an edit is achieved by recording the first sequence on blank tape, and then starting the second sequence at the start of the first. The problem with this sort of editing is that electronic synchronisation of the video signal is not maintained at the edit point when using most domestic equipment. This is because a new control track is laid down for each new sequence, and at the edit point the machine has to hunt for electronic synchronisation on the new control track. The control track contains all the electronic information needed for the synchronisation of a video picture. Without it all we will see is 'noise'. The result can be a complete picture 'roll', or picture noise, or disturbance of the colour component, during the new electronic synchronisation period. Different machines will give different degrees of disturbance, but fortunately some, like the Sony Video 8 system, will give no disturbance at all.

The second method of editing is called insert editing. A continuous control track is first recorded on to a blank tape. Edits are then inserted on to the tape without breaking into the continuous control track. It follows that as the control track is not disturbed in any way there'll be no video disturbance at the edit point.

As machines which are insert edit capable need more sophisticated electronics than an assemble edit only machine, they're bound to be more expensive. All the commercial and broadcast U-matic and Betacam machines are both assemble and insert capable, as are some of the more sophisticated professional VHS systems.

Editing on the Cheap

The technique used to perform edits will depend upon the type of gear you will be using and the demands made by your chosen style for the finished video. Here I have chosen two widely different examples. The first is a video made on domestic equipment using a very low budget and the second is one made on U-matic commercial or broadcast equipment on a high budget.

The pitfalls and limitations of domestic video equipment were discussed in Part 1 of this series and we concluded that if limited to a very low budget, you could make a mostly non-sync. video, although the second generation (edited) tape would be of poor picture quality.

You will need two machines, one to play and one to record. Some systems enable you to use the camera recorder as the playback machine but any compatible recorder will suffice, so long as it has the capability to dub a soundtrack independently of the video.

Firstly, record a clean soundtrack, including an audio sync 'bleep' at the start. Then edit on the video, using the sync 'bleep' as a starting reference when needed. Many domestic recorders will only allow you to record video plus audio together or audio only. In this case you'll need to record the video with the reference audio you originally recorded on the camera. When the edit is complete you can then dub over a clean soundtrack, again using the sync bleep as the starting reference. As we discussed in Part 1 of this series, this method of editing is plagued with synchronisation difficulties — so the less use of sync shots the better.

High Budget Editing

Using the commercial U-matic, broadcast U-matic or Betacam systems, we can achieve a totally synchronised and edited video. The editing recorder/players are capable of recording either video or audio, or both combined. There are two available audio tracks.

A continuous control track has to be put on a blank cassette. This involves putting the new cassette in the recorder, selecting 'Assemble Edit' and recording what is called 'Black and Burst' onto it. 'Black and Burst' means that the new cassette has actually recorded a control track containing all the electronic sync signals: all the information necessary to produce a black picture. (A blank cassette will only reproduce 'noise' when played. Black is not the lack of video but a recorded signal containing all the necessary sync, and colour information). A 'Black and Burst' signal is obtained either by taking the input from a video camera with its lens capped, or by recording from a 'Black and Burst' master cassette.

In the event of neither of these being available, you could record the output from any used cassette providing that it has continuous control track.

Next, select the 'Insert Edit' mode. On track 2, Audio record a clean sound track including the sync bleep. It's always best to use Audio Track 2 for the most important audio content, as this track is furthest from the edge of the tape and is therefore less liable to be damaged.

Finally, while in the 'Insert Edit' mode, edit on the video and the reference audio which was recorded in the camera. Put the reference audio onto track 1. Audio synchronisation between two tracks is obtained using sync bleep as a start reference. When the edit is completed you could erase the reference audio which is on track 1, to prevent accidental replay of the inferior track.

Once you have mastered the technique, the quality of your video will be determined by the ratio of your wealth to your creativity. However it's most likely that lack of creativity combined with wealth won't give you much, whereas a head full of ideas plus Uncle Charlie's home video outfit might just knock us all out. You never know.