Edit Foundry

Lip Flap

I have a pet peeve.  It’s called lip flap.  Lip flap is when you take a shot and the person or persons in the shot is talking.  Maybe they are talking to the reporter, or another person in the shot.  What they’re really doing is distracting the viewer.  Anytime I see a shot like this edited in a story I think it’s very distracting.  I’m trying to listen to the reporter track and I’m trying to listen to what the person in the shot is saying.  With all that listening I’m retaining hardly any information.  I don’t see lip flap nearly as much as I used to but I did notice it in this piece on the Booty Parlor.

In this story there are six shots with people talking, that’s lip flap.  I know people are talking in this type of story but you can still build an effective story without all that lip flap.  I know because I did it.

Passion Parties is my version of a the same type of story, only without any distracting lip flap.

So first watch Booty Parlor and then watch Passion Parties please.

As you can imagine the ladies talked a lot throughout the entire party. I simply chose edit points to eliminate any distracting lip flap.

Intimacy

How often do you see stories on the air that, when edited properly get you intimate with the information.  This is one of those stories that needs intimacy.  How do you get intimacy?  You do it with tight shots.

Sometimes extremely tight shots as to avoid future conversations with a Producer or News Director.

As you can see I had to use shots that gave the viewer enough information to process what they were seeing, without being obscene.  This was a very challenging edit.

and Shot Variety

Another difference in these two stories is shot variety.  Obviously I’m going to use tight shots.  I also want to give you a feel of the room.

Who’s sitting next to who, how big of a room they’re in, who’s interacting with whom.  I noticed in Booty parlor a lot of medium to medium shots that blanded what should be a colorful story.

I felt a comparison of two stories similar in subject but executed differently was a good learning tool.

One final note.  I didn’t have a good ending shot but I did have a good ending moment.  Always end with something memorable!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 7:46 pm Filed under Feature Editing 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.