Editing Dialog and Advanced Trimming - Autodesk Smoke Essentials: Autodesk Official Press (2014)

Autodesk Smoke Essentials: Autodesk Official Press (2014)

Chapter 5. Editing Dialog and Advanced Trimming

In this chapter, you’ll take the next step and begin using a greater variety of editing commands to build a scene between two characters, this time cutting around their dialog and multiple angles of coverage. In addition, you’ll begin using the many trim tools found in the Autodesk® Smoke®platform to make the small tweaks that are vital to tightening every scene and hiding your edits among the activities of the characters.

Topics in this chapter include the following:

· Source/record editing using overwrite and insert edits

· Trimming for continuity

· Trimming to create split edits

· Adding cutaways with three-point editing

Editing Dialog with the Source/Record Viewers

In Chapter 4, you did some fast editing using drag-and-drop techniques. In this chapter, you’ll see how to use traditional Non-Linear Editor (NLE)-style source/record editing methods to edit together a dialog scene with full coverage in Smoke.

First, you’ll need to create a new sequence:

1. Right-click the Visitation Scene library in the Media Library, and choose New imageSequence. You can also click the Visitation Scene library to select it and press image-N.

2. When the New Sequence Creation dialog appears, choose the settings shown in Figure 5.1 and click Create.

FIGURE 5.1 Creating a new sequence for the Visitation scene

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3. When you’re finished, close the Lab Walkthrough and any other sequence tabs by moving the pointer over each tab and clicking the Close button that appears.

You now have a new sequence in which to begin editing.

Using Source-Sequence Viewers

So far, you’ve used the viewer in Thumbnail mode and in Player mode. Now you’re going to use the Source-Sequence mode (labeled Src-Seq) in order to be able to load a source clip in which to set in and out points to define the range of media you want and locate the frame of your sequence where you want to edit it.

1. Click the View Mode pop-up menu, and choose Src-Seq (or press Option+2). Two viewers should appear (see Figure 5.2): a green-tabbed source viewer that shows whatever clip is selected in the Media Library and a red-tabbed sequence viewer that continues to show the frame at the positioner in the timeline. The name of each tab corresponds to the name of the selected item in the Media Library and the name of the selected sequence in the timeline, respectively.

2. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the Visit Media folder in the Media Library to open it, and click the header of the Notes column to sort by scene, shot, and take, so that the clips are in order.

3. Click the first clip, with the note 07_A_02. Every clip in this chapter will be referred to by note rather than by clip name. This clip immediately appears in the source viewer.

FIGURE5.2 The Source-Sequence viewer mode

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The media used in this book was originally R3D media shot using an RED camera, hence the complicated file and clip names. These names should be preserved in case you want to reconform to the original R3D media, which makes the Notes column so useful.

Each viewer has its own timecode displays, transport controls, and zoom and full-screen controls. Additionally, the viewer outlined in white is the currently selected viewer. In Source–Sequence mode, whenever you select a clip or sequence in the media library, the source viewer is automatically selected and displays that item.

4. Press the L key twice to fast-forward through the false start of this first take until you get to 11:39:07+23; then press K to stop. If you overshoot, press J to play in reverse and then K to stop. And you can always press K+L together to move through the clip a frame at a time or in slow motion. As you can see, the JKL keys are incredibly useful for shuttling through a clip as you begin to evaluate its contents.

If you like, you can open other sequences just like clips, using them as an editorial source.

5. Play through the clip until just after the director calls “Action,” and then press the I key to place an in point just as the camera is pulling out from behind a wall.

6. Play through the next 49 seconds of this clip, and press the M key to place blue marks in the scrubber bar at any frame where you think you might want to cut away to something else, as shown in Figure 5.3. Ideal spots include

· The two women hugging at the door (11:40:03+08)

· The main character’s friend appearing with tea (11:40:17+03)

· The friend saying “I had to beg a favor.” (11:40:29+08)

· The main character saying “Thanks, I appreciate it.” (11:40:36+13)

FIGURE 5.3 Marks in the source viewer scrubber bar

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7. Set an out point just after the woman on the left says, “You can’t keep skipping your classes; your TA is getting testy” (approximately 11:40:45+05).

