Digital Video Editing I | Shooting and Editing Video

Film an Interview

Choose a nice background for your shoot!

To get some working knowledge of filming, editing, and digitizing video, we'd like you to shoot yourself. In this project, we'd like you to shoot an interview with yourself as the interviewer and as the interviewee.

This project will be very challenging and may take more time than others in the course, but it will teach you an incredible amount about how to direct and edit video. You'll create a flow of conversation, choose camera angles, manipulate framing, pacing, and continuity, and more.

Beyond these important aesthetic and technical aspects, we will investigate the influence of subjectivity and objectivity in the editing process of one's own video project.

 

The production process for your interview is very simple, and in fact, it promises to be really fun. You won't need a studio, a crew, or any extra equipment such as external microphones, professional lighting, and so on. Just a video camera with a tripod, an extra lamp, some imagination, and the ability to talk about a subject that fascinates you!

Note: A tripod is highly recommended for this assignment, but if you don't have one, you can improvise a camera stand on a stable surface.

Your final interview should be no more than two minutes in length.

Preparing the Q & A

Most interviews that you see on TV or film are carefully prepared—scripted or rehearsed in some way.

So prepare for your interview by taking some notes before you start. You can conduct the interview on any subject you like. If you are stumped, ask yourself four questions about your life and career. Phrase the questions as you like. The following is just a guide:

	1. Tell us about yourself: What is your name and where did you grow up? 2. What are your main objectives in life right now, and how did you decide on those? 3. What was the inspiration for choosing digital media as your creative path or occupation? Did you have a key experience that inspired you? 4. What are your goals? What is your desired job in the future? (This question should have a longer answer than the others, 10 seconds minimum.)

Setting Up the Interview

The goal of this self interview is to create two different lighting situations for yourself in the double roles of interviewer and interviewee. To make your video intelligible to the viewer, you will have to choose a different background for each persona. Remember that in film you can "construct" space, so those two backgrounds can be in the same room or in totally different rooms. We, as the audience, will never know because, through editing, you can produce the illusion that those walls are part of the same room, even though in reality they are not. Experiment with the different framings that were discussed in this lecture. Change the framings of your subjects from shot to shot. Try an occasional change from medium close-up to close-up!

Since you are creating the illusion of a video depicting two subjects talking to each other, you will have to be careful with the angles where you set up your camera. The diagram below shows the 180 degree rule traditionally used in film:

According to the 180 degree rule, if you establish two characters in conversation, your camera should always stay on the same side of an imaginary 180 degree line.

To understand why, think of a TV interview. Imagine the interviewer is sitting on the left side of the screen, and the interview subject is on the right. Now, when the interviewer is talking, he or she should always be looking to the right of the screen toward the interview subject. When the interview subject is talking, he or she should always be looking to the left, where the interviewer is sitting. This keeps everything in proper relation to each other.

If the camera were to "cross the line" and shoot from the other side, the viewer would get confused. Suddenly, the interviewer is looking toward the right of the screen. Is he or she talking to a different person?

With that in mind, let's get ready to film you as the interviewer first.

Shooting the Interviewer

1. If you have already chosen a background, place the camera in front of you or to your right. Adjust its height so the camera is at the same height of your face (avoid any camera angles that point up or down—instead, adjust the height of your tripod).

2. Sit facing the camera. Look towards the left side of the camera. (Don't look into the lens.)

3. It is very important to make a test first to see if the sound is recording properly. Some cameras have a switch for internal/external sound input.

4. Flip the LCD viewfinder in your direction to see yourself and to frame yourself properly. Try to avoid looking towards this viewfinder during the interview. Remember that you are supposed to be looking to the left!

5. Since there is no one facing you, you now must choose a spot on the wall at the eye level of your imagined interview subject. This is where you will look when you are speaking to the camera.

Changing the framing helps to alternate the sequence.

6. To make sure you understand the 180 degree rule, we also want you to break this rule. So please go ahead, cross the 180 degree line, and place the camera on the other side and look to the right of the camera. Now repeat the first question. (We'll use this footage later to demonstrate the problems that crop up when you break the 180 degree rule.)

