The Invisible Editor

In my experience, there’s no place for cockiness in a professional edit bay. The best producers & editors I’ve ever worked with aren’t hot shots who think they know it all. Rather, they are, across the board, incredibly confident and completely capable, yet wholly humble people. And to be the best I think they have to be. To be truly great, a producer/editor has to be able to lay aside his or her personal tastes and preferences and alter their approaches to do what’s required for the greater good of each individual edit. Why? Because, great producers & editors live out a belief that the ‘Content is King.’ They know that, like children, no two productions are exactly alike, so they give each one the attention and respect that it merits. As makers of media, though we may want our work to be about us, it ultimately isn’t. The point of the edit isn’t the editor; the purpose of the production isn’t the producer. Every edit is… sacred. And, when you’re confronted with the sacred, you don’t impose yourself upon it; you submit yourself to it.

The best media makers don’t simply plug every project into the same template. They are investigators. Trustees. Storytellers. Visual communicators. – The story you tell may be about a camp, a car, a couple or a concept – it really doesn’t matter – at the heart of every edit there is an aim. Every professional production is conceived for a reason. So before you begin any edit, you need to know the goal. You need to know what you want your viewer to take away; how you want them to respond. Once you know the desired result, every decision you make – from writing and lighting to timing and transitions – should be driven by the vision.

I will venture to say that many, if not most, producers/editors out there don’t function this way. In reality very few people possess a diverse enough skill set to be able to produce high quality works in a wide variety of styles. Instead they land on a style that they do well and then apply it like a fingerprint to every project they touch. Shoot, I do this myself. It’s easier. It’s more comfortable. It’s known. But it isn’t always best. Sometimes the trademark, …the… ‘fingerprints’… of the producer, can be too pronounced.

The best productions draw the viewer past the construction of the production and into its purpose. This is one of the basic truths of TV/film/video production. When the viewer notices the edits, he is drawn to see the surface of the screen, and he stops looking past the glass. In my book, anything that moves my viewer's attention off the message and onto the medium is a mistake.

(Writer’s Note: I am happy to extend at least two notable exceptions to this rule: car commercials and kids shows. If you make either of these, forget the rules! Pretty much anything goes. Do whatever it takes to capture, and re-capture and re-capture your viewer’s attention. Yes, I’ve made both, and yes, the ‘rules’ go out the window.)

If it’s true that we want our viewers to look beyond the surface of the screen, it follows to reason that some of the best edits you’ll ever make will be unnoticed by the people who watch your work. Don’t miss this because it’s quite profound! The best edits of your life may well be the ones that are invisible to your viewers. The best visual fx you ever create will integrate so seamlessly that an unknowing audience won’t even realize they are there, and the best fx guys I know revel in that reality.

You probably practice this, to a degree, without thinking about it. Every time you edit you make decisions to make smooth edits by eliminating jump cuts, flash frames and continuity errors. Things like that can be major disruptions to the flow of the program. Novice editors often settle for simply not making blatantly bad cuts. While that’s a good starting point, the overriding principle of ‘message over method’ can (and should) be applied at the highest level. Even technically good edits can miss the mark if the style, pace, music, graphic design and overall approach are mismatched. For instance, you could spend a hundred hours (or more) creating a complex multi-layered AE comp with all the latest and greatest effects & treatments the industry has ever seen, but if the look and feel don’t match the mood of the message, the result is little more than a meaningless demonstration of technical prowess that does more to undermine the message than support it.

And so, the greatest of all editors are digital ninjas. They are a powerful, yet unseen, force. They are masters of the art of invisibility, and consummate chameleons. Shape shifters who continually reinvent themselves in a never-ending effort to make a masterful mark on media without leaving any fingerprints.  

Passing Production Trends

When it comes to clothes, some people are really up on what’s in and what’s out. Others don’t even try to keep track. Only educated experts can tell last season’s styles from this season’s, but anyone with any fashion sense at all can tell you that you shouldn’t be caught dead in a mesh half shirt and acid wash jeans. 

