ProVideo Coalition.com: Bruce's Blog by Bruce A. Johnson

I can barely watch television anymore. Seriously. It seems that no one knows how to edit anymore, and the culprit in this demise is the non-linear editor. Allow me to explain.

About 20 years ago, I went to Los Angeles to visit a friend that had landed a producing job at KNBC. During my tour of the station, my friend towed me through the edit suites. Above the door was a huge banner that read:

I thought it was funny then. At that time - the late 1980’s - editing was strictly a linear, tape-to-tape affair, and footage was recorded to tape. This wasn’t too big of a deal most of the time, because most edit suites were cuts-only, machine-to-machine rigs. However, once in a while you’d run across a multi-machine A/B roll suite, with an edit computer controlling the whole shebang, including a video switcher. This was Valhalla for a creative-minded editor, because now the whole wide world of dissolves, wipes, keys and maybe even DVE moves were available at your fingertips - except when you wanted to do an effect between two shots that were on the same tape. That’s when the “dub reel” came into play. (Later, some tape formats incorporated digital memory in the form of “pre-read,” but that’s another story.) If you really HAD to have that dissolve, you would cue up the 2nd shot in the player deck, then dub it over to another tape - the “dub reel.” The dub reel got placed in the second playback deck, the tapes were cued and prerolled, and the dissolve magically appeared (assuming there wasn’t a glitch, of which there were many.)

As laborious as this sounds, believe me, it was actually worse than that. So, many dissolves just didn’t happen - no one wanted to go through all that hassle over and over again. And oddly enough, our editing and storytelling skills were sharpened by the need to think our way around changes in place and time that occurred within a story. Because that is essentially where dissolves belong - at changes in place and time, and very few other places at all.

All that is gone today. Every shot in an NLE can be butted up against any other, and any of a million transitions can be placed in between. I see stories on both local and network TV that will dissolve between the wide shot and the closeup in the SAME INTERVIEW! I see dissolves used as a kind of salve between two soundbites of the SAME PERSON, sitting in the same place, at the same focal length! Don’t these photogs shoot any B-roll? Do the managers think people won’t notice? Well, I notice, and it screams in my head:

But, hey. It’s a USA Today world, right? Good enough is good enough, right? Sorry, but I dissent. And I’ll fight for the day when dissolves are rare and motivated, when L-cuts and J-cuts come back into fashion, and editing rises again above the level of slamming footage together as fast as possible to get that dreck on the air.

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I completely agree!

My number one pet peeve in editing is when you see 2 soundbites from the same person from the same angle dissolved together. Take away the non-linear and see how things end up.

I am a big fan of training people in high school linear just so that they start out with the basics.

Posted by vdeoguy on 02/02 at 02:19 PM

non-linear is only real form of visual and audio editing. Linear editing is horrible invention of the video linear editor. Film editing (including the dissolve) began as non-linear and our visual grammar language was well developed long before the curse of linear. You guys are welcome to go back to linear editing.

Want I think you are really ranting about it bad editing which I’ve seen plenty of with linear systems over the years. NLE’s has just enable bad editing to reproduce and spread at virus like rates.

Posted by stephen v2 on 02/02 at 02:50 PM

>NLE’s has just enable bad editing to reproduce and spread at virus like rates.<

And this is a feature? <g>

BAJ

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/02 at 03:17 PM

Amen. I think AVID/FCP should take a pint of blood every time you dissolve, just to make you wonder if its worth it.

Posted by Charles Angus on 02/02 at 05:22 PM

Amen to that, Bruce!

personally I think the same should be said of unnecessary use of motion graphics as well, but that’s a different peeve.

Trouble is that many editors these days are young and just want to bang things together. They do not know how to literally ‘edit’. A lot of what I see these days is a lot of screen time that is taken up without actually saying much because the so called editor is enthralled by the Effect tab in FCP or whichever NLE they are using.

Posted by Simon Wyndham on 02/02 at 05:58 PM

I was stunned when I saw all the work Walter Murch was doing while cutting Could Mountain (on the book Behind the Seen)4 years ago. It was a whole thinking process involving database, stills from setups placed on his work room and I thought “yes, this is the kind of work that needs to exist behind art”. Coming from a FCP only work experience, I believe the work behind the cut shouldn’t be only within the computer. But this bad behavior that happens amongst ‘usually’ TV editors comes from producers that usually are business oriented and don’t really know what they want except that they want speed and quantity. It’s healthy to see that more and more good work its showing up on TV such these new DRAMA SERIES like The Wire, cause they make a profit. It just came out on the Guardian (English newspaper) a whole piece about quality TV (having HBO as one of the pioneers) and how this could turn the business around for better and more interesting TV. Here in London it seems we are going in the opposite direction hopefully not for long.

Posted by Pedro on 02/03 at 09:03 AM

I once worked for an editor before I became one, who had two quotes that have stuck with. They have stuck with me to this day. Don’t stop me if you have heard them before.

“How about a zero frame dissolve here?”
“A cut is my favorite effect.”

The first one would always thought off the producer. They would hear dissolve and just approve it.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/03 at 02:32 PM

it is funny but the best effect is the cut that works. Unfortunately that can sound lazy to a producer as in most cases people dont take into account the work done behind the cut that works. It is a bit subjective and that is the challenge. How to make your work partners respect that work and accept it as the most efficient tool?

Posted by Pedro on 02/03 at 03:01 PM

Sure, film was all nonlinear and we could dissolve all we wanted… at $5/dissolve! It was one thing to grease-pencil in a dissolve on the workprint, quite another to write a check for an answer print! In those days, lad, you had to really consider whether you could AFFORD another dissolve, or it there weren’t a way of saying it with a cut… (and we had to walk fifty miles between the editing room and the lab… twice a day… in the snow… in our undershorts… and we LIKED it…).

Posted by Adam Wilt on 02/05 at 01:55 AM

OMG I couldn’t agree more. I especially hate it when audio of someone speaking is chopped together in a very unnatural way, and then the editor just shows footage of something else while the audio is running it’s course. I see this constantly on TV, it makes me want to kill somebody.

Great post, I’m glad you’re angry about this. I am too!

Posted by the_Director on 02/05 at 08:03 AM

As I start my sixth decade of life I have to say ... I’ve heard it all before. I especially remember all the moaning about the lost art of page layout as desktop publishing became cheap enough that everyone was doing it ... many poorly.

Bruce, consider lighting a candle instead of cursing the dark.

Peace,

Rob:-]

Posted by Rob on 02/06 at 04:23 PM

Can someone please get rid of the idiot above who keeps posting spam comments every day?

Posted by Simon Wyndham on 08/24 at 01:14 AM

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Get Your Finger Off That Dissolve Button!