The Three E's

By Frank Capria Courtesy of DV.com

In the midst of the often exhilarating chaos that is the creative process, even seasoned editors and designers get off track occasionally. Wild brainstorming and daring experimentation play a role in the creative process, but they must take their place within the framework of a disciplined approach.Most of us think of brainstorming as something done solely at the beginning of the creative process. Once we have a design concept, the rest is execution. If only it was that simple. Video postproduction is a series of creative processes-a series of creative cycles-not a single process. We have to be careful to leave enough room for experimentation throughout the post process while being mindful not to avoid situations where backtracking causes unacceptable delays. Over the years, I’ve worked on and observed dozens of productions from small student projects to multihour documentary series and movies of the week. The successful productions have all shared two factors-organization and discipline. The teams that made these productions successes reconciled the seemingly irreconcilable by bringing organization to the creative process.The challenge is made more difficult by the trend to rely on multidisciplinary post professionals; that is, editors who handle motion graphics, animation, color-correction, and sound design.Although there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, I’ve found a fairly straightforward approach to video postproduction that serves quite well on the majority of projects I oversee. I call my process “The Three E’s”: editing, essence, and emphasis. Attack them in order and there should be enough time for experimentation at the beginning of each part.

Editing: Start with structure

As in building construction, the foundation and structural elements should be sound before cosmetic improvements are made. In video, that means getting the editing right. The timeline acts as the foundation. Individual shots are the supporting trusses. Before getting hung up on effects work, make sure the story is clear. I don’t say this because I’m an editor, but because I’m a storyteller. It sounds so simple. Yet I frequently see experienced teams putting themselves in a difficult position by ignoring this basic tenet of visual storytelling. Here are a few of the traps I’ve stepped into myself.A nifty new effect is available to me. How can I use it? Countless times, FedEx has delivered a plug-in at 10:30 A.M. and by 2:30 P.M., my rough cut has at least half a dozen examples of the new effect in action. Whether or not the effect is appropriate isn’t the point. The fact is, at the rough cut stage, I don’t even know for sure if the shot is going to remain in subsequent cuts. If the shot is eventually put aside, my effects work was for naught.Simplify transitions. During the first two or three passes on a sequence, stick to straight cuts, L-cuts, and the occasional dissolve. Don’t get too fancy. These early edits will probably be trimmed and trimmed again. Any transition that requires rendering or uses elements beyond the outgoing and incoming shots should be put off until your sequence is to time. If a complex transition is absolutely crucial to the story, use a dissolve as a proxy for as long into the process as you can.Watch your layers. Before jumping in, cutting masks, and building multiple video layers, make certain the baseline images say what you need them to say. It takes more than twice as long to cut a two-layer video sequence as it does to cut a single-layer sequence, and the difficulty level grows exponentially with each additional layer. Again, if the layered sequence is necessary to advance the story, use a proxy. Fading in and out of a simple picture-in-picture effect usually makes the point well enough for the rough cut.Use static stills as placeholders. Animating or shooting stills should wait until you’re certain of the still’s duration within the sequence. The exception to this rule is a historical documentary that relies on stills to tell the bulk of the story. In such cases, there may be no avoiding an early trip to the animation stand. It’s often imperative to see how various moves work juxtaposed against each other.

Essence: Giving the piece style

Once your piece is close to time and all of the main segments are in place, it’s time to polish the overall look and feel by creating a palette of effects. These can include the color tones for certain scenes. For example, the interior of the protagonist’s home may be warmed up a bit while his office may use cooler tones. Specific moments in the piece may be given a slightly overexposed look or a bleach pass. Testing glows and similar effects may be appropriate here as well. Slow-motion and time-lapse effects should be fine-tuned at this stage. Adding strobes and frame blends are possibilities to consider. Just recently, I worked on a documentary where the producer insisted on seeing the strobe effects before the rough cut was complete. Valuable time was wasted tweaking and rendering dozens of shots before we’d even completed a first pass through the script. Everyone knows what a strobe effect looks like. We should have used standard slow-motion effects that render in realtime as placeholders until we were to time. It was my job to explain that the effects process should wait until the cut is in reasonably good shape. Instead, the job became a torturous combination of late nights and overused effects.

Emphasis: The finishing touches

I save text and motion graphics for the very end. I like to watch the edited piece in its entirety before making decisions on the amount and placement of text and motion graphics. Of course, it’s perfectly reasonable to have a motion graphics artist involved prior to this stage. His or her suggestions can help shape the style and essence of the piece. But be careful. Creating motion graphics elements too early is often wasteful. It’s been my experience that four out of five times, my motion graphics requirements shrink as the editing process goes on. As a producer paying top dollar for a designer or motion graphics artist, I want to make sure every dollar spent shows up on the screen. I wait until the last reasonable moment to order the motion graphics and animated stills. But all rules are made to be broken. A few times, I have built a sequence around a really neat effect and have gotten away with it. Yet more often than not, when I’ve strayed from my Three E’s approach, I’ve ended up squandering time on effects that should have been spent on the editing. And we all know that if the underlying editing isn’t any good, all of the wonderful effects and dazzling motion graphics in the world won’t save the piece. All you’re really doing is putting lipstick on a pig.

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