In case you hadn’t noticed, let me remind you that video has gone through some pretty awful crazes. There was a time when sepia tones, strobe effects and posterization were all the rage. For a while one of the companies I worked for actually instituted a requirement that every video we produced HAD to include at least one of these vile video effects.

Other video crazes have come and gone too. Color pass filters, where the whole image is black and white except for the red pedals on a rose, for instance, were pretty cool for a while. And bullet time, where the footage is shot with multiple cameras from various angles so the subject freezes and seems to rotate in space (thank you, Keanu) is a more recent example of a trendy effect that had its 15 minutes of fame.

The style of your titles and graphics are key indicators of your productions’ sense of style. I like to compare title and graphic styles to makeup and hairstyles. Certain fonts and fills look current and natural, and others look behind times and out of date. Back in the 80s when heavy blue eye shadow and big Flock-of-Seagulls hair were in style, we were making titles and graphics that were big and bubbly with thick outlines and multi-color gradient fills. We thought it was rad. It was rad. At the time it was cutting edge. Today, however,  it would look ridiculous.

With the wide acceptance of DSLR cameras, the shallow depth of field look has become popular to the point of trendiness. Before DSLRs the soft background look was a lot harder to pull off. Because it required a big lens, it was the mark of professional video. Now anyone can do it. Is the shallow focus phenomenon a trend that will last, or just a passing fad? Personally, I believe it’s more of an innovation than a trend, so I think it is here to stay. But the video production innovations timeline will certainly include a marker separating the days before and after the DSLR look.

One thing I have noticed about fashion is that the 40s, 50, 60s, 70s and 80s had very distinct hair and fashion trends (sideburns and bell bottoms anyone?), but in the last 30 years (the 90s through 2010s) clothes and hair styles haven’t changed a whole lot. Things seem to be stabilizing. Normalizing. I was just beginning to think we as a society had moved past ridiculous fashion crazes… then somebody invented skinny jeans.

So producer, beware! Your videos are just as subject to fashion flubs as you are. The way you dress your videos can make them look ‘with it’, or whacked out. The key is to make sure your productions look current without trying so hard to be trendy that they become cliché.

Let Your Music Set the Pace

The music you select will drive the pace of your production. Even if only used as bed music, the soundtrack you choose to use needs to match the timing and pace of your edits. A slow-paced song lends itself to longer shots and soft, slow transitions, like dissolves. Upbeat, fast-paced music fits best with quick, short shots, whip pans and cuts, not fades. When hyper-fast edits are mismatched with slow, plodding music or vice versa, the pace doesn’t play properly. You have a mismatch. Select a soundtrack that sets the right pace for the piece, and edit your visuals to match the pace of the music.

Have it Your Way: Customizable Content

Back in the day, Burger King had an ad campaign that was driven by the fact that you could “have it your way” at their restaurants. Remember the jingle? “Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce special orders don’t upset us.” At the time that was a big deal. Until then people just ate it the way a place made it, or they went somewhere else. Today, having it our way is the only way.  Who would accept anything less? The portions are scaleable too. I can get my custom-created-just-to-my-liking #2 combo Regular size, Jumbo size or Gargantuan. It’s up to ME... and I like that. I bet you do too. As consumers, we all like to have things “our way.” I think fast food chains have done a brilliant job of serving us their “content” in modular combinations and scalable portions. I hope that one day we might be able to offer similar 'portion control' to our viewers. 

As a video producer, writer and host of "edutrainment" programs, I have often wished that I could do that for my viewers. As producers, we face a dilemma when it comes to distributing our programs. There just isn’t a good way to create and present a video in a modular format that can be customized by the viewer on playback. We edit video in a nonlinear, random access fashion, but (with very few exceptions) our viewers still watch our productions as linear presentations. They start at the beginning and they have to watch the middle to get to the end. In my opinion, that’s too rigid for today’s busy, fast food content consumers. 

