The Visual Grammar of Motion Picture Photography
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Video Editing: The Invisible Art

A skilled editor successfully reconstructs a series of events that “embodies a sense of continuity or consecutiveness” to sharpen and enlighten the viewer’s experience. The images presented in a story need to show an event unfold, as it could in real life. The photographer should view a camera’s lens as a human eye. The way a person observes a setting, and gradually focuses on certain details should be considered when setting up a camera shot. Several techniques can be used to help this process. The 'Rule of Thirds' improves the composition of a setting by having the photographer divide a scene into thirds. When viewing scenes in this way, the photographer places subjects in regions where the lines intersect. This useful approach enables the viewer to concentrate on the most important actions. Another strategy when capturing a setting is the pan, which is used to survey a scene that lasts long enough for an average person to process the documented details. In journalism, less equates to more. Images that do not clutter a picture and lack detail often succeed in effectively telling a story.

One of my concerns with any sort of journalism is staging. I always try to stay outside of the story so that I can successfully document the natural actions during a moment in time without influencing the actions within a scene. With the overlapping action, the photographer at times interferes with the natural flow of events by instructing the person in the image to repeat an action. Although this may be necessary in order to capture a master shot and a detail shot, the idea of staging journalism makes me quiver with pity and shame.

An important technique with editing is the cutaway. In radio, I am comfortable with taking two separate parts of a single interview and pasting them together to save time, without changing the meaning. In television, editing in this way is not as cut and dry. Joining two separate parts of a video interview results in a jump cut. Cutaways prevent jump cuts by inserting b-roll as a backdrop over the interviewee’s audio. Doing this correctly will prevent the viewer from being distracted by an obvious edit. A technique in radio that can be applied to television is using sound as a transitional device. Starting natural sound at the tail end of a shot can ease the viewer with a sound bridge from one scene to another.

Just like the way a camera’s lens should be viewed as a human eye, editing should be done with “our eyes and with our minds.” Since editing is such an integrated part of storytelling, everyone involved in the process (the reporter, writer, photographer, etc) is an editor. Every image in television has tidbits of information that should flow smoothly from one scene to another, and every edit made should make sense. Simply placing b-roll over an interview should add to a story, not defer from it.


A 4802 Web Extra

For more detailed photography techniques, click here.

For an article on the the ethics of staging, click here.