8. Click the Overwrite Edit button, as shown in Figure 5.4 (or press the F10 key), to edit the portion of the clip you’ve defined using in and out points into the timeline at the positioner. Then press Shift+Z to fit the entire clip you’ve edited into the current width of the timeline.

FIGURE 5.4 The Insert Edit button (left), the Overwrite Edit button (center), and the Replace Edit button (right), which is customizable

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With this clip edited into the timeline, you can see that each mark you added to the scrubber bar of the source viewer has been added as a blue cue mark in the timeline. Cue marks appear in the timeline ruler at the bottom of the timeline, while segment marks are attached to clips within the timeline. Segment marks travel with each clip, while cue marks are attached to a specific position in the timeline.

9. Move the positioner in the timeline to snap to the first mark at the frame of the two women hugging at the door, and then click the clip noted 07_B_02 (in the Notes column) to open it into the source viewer. This is a medium/close shot of the same scene from the same angle, so play through the clip using the JKL keys until you identify a frame where the position of the two women in the source viewer matches that in the frame in the sequence viewer, as shown in Figure 5.5, and then press the I key to mark an in point.

FIGURE 5.5 Matching the action of the two women hugging in preparation for editing a medium/close shot into the sequence

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10. Play through the source clip until after the woman who answered the door says “Sit down,” and press the O key to set an out point. Then click the Overwrite button (F10) to edit this clip into the timeline over the top of the previous clip. Play this newly created three-clip sequence in the timeline to see how it looks, but don’t worry if the second edit point is a little awkward. You’ll deal with that later.

To snap clips and the positioner to markers, you must turn on the Snap button at the top right of the timeline, and you must turn on Snap image Snap Includes Marks in the Options pop-up menu underneath the timeline.

11. Move the positioner to the next cue mark to the right in the timeline by pressing Shift+down-arrow key (Shift+up-arrow key moves the positioner to the next cue mark to the left). This should be the mark you placed just as the woman walks in with the tea tray. This should be close to frame 11:40:17+03 of the source, which can be seen in the source timecode display underneath the red-outlined record timecode display at the bottom of the record viewer, as shown in Figure 5.6.

FIGURE 5.6 The record viewer displays both the record timecode of the timeline and the source timecode of the clip intersecting the positioner.

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12. Click the clip noted 07_D_05, play or scrub to the frame just after she spills the tea (13:05:08+09), and press I to set an in point. Then play forward to the point where the now-seated woman brings the red robot into the frame and looks at the other woman seated across from her (13:05:13+18), and press O to set an out point. For purposes of this exercise, don’t worry about trying to match the continuity of this shot.

13. Press F10 (or click the Overwrite Edit button) to edit this clip into the timeline.

14. Move the positioner to the third cue mark (source timecode 11:40:29+08), where the woman on the left is about to say, “I had to beg a favor.” Play forward in the same source clip (noted 07_D_05) to a frame just before the same line, “I had to beg a favor” (13:05:16+13), and mark an in point. Then play the source clip through to the end of the line “Far as I can tell, the file structure is intact” (13:05:24+06), mark an out point, and overwrite edit this clip into the timeline.

15. Play through what is now the sixth edit point in the timeline. If you’ve edited identically to the instructions, the edit joining “file structure is intact” and “Thanks, I appreciate it” is a bit jumbled and doesn’t fall on that last cue mark you placed.

16. Click the bottom handle of the last cue marker in the timeline, and press Delete to get rid of it. Markers are both selectable and draggable, if you want to move a marker to another frame.

17. Use JKL or scrub in the timeline or sequence viewer to identify the frame right at the end of the word “intact.” Then click the clip noted 07_C_01 in the Media Library to open it into the source viewer, and mark an in point at the very frame before the redheaded woman in the reverse shot smiles and says “Thanks” (12:24:11+14). Then play forward and mark an out point just after the line “People are asking about you” (12:24:16+07). Do an overwrite edit to put this clip into the sequence.

18. At this point, play through your eight-clip sequence to see how things are lining up, as shown in Figure 5.7.

FIGURE 5.7 The roughly edited Visitation sequence

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Watching the sequence, you’ll undoubtedly see several edits where the clips on either side are either out of sync or awkwardly cut together. That’s OK because now you’re going to use the various trimming tools in Smoke to refine this edit.