Shooting the Interviewer's Reactions

You also will need to shoot reaction shots. They are the cutaways that you can use to break the length of a shot, mark a reaction, or cover some unwanted action or change.

In this case, it is important to remind the viewer that there is a listener. Once you finish talking, keep looking in the same direction you've been looking the whole time and anticipate your possible answers. Nod from time to time and change the framing once or twice (see example below).

Sample interview.

Shooting the Interviewee

When you have finished filming the interviewer and the interviewer's reaction shots, it is time to change sides (and change clothes if you want) to play the interviewee. Place the camera at the opposite side, so that it matches the viewpoint of the interviewer. This time, look towards the right side of the camera.

1. If possible, turn off the ceiling light in your room and aim a reading lamp in your direction. (If you want to be more creative, light yourself from two sides. The idea is to create a different ambient situation.)

2. Once again, make sure the camera height is at eye level.

3. Now use your interview notes to answer each question.

4. Again, make sure you record some reaction shots of you listening to the interview questions.

You're done shooting. It's a wrap!

Post-Production
Your Drive and Camera Setup

Let the post-production begin! You will need a computer with a FireWire port, your DV Camera, a FireWire cable to connect your camera to your computer, and optionally an external hard drive since these files get pretty big.

More details for Premiere Pro users on how to hook up a camera are found here and how to hook up your television or NTSC monitor here. Final Cut Express users, check your manual or Apple videos for details.

Capturing your Source Material

Capturing is the crucial first step. The setup is relatively easy. If you have done capturing before, you can skim or skip this short section. What follows here is a quick rundown:

1. Hook up your video camera to your computer with the FireWire 6-pin to 4-pin cable. Load the tape with the footage you want to capture and turn your camera on in VTR Mode.

This diagram from Apple helps explain the required system connections.

2. Now launch Premiere Pro or your NLE software of choice, start a new project, and name it "E2-Interview."

3. Before you begin capturing your footage, check where you want to save the material and how much space you have on your computer (or external hard drive).

You can easily estimate the amount you will need: Calculate that each minute of MiniDV = 216 Megabytes. If you have 14 minutes of video you count: 14 x 216 = 3024 MB = 3.024 Gigabytes. This is what you'll need, in addition to the usual 2 GB of free disk space, to make your system run properly.

4. Follow the instructions below to start capturing in Premiere Pro:

Go to File > Capture. The Capture window will open, and you can start capturing your tape, but you should label it first! Give your reel a name.

The Capture window

Now you are ready to capture. There are several ways to do so. The easiest is to just "roll the tape" (using the control buttons and the slider) and click Record in the lower-left. After you have finished capturing all the interview material, press the Esc key to stop capturing.

The clip should now automatically appear in your Project Panel. After you have finished capturing, save your project.

Note:For those of you shooting with still cameras or video cameras with memory cards, you would simply import your movies into your project like any normal picture file off your camera.

Organizing your Clips

Now you should have a master clip with all recorded questions and answers on it. For this section we will work entirely in the Source Monitor.

1. Load the clip in the Source Monitor.

2. Check the settings of your footage. If you were using a DV camera, you will likely see dimensions of 720 x 480 or 1280 x 720, and a perhaps a 0.9 pixel aspect ratio rather than 1.0. This is perfectly fine as long as you work within these settings.

3. Create a new Sequence that matches the settings of your footage as closely as possible.

4. Mark the in and out points of the first section you want to use.

5. Drag your clip from the Source Monitor to the Program Monitor and a new clip will appear with the in and out points you just selected.

6. Continue creating the rest of the subclips and log/name them one by one. This may sound tedious but it will save you a lot of time in the long run; organization is a video editor's best friend!

7. Remember when we asked you to shoot a version of your first question against the 180 degree rule? Make a separate subclip of this take and name it "ALT" behind your title.

8. You (hopefully) also filmed yourself listening/reacting as both interviewer and interviewee. When you create subclips of those shots, make them short: three seconds is more than enough. Maybe just a nod or two. Label these with specific terms too.

When finished, you should have a bin full of your selected questions and answers with appropriate labels.

