EDITING RULES : DSLR Filmmakers' Report

Film/Video editing is an Art as well as a Science. We need to master both the Art and the Science with rigorous practice and Observation. Editing is all about making multiple decisions at one time: decision about what shot to use and what not to, how long it should be, how should it appear, what should be the color, brightness, contrast, How is the audio and a lot of other relative decisions. Some important decisions are mentioned below:-

1. When cutting from shot to shot, have at least a 30% change in shot size. Wide to Medium is good. CU to wide works. Medium to another Medium of same angle looks weird.

2. Try to cut on a motion to hide the edit. A raised hand, a head turn, a slammed door.

3. If you think a cut is too long…you’re right. It’s too long.

4. If a scene plays great in one shot…leave it alone. You don’t have to cut to CU, reverse, wide, medium. Let the story tell itself.

5. Overlap any action by 4 or 5 frames. Someone turns their head in a medium shot, on the next shot start the head turn 4 or 5 frames earlier (then the previous shot) and for some ridiculous reason it looks and feels right.

6. Don’t go bonkers over every cut. Often performance trumps continuity. Now if the lead actor’s shirt is a different color in two consecutive shots…you’re on your own!

7. With DSLRs you can scale a shot up to 40% and still have adequate sharpness if you need to reframe or make a medium shot a close up. Sneaky but it works all the time.

8. As much as an editor feels he is saving the film, he’s probably not.

There were a couple other people involved before he started editing.

9. Anyone who says “We’ll fix it in post!” needs to be made aware that they need to get it right during shooting.

Last by no means the least learn how to put "Filters in order". To learn how to put filters in order visit my previous post.

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