Trimming for Continuity

Throughout this sequence, you have full coverage of the scene from a variety of angles. Using clip 07_A_02 as the master shot, you’ve edited insert shots to call attention to key moments and direct the viewer’s eye. However, small variations in each performance conspire to make these different angles of coverage fit together imperfectly. With the overall scene edited together, it’s time to use the various trim modes.

1. Move the positioner to the second edit in the timeline (at 10:00:45+00), and play from the second clip to the third to see how it looks. You should notice a continuity break as the woman coming into the entryway is suddenly inside the house.

2. To make sure that each clip’s audio trims along with its video, check that the Link button is turned on.

3. Press the R key to select Trim mode (or choose Trim from the Edit Mode pop-up menu). Then press Option+4 (or choose Trim View from the Viewer Mode pop-up menu). When you select Trim View, the playhead immediately jumps to the nearest edit point, and the viewer changes to show the initially two-frame Trim View mode (see Figure 5.8), which shows you the outgoing frame to the left and the incoming frame to the right, along with some custom controls for adding frames to or removing frames from either side of the edit point.

FIGURE 5.8 Trim View mode

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If you’re not positioned on the correct edit point (between the second and third clips), you can use the up- and down-arrow keys to jump the positioner, and the selection, from one edit to the next on the timeline.

You can also use the Trim tool to double-click an edit point, both to select it and to open Trim View mode.

With the trim mode selected and the trim view open, you need to choose which part of the edit you want to trim. You can ripple the sequence by trimming the outgoing or incoming half of the edit, or you can roll the edit by choosing both sides together. There are three ways you can set this up (seen in Figure 5.9):

· In the trim view, click the left-hand frame (adjust outgoing), the center point between both frames (roll), or the right-hand frame (adjust incoming).

· If you’re a keyboard jockey, press P (adjust outgoing), left bracket (roll), or right bracket (adjust incoming).

· In the timeline, click to the left of an edit point (ripple outgoing), on top of the edit point (roll), or to the right of the edit point (ripple incoming).

FIGURE 5.9 Yellow indicators show whether you’re rippling the outgoing half (left), rolling the whole edit (center), or rippling the incoming half (right).

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Here’s another thing to keep in mind: unlike some other applications, the trim options you set up don’t always ripple the sequence when you’re adjusting the outgoing or incoming half of an edit. If you want to ripple rather than overwrite or open up a gap, you need to turn on the Ripple button.

4. Click the Ripple button to turn it on. The trim indicators in the timeline should turn yellow to indicate that you’re rippling rather than resizing.

5. Select the incoming half of the edit by clicking the right image in the trim view, pressing ], or clicking to the right of the edit point in the timeline. A yellow line should appear to the left of the edit point being trimmed.

6. Having selected the part of the edit you want to trim, there are four ways you can perform the necessary trimming to fine-tune the edit.

· Click the +5 button 13 times.

· Press Shift+Period 13 times to add frames in five-frame increments (the Comma key subtracts frames).

· Click the outgoing half of the edit in the timeline, and drag to the right until the outgoing frame count at the end of the clip you’re adjusting reads 2597.

· You can also use the JKL keys to play forward or backward, and the edit point will trim to the new position of the positioner whenever you stop.

7. Evaluate your adjustment by clicking the Trim View play button (see Figure 5.10) or pressing the spacebar, which will loop the playback of this edit repeatedly until you stop. Don’t use the JKL keys to do this, since doing so will actually trim the edit. This adjustment should look fine, although you should feel free to fine-tune this if you want to experiment with the different methods available to trim.

If you’re trimming by dragging in the timeline, you can hold the Shift key down while dragging to disable snapping temporarily if it’s on and getting in the way or temporarily enable snapping if it’s off and you need it.

FIGURE 5.10 The Trim View play button loops the edit point to let you see how the edit plays from one clip to the next.

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8. Now that you’ve rippled the sequence, the cue markers in the timeline no longer make sense, so +click all three remaining cue markers to select them, and press Delete to eliminate them.

