This is a proof of concept edit to demonstrate UW Video’s ability to quickly turn around high impact content. The footage was captured by two producers with different styles. One shot with a GoPro on a gimble, capturing a diverse selection of longer shots. The other shot with… well I don’t remember now. It was a new camera they’d acquired, capturing a more select group of action shots with whip pans. The challenge was to integrate the efforts of both shooters into one high octane piece of work.
Swiss Bobsledding
I’m showing the adrenaline portion in this demo, but the full sequence is actually set-up without music and then the run. Two different editorial challenges, I loved them both. One for its behind-the-scenes feel and the other for it’s multi-camera motion madness.
TRAILER Europe for Music Lovers
What I love most about this piece is actually the process of working with the trailer’s producer and executive producer across three days with access to digital footage from 52 travel shows produced by the company. It was a process of both discovery and intention, being open to how different performances hit me and being faithful to the producer’s vision. What can I say? We pulled it off. 🙂
Flawless Kevin
Like the boxing edit below, I cut this one without music to see if it would hold up without music… and it does. Kevin’s a very kinetic young man, highly improvisational, with a considerable backlog of content on his YouTube channel. This piece was absolute fun to edit.
UW Boxing
When this project came up, another editor and I were both available to cut it. Both of us were deferential to the possibility of the other getting the gig… but we each very much wanted to be the one to put it together. Scheduling got me this edit… and I thoroughly enjoyed setting the stage for the UW Boxing Club as well as piecing together the fights.
Neuroscience for Kids
In my experience shooting and editing, I’ve done a lot of work with teens. It’s a pretty random lot of work, mostly capturing a particular energy through pacing and music. With this project, I was given the opportunity to express some of that manic energy through motion graphics as well. A wonderful way to stretch my creative impulses.
A Mountain Express
For this project, I’m editor, composer, and performer. For sequence I edited first, composed second. The fully arranged composition, I feel, captures the experience of this train through these mountains most faithfully. The process of edit first then compose, of course, takes longer with one person doing both jobs… but it is fun to cut sequences to the music I hear in my head and then get to compose and perform that music. 🙂
Flawless Kevin
Edits like this are rare in my experience. In this case, there’s definitely a manic, improvisational vibe that carries through the entire piece. However, this is a young person subjected to bullying in his teens… and his heart reaches out to others who don’t fit in. It makes for an unexpected, warm close that brings this piece to another level.
UW Boxing
I knew going in that this edit was gonna be filled with all kinds of heart and inspiration. It’s a project that, from an editor’s and a viewer’s point of view, has it all: both action and depth. That kid at the end? Wow. A hugely heartbreaking story with a very heartwarming conclusion to this step in his life. It’s some special kind of treat to get to work on a piece that not only professionally challenges me… but also personally inspires me as well.
I was brought in to tinker with the first episode of this series, to imbue it with rhythm and style more appropriate to a show for kids. Three episodes in, what remains of the original design are the brain/gears animation elements in the open and bumpers.
This clip represents the latest effort in the series, a rough cut of the first minute of the show that I got to have a lot of fun with.
This is a story we told on behalf of Columns, the University of Washington Alumni magazine. It’s the companion to the magazine’s own article on Kevin. We were asked to provide a behind-the-scenes flavor to his story, in the pursuit of which I used short clips from his YouTube channel to punctuate aspects of Kevin’s personality.
To great effect, I might add.
The soundtrack alone makes this one of my favorite pieces. There’s no music here… Kevin’s a walking sound effects machine just as he’s visually always in motion. Combine the two and you’ve got a ton of energy happening all in the one room in which his interview was shot.
I love pieces like this that hold up on their own without music.
Couple weekends ago plus a Monday, I spent cutting a trailer for a series that, right now, only exists in the minds of its producers. We’re pitching for funding, you see.
Saturday, I spent with the executive producer identifying the essential performances that would form the heart of the trailer experience. Focusing on a handful of performances, I used notecards to keep track of my real-time responses to footage as we watched the first time. I had them spread across the counter all three days. Then we sussed out the bare minimum of what we needed to cover the narration. What we ended up with (and what I was going for) was a soundtrack. The video and its pacing would be nowhere near complete… but the soundtrack would give us our rhythm.
Sunday we had notes from the producer that cut the running time by half down to three-and-a-half minutes.
What can I say? I really loved the music.
But what I created was an experience, not a trailer.
And I got called on it.
So then the EP ‘n I spent the day running down all the shots the producer called for, a not inconsequential task given we’re talking about shots originating across four 13-episode seasons.
