how to make making smooth edits?

[Michael Richard]

I am shooting a short project and wonder how to cut smoothly between edits. Say you have a 60 second piece captured and you insert two segments of an interview into your timeline. Now when you play back the first segment, your talent has just finished saying something. Now here comes your next segment, same talent talking about something else. But say that the talent has some how changed position. Maybe their head has moved to the right. Now you see a noticeable jump between the two pieces where they are cut together.

How do you deal with issues like this? I would rather not do a dissolve.

[Rob Zeigler]

Hey Michael,

If you don't want to do a dissolve, then I can think of a couple of other options.

1. The solution I favor the most, in this instance, depends on what is more important: seeing the talent or hearing the information. If you MUST see the talent, then see #2. If just the information is important, then try this: First shot is your talent talking, the next shot you have is them talking about something ELSE, but instead of showing them again, do you have any B-roll footage that you can insert but still use the audio track from their interview? That way the information is still coming across, but you're not jump-cutting between the same person in two different seating positions.

2. If you don't have any B-roll or must continue to show the talent, then instead of a dissolve perhaps you could insert a graphic showing the question they're about to answer. It'd be a way to setup the viewer. For example, the graphic says, "Why is this subject important to you?" and then you could cut right into the speaker and they could answer the question.


I, myself, would prefer #1. I find it jarring if the talent is repeatedly showing up in different positions, especially if they're within the same setting (say, an office) in all of the shots.