9. Next, play through the third and fourth edits of the sequence — from the end of the third clip to the beginning of the fifth clip in the timeline. Notice that while the continuity from the third to the fourth clip is plausible, the cut from the fourth to the fifth clip shows the woman picking up the red robot thumb drive twice. This is easily corrected using one of the other trim modes.

10. Choose Slide from the Editorial Mode pop-up menu (or press D). When in this mode, you can drag a clip in the timeline to the right and left while simultaneously adjusting both of its edit points in order to leave no gap between it and the neighboring clips in the sequence.

Before you use Slide mode to trim the next clip, it’s important to understand that if Ripple is enabled, Slide mode will work differently than you may be used to in other applications. To help you keep this in mind, the Slide cursor will be color coded to let you know whether you’re sliding with Ripple turned on (yellow) or off (red).

· With Ripple turned on, sliding a clip will ripple the outgoing edit of the clip to its left, altering the duration of the overall sequence from that clip forward (see Figure 5.11).

FIGURE 5.11 Sliding with Ripple turned on ripples the sequence forward, before, and after.

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· With Ripple turned off, sliding a clip will roll that clip’s incoming and outgoing edit points, so that the duration of the clips to the left and right of it will be changed, but the overall duration of the sequence will not (see Figure 5.12).

FIGURE 5.12 Sliding with Ripple turned off leaves the overall sequence duration unchanged, before and after.

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11. Click the Ripple button to turn it off, because you want to slide this clip forward without rippling the rest of the sequence in order to improve the continuity of the outgoing edit.

12. Double-click the middle of the fourth clip to enable the trim view. You should now see four frames in the viewer (see Figure 5.13), representing the outgoing and incoming frames of both edit points that you’ll be adjusting with this operation.

FIGURE 5.13 The trim view, showing (from left to right) the outgoing and incoming frames of the first edit side by side and the outgoing and incoming frames of the second edit side by side

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13. With all of this set up, drag the center of the selected clip forward until the position of the woman’s hand holding the red robot in the third frame matches that of the fourth frame (see Figure 5.14).

FIGURE 5.14 Matching the position of the woman’s hand at the outgoing edit using a slide operation and the trim view

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14. Click the Trim View play button to see how the two edits connecting these clips play together, and continue to tweak the adjustments using the Comma and Period keys to fine-tune the position of the clip you’re sliding frame by frame, in order to match the movement of the woman’s hand from one frame to the next. A good place to stop is just before the woman begins to say “You owe me for this” in the next clip (source timecode 11:40:23+23).

As you can see, Slide mode is a fast way for changing how three clips fit together in a single step, but there are even more trim tools available for fine-tuning your edits.

Trimming to Create Split Edits

In this next series of operations, you’ll use Trim and Slide modes, as discussed in the previous exercise, and you’ll also use Slide mode and the Roll operation to start creating split edits to make the scene flow more smoothly. You’ll start by tightening up the edit a bit.

1. Play through the fifth and sixth clips. The dialog of the sixth clip in the timeline is extraneous and can be cut to speed up the exchange. Use the JKL keys to move the positioner to the frame just before the line “Far as I can tell, the file structure is intact,” and stop.

2. Press Control+M to place a segment marker on that clip at the positioner.

3. Press R to enter Trim mode, turn the Ripple button on, and then click the incoming half of the fifth edit and drag to the left until the marker snaps to the edit point (see Figure 5.15).

FIGURE 5.15 Rippling to cut out a line of dialog

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4. Play this edit, and you’ll probably notice that the pause between the lines spoken by the woman holding the red robot is too long. Press P to select the outgoing half of the edit, and then press Shift+Comma three times to ripple the outgoing frame to just after the line “anything off of this.”

5. Next, press ] (Bracket) to select the incoming half of the edit, and use the Comma and Period keys to trim an appropriate number of frames before the line “I had to beg a favor . . .” in order to create a smooth-playing edit.

As you can see, you can use the P, [, and ] keys along with the Period and Comma keys to select and trim edit points in the timeline, even if the trim view is not currently displayed.

6. Using the JKL keys, play through the line “As far as I can tell, the file . . .” and stop before the words “structure is intact.” Press Control+M to add a segment marker at this point.