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could select your own custom-created edit of a video, rather than being forced to settle for the one-size-fits-all option created for a mass audience? I think it would be cool to be able to offer my viewers optional 2-minute, 5-minute and 10-minute versions of a show and let them choose which version they’d like to watch. Sure, I could edit and distribute 3 different versions of a video for a DVD or post 4 variations of an edit to YouTube, but that’s way too time consuming and bandwidth intensive. It’s not practical. What I want is a way to create one edit, the full-length version, and then embed invisible markers into the file to assign commands that would re-direct or re-sequence the show on the fly during playback based on the viewer’s individual level of interest in the episode. 

QuickTime, Flash and DVD can all sort of do this, but none of them is meant to do it and none of them makes it a fast and easy process for the editor, nor provides a high-quality viewing experience for the viewer. My hope is that it won’t be long before we see this kind of technology built into our editing applications. 

I predict that, in the future, the way we distribute video will have to change to become more viewer-customizable. Our shows will need to become more modular and scalable. Viewers want to watch videos on their own terms; they just don’t know how to order them yet. Until that day comes, they’ll just have to watch what we give them… or exercise their right to turn us off. 

Building a Big Set on a Small Budget

Most of your videos may be shot in real-world settings or on a simple solid-color wall, but you can give special projects a big boost in production quality if you take the time to build a custom set. I recently had the task of creating such a set and in this entry I'll tell you how I did it. Yes, it takes some rudimentary carpentry skills and some Macgyver magic, but with little bit of creativity you can build amazing sets for your videos with just a few simple tools (this set was built using a saw, a drill, some scissors and a staple gun). The best news is that you don't have to spend a lot of money to create a really cool set that makes a massive impact. This set only cost about $200 in materials. Here's a step-by-step overview of how I designed and built my big ol' backlit set, so you can build one like it.  

The Task
I wasn't given a lot to go on in terms of direction. I knew the production we were working on called for a single-talent stand-up presentation, and the colors for the client were orange & blue. I also knew it needed to be a large set; big enough to shoot our host head-to-toe without showing the edges of the set. Fortunately, we had access to my buddy Todd's gymnasium-sized studio space with plenty of height and width to work with. The only instruction I was given was that and it needed to convey a "high-impact entertainment show look."  -- Okay... where do you even start?

The image of this trade show booth served
as inspiration for my big backlit set build.

Step 1 - Find Inspiration
I like to begin my new projects by searching the web for images to provide inspiration and ideas. I decided to Google some images of keynote speeches and trade show booths. I created a folder on my desktop and filled it with reference images that showed the general direction I wanted to head. The image on the right it the actual image that I used as inspiration for this set. It happened to be in the color scheme of my client, but that was coincidence more than anything. It was the combination of backlighting & modular-panel construction that I found inspiring. I found two that were both very close to what I needed to build. I looked into the cost of simply buying or renting a similar pre-constructed background. Yikes. Let’s just say, they were “cost prohibitive.” There was another problem too. Although they had the right look, none of the prefab backdrops I found was anywhere near large enough to shoot our host head-to-toe. Nope. We would have to build something ourselves. So, with a clear concept in mind, I jumped to Excel to create a blueprint of the set we would actually build. 

Step 2 - Sketches and Scale

The next step was to make some drawings to help determine the size of the set. I use spreadsheets for just about every aspect of production, including set design. Spreadsheets are like virtual graph paper, so they’re a great tool for visualizing a set like this, and they provide a good scale drawing that makes it easy to estimate the materials you’ll need to buy. 

Spreadsheets are a great tool for pre-visualizing your sets.

This is my original “spreadsheet blueprint” for this set. By the time we finished, the blue center sections would be widened, but this sketch was key in developing the original plan. I eventually spec’d a series of 8′x2′ panels divided into 2′x2′ squares by adding three cross members.