We got ’em all, by the way. Plus, the EP figured out how to give us real-time access to all fifty-two shows without voice over. Super handy when you like a musical performance and don’t need the narration.
Monday morning.
I’ve got the first thirty seconds re-cut and filled in with the producer’s notes in mind by the time she joins us. Then we continue the edit with both the company’s executive producer and the trailer’s producer weighing in. It’s the fastest way to finish a project with all the sign-offs you need… provided you’re working with the right people.
And these are the right people.
Always have been.
Took us three to four hours to finish the work to everyone’s satisfaction. And like that—
We were done.
I’m actually proud of these kinds of projects, these starting-from-scratch working-against-the-clock with talented people experiences.
I fall in love with what I do all over again.
Some names you should remember:
Stacy Sakamoto.
Dick Marshall.
Stacy’s the producer/writer of this story. Dick’s the photographer, employing XDCam, GoPro, Canon Powershot, and an iPhone.
By the time they were done, here’s what was supposed to happen: a 3-1/2 minute cut completed in 12-16 hours. Instead, the cut had to be 5-1/2 minutes done in 8 hours.
That’s right: more content… and less time to cut it.
The question was, just how much impact would the loss of edit time have on the finished product?
Okay so Dick gave me tons of great stuff. I actually took time to skim through every clip, tagging as I went, before working the timeline. I quickly discovered the GoPro footage was AWOL. No kidding. Fortunately, Stacy took it upon herself to hunt it down for me.
As scripted, the story’s open featured a mix of the actual fight night and practice bouts. I leaned hard into the fight night footage alone; it was so loaded with energy.
The script also featured the deep, emotional moments two of the boxers experienced. It gave me an opportunity to get out of the way as an editor and let the moments play for all they were worth. And they were worth plenty.
Finally, I misjudged the amount of time it would take to cut the two fight sequences and actually cut around them in case I had to hand the edit over to another editor.
But, turns out the magic number was 30.
Thirty minutes to cut the fight sequences. Go figure.
The story on the photograph that ends this piece is that by the time the team assembled for a group shot, Stacy and Dick had already packed up their gear. So with no time to unpack anything, they used an iPhone to capture this final moment and, at the end of the edit, Stacy emailed it to me from her phone.
And that was that.
Magic.
🙂
There are times when you’ve got an abundance of footage. There are times when you’re cutting something that’s truly fun to cut. And there are times when those two circumstances intersect.
This sequence is one of those times.
As for the footage, good grief, there’s an HDCam and at least a pair of GoPros. I’m pretty sure you can see both GoPros mounted in the still image for this video. One’s mounted to the fin in front pointed forward. The other’s mounted just ahead of the first rider pointed back at the bobsled crew. And, for the beginning, there’s the HDCam for the wides… and that’s about it.
We also got the video captured by the track itself where cameras are mounted everywhere and, for each ride, a video’s made of that ride.
So.
A three-camera shoot of the ride itself. Pretty cool.
Before that, of course, there’s a lot of set-up and even that I found interesting. Enough so that I wanted the up-front portion of the sequence to run with just the sound of being there. The actual run itself, well, with speeds reaching upwards of 80 miles an hour there’s no way I can make you feel the adrenaline of that without a little help. So I composed some for the occasion.
In the end, this is one of my favorite sequences to cut, score, and yes… even watch.
🙂
Some sequences are mixed blessings.
What else do you call an amazing opportunity to cut a wild river rapids adventure featuring footage from an HDcam, three HDV cameras, and three GoPros?
That’s HOURS of footage, my friends, for roughly two minutes of screen time.
Because we had a longer deadline for this show, and because I was paranoid about missing out on any sound or visual element that would amaze… I watched everything.
Seriously. Everything.
This was one of the few times I tagged and sorted all the footage of a sequence before cutting one frame. Which helped me identify all the pieces I needed to create epic wipe-outs… and provided a rough idea on how to structure the sequence.
At the same time I was sifting through the footage, I was also thinking through what role music would play.
I always knew, for example, that music should mimic the adventure itself: preparation, setting off, rapids, and quiet resolution.
In viewing the footage, I spotted what I needed to transition from one part of the adventure to the next; the guide yelling out in the open being the pivot from setting off to rapids, for example.
Of course all this meant that I indulged… a LOT. And the editor’s cut of this sequence went roughly 45 to a minute longer than what aired.
No worries, though. That longer cut lives on in DVD extras.
🙂
DaveInEditing 