Edit Foundry

Our story for this post is Reminders of May 22nd

Quite often I’ll get a story that a reporter has written with more than a few lines in which I challenge myself to find shots that are relevant to the story.  This is one of those stories.  A majority of the story I felt the shots I chose worked well.  But there are some lines of track I really struggled finding the right shot to edit in.  So please watch the story and check S.W.A.P (Synchronizing words and pictures) when it works, then look at the shots I choose when I don’t have a good relevant shot, here I try to use symbolism.

The story is a look at the recovery efforts after a tornado hit the town of Windsor Colorado last year.

So here’s some of my logic to the story Reminders of May 22nd

Our first track is

There are still reminders of May 22nd.

I start the story with a medium shot of a bare tree.  I felt this bare tree looked like a tree you would see in any day of tornado stories.

The next shot is of that same tree but now you definitely see what appears to be what’s left of an aluminum shed.

Then I take a tight shot of that ripped shed. Notice I take the edit mid-motion.  Like if you were there you’d here that noise the aluminum makes and then you would look it.

Take notice that the first 6 shot in this story all have slow zooms I added in editing.  My subtle way of pulling you into the story.

At [:13] You hear the reporter and then I cut to her visually.  This is another little trick I do a lot.  Helping take the viewer to a new location and imitating the eye.  If you were looking at that tree and then heard the reporter talk, you wouldn’t look at her until she already started speaking.

I’ve got music going in this whole story but this [at :16] is the first time i bring it up full.  I give a moment for the viewer to adsorb the shot….

…now my journey to try and find some relevant video begins.  I show the shot above because the mayor speaks about houses with no roofs.

Then he talks about someone losing half a home so I show this shot.

Then when he’s talking about fences being gone, I use downed fences video.

He then talks about seeing the living room and kitchen so I show this shot.

Throughout the story so far I’m doing my best to find shots relevant to the story.

Obviously the tornado should be shown.  I had to pull it from a file package so I only had a few shots to choose from to make this section work.

Now my true symbolic adventure begins.  There are several lines of track I’m totally not sure what to cover with.  I try to find shots that have some kind of symbolism.  Something the viewer can look at and it helps understand and correlate with the reporter track.

The soundbite I’m covering with these two previous shots is

For what we’ve in a year, it’s a great accomplishment.

Showing the town of Windsor sign up I consider just a symbolic shot of the town getting back to normal.  Tornadoes knock down trees, so showing trees ready for disposal is again a symbolic shot of recovery.

This doesn’t require reasoning.  Showing someone working on a house shows repair from the tornado.  I think it’s important to point out that I work very hard to find relevant shots, I’m only going symbolism route if I cannot find a shot that truly works with the reporter track.

This day care was heavily damaged and people familiar with the story will appreciate this shot.  Sometimes an edit may only be for a few.

The reporter talks about rebuilding families.  There is symbolism in this shot is just subtle and that’s the board in the foreground, It’s subtle.

Please continue watching.  There are a few other symbolic shots that I think work very well.  I challenge you to find the right shot for every edit.  I do.

P.S.  Hope to see you in Las Vegas on Thursday!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 9:19 am Filed under General Assignment and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.