I've edited a couple of true multicam shoots of stage productions and apart from the technical stuff which was made very easy thanks to Infiniticam it was relatively plain sailing. Just stick to a few basic rules of editing and all came out looking pretty good, even if I do say so myself.
But Oh Boy, my latest venture is a much harder boat to row. I guess the old hands will just go 'Duh Bob' but it's sure taught me a thing or two.
Some background.
This wasn't a true multicam shoot, just one camera shooting mulitple takes of a single car running in a time trial. Needless to say I was quite concerned about continuity issues.
So I started by carefully lining up two takes shot from different position on the track. Did this using what seemed the obvious, markers on the road. My idea was that if the cut happened with the car in exactly the same physical postion all should be well.
Ha, wrong! The cuts looked quite wrong and it took some head scratching to work out why. The eye isn't looking at the precise location of the car on the track at all, it's looking at the relationship between the car and the foreground and/or background. In fact the closer I got things to perfect visually the worse it'd look. I could almost fudge an effect where the car seems to keep going on it's merry way and the background jumps a huge amount across the frame and that really spins the brain out.
Now this explains something that's always bugged me. Watching live coverage of a car race sometimes the cuts look really off, like the editor lost more than a few frames, yet that's impossible.
So I've learned one thing about this game. Planning a shoot for editing can save pain. Don't slavishly follow the car around the track, let the camera come to rest and the car run out of frame, then cut. This creates some visual tension (where'd the car go???), so when we 'find' it in the next shot the brain is happy and the tension masks any continuity issues.
I did also find that dissolves do a great job of masking many visual warts however I really wanted to do this the Old School Way, cuts only. I could have also used the old standby, the cut away, plenty of them at hand however as each 'race' is very short I resisted, I felt a cutaway has a place only in longer sequences to relieve visual tedium, in a 40 second event they'd look forced.
One thing I learnt out of all this, we can argue all we like about cameras and tapes and tripods and lights but in the end nothing leaps out of the screen and hits you in the face like a Mack truck more than bad editing. For me the jouney seems to involve a lot of learning how NOT to do it but at least they're lessons I'll sure remember.
Bob.
But Oh Boy, my latest venture is a much harder boat to row. I guess the old hands will just go 'Duh Bob' but it's sure taught me a thing or two.
Some background.
This wasn't a true multicam shoot, just one camera shooting mulitple takes of a single car running in a time trial. Needless to say I was quite concerned about continuity issues.
So I started by carefully lining up two takes shot from different position on the track. Did this using what seemed the obvious, markers on the road. My idea was that if the cut happened with the car in exactly the same physical postion all should be well.
Ha, wrong! The cuts looked quite wrong and it took some head scratching to work out why. The eye isn't looking at the precise location of the car on the track at all, it's looking at the relationship between the car and the foreground and/or background. In fact the closer I got things to perfect visually the worse it'd look. I could almost fudge an effect where the car seems to keep going on it's merry way and the background jumps a huge amount across the frame and that really spins the brain out.
Now this explains something that's always bugged me. Watching live coverage of a car race sometimes the cuts look really off, like the editor lost more than a few frames, yet that's impossible.
So I've learned one thing about this game. Planning a shoot for editing can save pain. Don't slavishly follow the car around the track, let the camera come to rest and the car run out of frame, then cut. This creates some visual tension (where'd the car go???), so when we 'find' it in the next shot the brain is happy and the tension masks any continuity issues.
I did also find that dissolves do a great job of masking many visual warts however I really wanted to do this the Old School Way, cuts only. I could have also used the old standby, the cut away, plenty of them at hand however as each 'race' is very short I resisted, I felt a cutaway has a place only in longer sequences to relieve visual tedium, in a 40 second event they'd look forced.
One thing I learnt out of all this, we can argue all we like about cameras and tapes and tripods and lights but in the end nothing leaps out of the screen and hits you in the face like a Mack truck more than bad editing. For me the jouney seems to involve a lot of learning how NOT to do it but at least they're lessons I'll sure remember.
Bob.