Drives me nuts when film edits don’t have rhythm; ESPECIALLY for commercials. Lost track of how many times I’ve thrown fits about rhythm destroying cuts in film and sent them back to the edit room. (Besides: y’all should know better, anyway) ;)
I’m not saying simply using boring rhythm in video edits: 4/4 timing and always on the down beat. I’m talking about creative timing, changing time signatures, and using the beat of either the score, or the speech to drive your cuts and transitions.
So if you want to get better at editing in Avid or Final Cut Pro: study music. And I mean study. Get yourself out of 4/4 time signatures. Study the back beat and syncopation. Find places to nod your head where you normally wouldn’t. Find the beats between the beats.
Then turn off the sound and watch some music videos. Watch some car commercials. Watch the edits and learn the rhythm that’s happening visually: when it builds, when it dips, how it resolves (IF if resolves). Do the good ones (i.e. the ones that have a larger emotional impact) use standard rhythm or do they play with it sometimes? Throw you off… make you skip a heartbeat?
Good film / video editing uses its cuts, cross-dissolves, dips, and fade outs as objects within the movement of the image… not just “oh, I need to get to this other clip now, so I’ll cut here” whenever it’s predictable or easy.
Editing is not just about knowing all the tools and shortcuts in your software. Editing is an artform. It IS art. One bad edit in a 30 second spot can kill the entire vibe (often times without the person watching it realizing what happened). You have to practice to get to Carnegie Hall.
Film editing… study music. Edit music. Dance to music. Find the rhythm where other people normally cannot. Your edits, unpredictable, but inside the rhythm, are the third part of creating movement in filmmaking: the audio, the film, AND editing.
