Rant - editing others' footage

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GalinMcMahon

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Rant - editing others' footage

PostWed May 26, 2021 8:10 pm

Just a rant, open to any wisdom.

I am an aspiring editor. I'm pretty good and I study editing philosophy. My reel sucks though.

I recently got a gig editing some short ads for a shoe company. Sounds like a big break! I wasn't on set and the director clearly has no editing experience. They shot with an intention of a 1080 output...so they shot in 1080. One cam was a BMPCC 6k...and they shot in 1080 pro res! No problem with good lighting and framing....but thats not what happened. Most product shots the shoe was half way out of frame. True, they could have shot in 6k and essentially had 9 1080 screens at once so the editor could recompose. The editor could have pulled out multiple angles from the same shot. But no. 1080 and poor framing.

And then the actors were not actors but tech reps. Easy to read a script off a teleprompter, right? It would be...if they had bothered to script it. So of course with non actors and no script you get multiple takes that can not be seamed together because no two takes were on the same train of thought and no one take made it more than 15 seconds without messing up.

I guess my advice is if you are directing and are not an editor, talk to your editor about your shoot before you shoot. Because getting a lot of bad footage is so much worse than getting a very small amount of good footage.
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Jim Simon

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Re: Rant - editing others' footage

PostWed Jun 02, 2021 3:36 pm

I always had the idea that if my little one-man-shop ever got successful enough to expand, new hires would start as editors before moving out into the field.
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Mike Wallis

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Re: Rant - editing others' footage

PostWed Jun 09, 2021 3:47 am

Sorry but I had to laugh!

I've been editing for over 40 years now and I've been in this situation many times. One of the skills an editor really needs is how to take a pile of sh## and turn it into something passable.

These days I only edit my own shoots so I only have myself to blame :)

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