In this video tutorial, we re going to take a look at continuity editing and how we can use editing techniques to compress time.

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Corey Cross
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Digital Film School Continuity editing In this video tutorial, we re going to take a look at continuity editing and how we can use editing techniques to compress time.

1 Digital Film School Continuity editing In this video tutorial, we re going to take a look at continuity editing and how we can use editing techniques to compress time. Rick and John have given me the rushes from their recent recording session. It s great footage and they ve given me lots of flexibility through good recording techniques, such as using LIGHTS and good preparation, using a STORYBOARD. I ve already imported the rushes and put them in a BIN, which I ve named CLIPS. And here they are... there s quite a few of them. For example, here s one of a kettle being filled. My first role as the editor is to watch all the clips and make some assessments about each one.. What I like to do is watch them all through and then decide on the order they should go in. Don t forget that Final Cut will order them alphabetically and this isn t necessarily the right order. I ll keep it simple and use a numeric prefix, such as ZERO ZERO ONE to designate different shots, and then a letter to designate different angles or versions of that shot. So here we ll have ZERO ZERO ONE A and ZERO ZERO ONE B FADE OUT Here I ve completed that task. You can see my numbering gives me a better idea of my desired order. Next I ll figure out which clips I really want to use by watching them through again. I ll just skip through them for your benefit, but you need to make sure to watch them thoroughly. If I decide I want to use a clip, I can do a number of things. I could for instance label it in the right-click menu. I have some different coloured labels here. However, I prefer to move them to a separate bin, like this. So I ll carry on sorting these out now, watching each in turn FADE???

2 This one I don t like... it s duplication and that whip-zoom was a bit unpleasant. I ll leave it alone in the original CLIPS BIN. I m not sure about John s facial expression in that one... there looks to be an alternative take... Yes, that s better. FADE So I ve moved the other clips into the BEST BIN now. You can see that they re still in numerical order, so I m ready to start editing. I m going to cheat a bit here and select all the clips, then drag them into the timeline. And click YES to that. Final Cut will automatically place them all in sequence, exactly as they appear in the BIN - with 001 at the far left of the timeline. I ll have to ZOOM out of the timeline for you to see this. I m using shortcut keys to speed things up a bit. You can find shortcut keys for your editing package in its HELP files. So here you can see the whole timeline with all my clips. The problem is that it s really long. over 6 minutes to make a cup of tea will get boring... I won t even bother to play it all for you now! So we need to get down to some serious editing here. You can approach this in whichever way you choose, but I m going to start with this huge clip of the kettle boiling. It s about 4 minutes on its own, so if we can cut this down, we ll be cutting lots off the overall time! If I double-click it and preview it in the VIEWER, I can see that it is footage of the entire boiling process. From here at the beginning of the boil, to here - near the end! That s going to be pretty boring to watch. What I m interested in is the CLIMAX of the boil - this is the key visual clue for the story... I can find that at the end. One really good technique to trim this is to add an IN POINT. I move my playhead to the point I want to cut to and then click this little button here. Then I want to add an OUT POINT for the end of the desired clip... so that s this button. It has instantly cut the clip down in the timeline, but we ve got gaps now, which isn t much help! A crude way around this is to right-click in the gap and select CLOSE GAP. Great, that gap s gone. Let s do the other gap now.

3 Ok, that s fantastic... we ve cut lots of time off the sequence already... it s just a little over 2 minutes. I ll just zoom the timeline again. Let s just watch that middle section and see what we have. There s the kettle boiling......and there s where it clicks off. Next we have a close-up of the boiling climax, which repeats what we ve already got. I d like to use this close up too, as it adds some visual interest and stops the audience getting bored. I think I ll move the close-up to before the mid-shot. I ll click and pick it up, drag it over the top of the mid-shot and then hold my ALT KEY... this changes the mouse pointer to a downwards arrow. I can release this and it s swapped the clips over... great! That looks better, but we still have repetition. I m going to grab the edge of the mid-shot clip and drag it to the right. When I release, it has shortened the clip and left a gap. I can close the gap in the usual way. I can do the same with the close-up, but all this gap closing is getting to be a real pain! Fortunately, this editor has a much more useful tool, called the RIPPLE EDIT TOOL. It s found over here in the tool menu. Note how the mouse pointer has changed. I just want to find the point before the kettle clicks-off and move my playhead there. If I now drag the edge of the close-up clip to my playhead, it automatically reduces the clip length without leaving a gap. Let s play that through now. I don t want too much of the boiling, so I ll RIPPLE EDIT that too. OK, that s a bit better... it s shorter and it has continuity. I m going to move back to the clips before the boiling now. Again, we have some duplication here, but I like both shots and they provide more visual interest. I m going to swap them over, using the technique from earlier... holding my ALT KEY. So now we have a WIDE SHOT, running to a CLOSER SHOT.

4 Again, there s duplication and I want to edit that out... concentrating on the moment that John switches the kettle on. Here s good. I ll ripple-edit back to there. And then I ll find a matching point in the close shot. And ripple to there. Let s see what that gives us... That s a bit better now. So after the kettle boils, there s some footage of John reading his newspaper. In this one, he gets it out the cupboard and I don t really think that fits with the flow of the story... so I m going to move it to BEFORE the kettle boils. Let s have a look at what we have now... John starts the kettle boiling, reads his paper and then it boils, but I think he reads for too long. We don t need all that, so I ll ripple it back. Once the kettle has boiled, john notices it and goes for the fridge. We ve got a close-up here with some repetition that I don t really like. I ll just delete the entire clip and then close the gap. After John gets the milk, the shot changes to him arriving with the milk. This is good, but the continuity isn t there... we need to edit to match John s movement in both scenes. This can take some time, but experience will help to guide me to the right point. It also helps that I ve watched the footage so much, so I m familiar and I can anticipate the movement. There we go... that looks pretty good. Finally, I m going to tidy up the beginning. Just watch what I m going to do and see if you can recognise the different editing techniques. So let s see how that s worked out.

5 That s working well. It s a nice short edit and we ve cut 6 minutes down just just over ONE minute. It has a nice pace to it, which I m pleased with. I think I can do better though. If I needed it shorter, here s an example of it edited down to just under 30 seconds... A trick I ve used here is to take some audio from one of the kettle boilling clips and place it under the video of John reading his paper... let s watch that. I ve completely cut out the visuals of the boiling water, but I ve kept the audio to help the flow of the edit. You can probably see here that I ve placed this boiling audio on a different track to the paperreading audio, and they play together. Here it is once more... I ve also used some CROSS FADES to help tidy the ends up. Here s one more example of an even shorter version... just over 8 seconds. It s not perfect, but it might work well with some fast-paces music underneath. So, we ve managed to cut a 6 minute tea-making process into just 8 seconds, through the use of some simple editing techniques... why don t you have a go and see what you can achieve?

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