Step 3 - Choosing Materials

Next up was a field trip to Lowe’s to look for materials for the build out. The structure would need to be solid enough to support a colored skin, but thin enough to not dominate the design. It would also need to stand up on it’s own without collapsing. The cool thing about building sets is that anything that works, works. It needs to look good on camera, but apart from that there is a lot of room for creativity in how you build it. Once I had my idea and sketches, my next step was to wander through the aisles at Lowe's to look for building materials that might work. My first thought was to build the frame out of PVC lengths and joints. While PVC could certainly work for a similar design, it wasn't practical for a grid that would be 12-feet high. PVC is also pretty pricey, so it would have cost a pretty penny to build anything as large as this set. Fortunately, I discovered cheap bundles of 8-foot 1"×2″ boards in the back of the store behind the lumber. A lot of them were warped & crooked, so it took awhile to find enough straight boards, but after a little searching, I left the store with a big box of drywall screws and all the wood I needed for just over a dollar per board. 

A test proved the concept, but wasn't quite right.

I wanted my set to “light up” like my inspiration images. I decided to do this by skinning the wall with some kind of material that would allow light to pass through from behind. I quickly eliminated plastics & plexiglass, and landed on fabric. An expedition to Hobby Lobby yielded three varieties of material that I thought might work. I brought samples back to the studio for small scale light tests. — My first choice of fabric was a tarp quality material (test shot shown here). While it proved that my backlighting concept would work, it was too thick to pass much light & it didn’t diffuse it evenly enough. I ultimately settled on a thinner nylon fabric (in turquoise & orange) that I got for around $5/yd. Not too shabby.



Step 4 - Construction
Construction of the frame took three of us most of a day. We built a series of 8′x2′ panels, using (2) 8′ boards as our outside edges, and (5) lengths of board cut into 2′ sections to create our “ladder rungs” that spanned the outer boards at 2-foot intervals. We laid them out on the floor, then screwed them together with inch-and-a-half drywall screws, and stapled our fabric to each section. Next we screwed the panels together to create bigger sections. 

Step 5 - Suspension
Because of the tall height & flimsy nature of the panels, I decided to hang them from the ceiling, rather than try to prop them up as a free-standing structure. A few lengths of dog

chain and a handful of eye hooks (again from Lowe’s) did the trick, and soon we had the large center portion of the set up and hanging in place. With the center section secured, we added our two outrigger sections. I decided to not attach these to the center section, but to set them forward so our talent could walk out from between the panels. After adding our outrigger panels, the unlit wall looked like this - The final dimensions: 32′(w)x12′(h).

Step 6 - Lighting

As with most video, the big payoff comes in the lighting phase. The trick here was to light our set and our talent independently, keeping spill from our talent light completely off the background. We lit the main part of the large set wall from behind with (4) 500 watt scoops, and the outrigger panels with stand-mounted 250s. This required leaving enough space behind the set for our lights. With the backlighting turned on, I quickly noticed that white light was spilling through small gaps between the panels we had screwed together. The solution was to tape the gaps with black gaffer's tape. I did the same thing to prevent light from spilling out underneath the panels onto the floor. 

Step 7 - Discovery
Sometimes we all benefit from happy accidents, and I had several of them on this project. As we were lighting the wall, we inadvertently discovered that the cement floor took the gelled light beautifully. I commissioned a fresh coat of floor wax, added a few par cans with matching gels to add color, and the floor became an outstanding extension to the set. Since I had some time between the set build and the shoot, I decided to have a custom gobo made from the client's logo. We added the gobo to an un-gelled white light to blast the logo onto the floor as a finishing touch.

As we tested footage of the lit-up wall, My editor discovered that we could chromakey out the orange and blue sections, turning what was originally intended to be a practical set into a virtual video wall. This allowed us to insert video and graphics behind our talent, and to easily change the color & texture of the entire set, while retaining it’s luminosity. As a result, this set that we built for one client became at versatile workhorse that we were able to repurpose for several productions with very different looks, and it stands as a semi-permanent part of Todd's studio to this day. 

I hope this entry helps inspire you to get creative with your own set designs and maybe try out your own backlit fabric set. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to create awesome environments for your productions. Below I have included links to three videos shot using this set so you can see it in action. It looks far better in motion than it does in these stills. Three projects, three looks all from this one set. Check them out and let me know what you think.

Jenifer Fox Strong Planet Promo
http://youtu.be/GGDV71owXd4

Paul Wittwer, One Degree Promo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mApdj4AEBxM

CMConnect Promo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwalY5uqmlQ