This edit is a good opportunity to create a split edit, moving the video edit separately from the audio edit, to refine the cut and help the dialog and performance to flow more seamlessly.

7. Turn off the Link button, because you want to adjust the video without also adjusting the automatically linked audio that accompanies it. Then turn off the Ripple button and press A to enter Selection mode. Move the pointer over the middle of the second edit from the end until the Roll cursor appears, and then drag the edit point so that it snaps to the marker on this clip. Use the JKL keys to review this edit to see how it plays.

FIGURE 5.16 Rolling the video separately from the audio by disabling Link and Ripple

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The split edit you created plays well, but now there’s a bit of a pause between the line and the redheaded woman’s response.

8. Turn the Link button back on, because you’ll want to slip the audio and video together. Press S to enable Slip mode, and then double-click the second-to-last clip to open the trim view.

With this set up, you’ll use the Slip tool to change the content of the clip so that the redheaded woman’s line starts earlier, without changing anything else about the edited sequence.

9. Click the −5 button twice to slip the clip contents to the left (you could also press Shift+Comma or drag the clip with the Slip cursor); then use the Trim View play button or press the spacebar to preview the change you just made. Feel free to fine-tune it until it feels right to you.

10. Play through the last two clips in the timeline.

Two lines of dialog are joined by an edit: “People are asking about you” and “You can’t keep skipping your classes.” To make the scene a bit more dynamic, you’ll overwrite the previous line with the more forceful second line, but then you’ll edit the visuals to cut at a different frame than the audio.

11. Play through the second-to-last clip, and stop just after the red headed woman says “Thanks, I appreciate. . . .” Press A to choose Select mode, and then drag the last clip until its in point snaps to the frame of the positioner (see Figure 5.17), overwriting the line “People are asking about you.”

FIGURE 5.17 Overwriting the end of a clip in the timeline

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12. Play both clips around this edit. There’s too large a pause in between the two women’s lines to play well, so turn the Ripple button on, double-click the edit point between both clips to open the trim view, and use the controls to tighten up first the outgoing half of the edit and then the incoming half of the edit, so it sounds like one woman is interrupting the other.

With this done, the dialog sounds convincing, but the motion of the arm holding the red robot now has poor continuity. The solution to this will be another split edit, but this time you need to create room in the last clip to find a good frame for continuity.

13. Turn off the Link and Ripple buttons; then press R to enable Trim mode, and double-click the edit between the last two clips to open the trim view. Now drag the last edit to the right until just after the line “You can’t keep skipping your classes” but before “your TA is getting testy.” Play through the result using JKL, and use the Comma and Period keys to fine-tune this edit frame by frame until it’s right between these lines.

The delay between the audio and video edits looks great, but now the continuity is even worse. It turns out that the performer’s business with the red robot in each angle of coverage doesn’t match, so you’ll need to look to editing another clip into the timeline with better continuity.

Adding Cutaways with Three-Point Editing

The previous exercise left you with a nice split edit that cut away to a clip with poor continuity. In this last exercise of the chapter, you’ll use three-point editing to add a better clip and use the same technique to add an additional cutaway as you continue to refine this scene.

1. First, select the clip noted 07_D_03 in the Media Library to open it into the source viewer, and play through to find the line “Your TA is getting testy.” Mark an in point at the beginning of “Your. . . .”

When using the X key (Mark In/Out Around Selection) to add sequence in and out points that match a clip, whichever clip is on the track indicated by the focus of the positioner is the one used to set the points.

2. Now move the positioner so that it sits over the last frame in the timeline, and press the X key to set in and out points to match the duration of that clip, as shown in Figure 5.18.

FIGURE 5.18 Marking in and out points around a clip to make a selection

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3. Now press F10 (or click the Overwrite Edit button) to edit the source clip into the sequence.

You’ve just made a three-point edit, where three edit points are used to edit a clip into an automatically defined space of the timeline. Technically, you’ve already been making three-point edits by setting in and out points in the source viewer and using the positioner in the timeline as the third point to define where the incoming clip should start.

