Learn distribution & impact strategy. Attend the Master Class Nov 10 at 12 PM PST.
Develop the Narrative Foundation for your screenplay. Enroll by Nov 10.
Learn distribution & impact strategy. Attend the Master Class Nov 10 at 12 PM PST.
Documentary editor Toby Shimin talks about how to screen for emotion and story, organizing footage, and building impact.
Key Insights
- As an editor, you are looking for subtext: the deeper meaning behind what’s really happening.
- Pay attention to your physical responses when watching footage - your intuition will key you into special moments.
- As you start watching footage, create bins for audio cutaways and keep them organized.
- These are bins you’ll use to create “emotional highlighting”
- Look for themes: emotions, times, events, people
- Create a bin just for “filler” words to help you clean up sentences (e.g., “and”, “but”, “so”, “the”, etc.)
- Stay organized and disciplined in your binning - this will only benefit you and your team
- Silence and space are essential to crafting emotion and pace: don’t cut out pauses only for the sake of trimming time.
- Film dialogue/audio is like a conversation - you want to let something sink in before providing a response.
- You can use “scripting” to craft a moment you need, so long as it is something that accurately represents the person or story, and is ethically sound.
- Look for the moment in the footage that tells you what the story is really about: the personal struggle that connects to everyone and draws them in.
Editor
Editor Toby Shimin began her film career as a sound editor and switched to picture editing in 1988 when she cut "The Children's Storefront", which was nominated for an Academy Award. more...
Tags:Shorts