In this case, you’ve only defined where the incoming clip should start via a source viewer in point, and because you’ve set in and out points in the timeline, Smoke automatically calculates how much of the source clip to edit into your sequence.

4. Play through the last two clips. The continuity of the woman’s arm now works because it’s cut off in the last clip, and the line readings almost match, but there’s a fast way of fixing the dialog.

5. If necessary, press R to enable Trim mode, make sure both Link and Ripple buttons are turned off, and then -click the incoming half of the audio edits for the last audio clips on tracks A1 and A2 (see Figure 5.19).

FIGURE 5.19 Selecting incoming audio edit points in preparation for a trim operation

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6. Now move the positioner in the timeline to the preceding edit, and press E to trim the selected edit points to the positioner (see Figure 5.20). Play through the last three clips in the sequence to review the result.

FIGURE 5.20 Using the Trim To Positioner command (E)

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The Trim To Positioner command (E) automatically moves any selected edit point to match the location of the positioner. It is a powerful command for making quick adjustments when you’ve identified a target frame using the positioner.

7. Play through the fourth and fifth clips again. Now that you’ve created some sophisticated edits at the end of the sequence, this edit may not seem as smooth as it could be.

8. Select clip 07_C_01 in the Media Library to open it into the source viewer, and move the source positioner to frame 12:23:53+23, which is the last frame of a close-up shot of the red robot just before it’s lowered out of the frame. Press O to mark an out point.

Now you know the last frame of the close-up that’s available, but you want to figure out how much of this clip you want to edit into the sequence to cover the desired section. You can figure this out automatically by backtiming the edit using a different edit points setup with three-point editing.

9. To identify where in the sequence you want to edit the incoming clip, use the JKL keys to play through the fifth clip in the timeline and stop the positioner after the word “wasn’t” and just before the phrase “. . . sure I was going to be able . . .”

10. Press O to set an out point in the timeline, press the up-arrow key to jump the positioner back to the previous edit, and press I to set an in point (see Figure 5.21).

FIGURE 5.21 Defining in and out points in the timeline for the incoming clip

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11. You want to overwrite the video but leave the audio alone, so click the A1 and A2 source/destination controls to disconnect these tracks from the operation (see Figure 5.22).

FIGURE 5.22 Disconnecting the audio source/destination controls so that only video is edited into the timeline

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12. With all of this set up, press F10 (or click the Overwrite Edit button) to automatically edit the appropriate duration of the clip in the source viewer into the section you’ve defined in the sequence by aligning the source out point with the sequence out point.

13. Play around the clip you’ve just edited into the sequence, and observe that the woman’s hand in the static shot is very still compared to the movement of her hand in the previous shot. This is a good opportunity to slip the content of the insert shot to a range of media with better continuity.

14. Press S to choose Slip mode, and double-click the clip you just edited to open the trim view. Drag the clip to the right, use the Period or Shift+Period key shortcuts, or click the +1 or +5 trim viewer button to slip the clip so that the woman’s arm moves up for the first few frames of this clip, as shown in the left two images of the trim viewer (see Figure 5.23).

FIGURE 5.23 Slipping the clip to match the arm motion at the incoming frame

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Use the spacebar or Trim View play button to loop through the edit until you’re happy with the continuity of motion from one shot to the next, and then play through the entire edited sequence to see what you think. Feel free, at this point, to use what you’ve learned to fiddle with the current set of edits. There’s a lot left to fix and refine.

The Essentials and Beyond

The exercises in this chapter have covered a wide spectrum of source/record editing and trimming techniques, all of which are common operations that with practice you’ll find yourself using every day.

Additional Exercises

· Play through the second and third clips, and notice that the woman answering the door says “sit down” three times the way it’s now edited. Trim or re-edit this edit so that she says it only twice — once as an invitation and then a second time with urgency.

· When you feel comfortable with the techniques shown in this chapter, go ahead and edit the second half of the scene using the remaining clips. On your first pass, edit for continuity of dialog and edit in every single line of the scene.

· After you’ve cut the second half of the scene, trim it down to tighten the performances and see what lines you can eliminate to pick up the pacing of the scene. Don’t forget that you can choose different takes to even out the performances and cut out lines of dialog by editing the audio and video at different places.