Editing a Conversation (Shot/Reverse Shot)

We are ready to edit! The final interview length should be around two minutes or less, so keep this in mind while editing.

1. Double-click the first subclip to load it in the Source Monitor. We will now assemble the sequence. Drag Question 1 and then Answer 1 into the Timeline. Play your edit to make sure that the eyelines work. Is the interviewer really looking at the interviewee?

2. Just for comparison, insert the shot you named ALT (the one that broke the 180 degree rule). Place it behind the second shot and repeat once again Answer 1. Now you should have four clips in your timeline. To compare the two versions you can conveniently jump back and forth.

Tip for navigation: When moving the playhead over the clips, press the page up and page down arrow keys to automatically jump to the very first frame of the next clip or the next closest edit point. This is one of the most important shortcuts for editing. In this case it helps to quickly compare the first version and the ALT version. Try to find out for yourself why this alternate shot doesn't work.

3. Now erase the ALT version by selecting it and pressing Delete.

4. Finish assembling the remaining questions and answers. When you have them all in the sequence, play the whole sequence and see how the timing between the questions and answers work and if the whole conversation flows "naturally."

5. Now it's time to do the fine tuning. You can even compare the images that define the cut by going one frame forward and one frame backwards when you are right over the cut, using the left/right arrows on your keyboard.

Placing the Reaction Shots

Let's place reaction shots over the first answer. For that task we will revisit the overlay (overwrite) edit type from Exercise One. What we need to do now is place the reaction shot without altering the length of the whole sequence.

1. Choose an easy reaction shot. Maybe just a nod to start with. On the Source Monitor, mark your desired in and out points for how long the reaction shot should last.

2. Move the playhead on the Timeline to wherever you want your reaction shot to begin (during the answer of the interviewee).

3. Disable/detach the audio tracks, because for this reaction shot we don't want to interrupt the interviewee's answer.

4. Now use the Overlay button to pull your clip from the Source Monitor on to the Timeline. For the marked length, the reaction subclip will overwrite part of the answer subclip.

An Overlay edit

Do you like how your first reaction shot works with the rest? Did you start trimming the clip to fix the beginning and the end? Well this is quite normal. It is often hard to predict how two facial expressions will work together. How and when the other reacts seems to be equally important. So finding the exact place and length for it may take some time.

The second, more ideal way to place a reaction shot however, is to simply drag the reaction clip onto the timeline onto a new video track. Notice when you drag down from the Source Monitor, Premiere makes video track 2 available for you to place it on.

Inserting video onto a new video track

The advantage of this, as you can see, is you don't actually overwrite the interviewee's answer clip. This allows you to fine tune your placement with greater ease and peace of mind.

Pacing

Why are we putting all these reaction shots into the interview? Their function is to bridge long answers, to introduce a change of image, and to make the audience aware that there are two people in conversation, not one person in monologue. So it often works best to put them in more or less equal intervals.

The great advantage of now working with two video tracks is that you can move the reaction clips without touching the edit on the track below. Try this in different locations and see what an impact it has on the conversation. Common sense will tell you not to cut a shot while a subject is in mid-sentence. In fact, these changes work well when placed after sentences.

Make sure there is some space between the answer and next question. Don't cut it shorter unless the interviewee's intention is to interrupt (which is actually the case in our example). Also, the reaction shots should not be too tight. Make the absolute minimum one second of length. Everything below a second may appear more distracting than supportive to the flow.

Aim for your video to be no longer than 2 minutes in length. Don't be afraid to cut out substantial portions of your original footage in order to achieve this!

The Output

Remember that for the course you will encode your short videos in a smaller compressed format so that the result can be uploaded and downloaded in a reasonable time. Let's recap the output settings we covered in the last exercise...

MPEG-4 Export settings

Here's a reminder checklist for exporting your video:

1. Make the Format type H.264.

2. Final dimensions should be around 400 px wide and relative to your original footage. You'll likely need to unlink the constrain proportions link in order to enter these, but then relink them in order to reduce the dimensions proportionally. Here's an example:

Original source footage properties

Setting the correct dimensions, then scaling down proportionally.

3. Change the Frame Rate to 25.

4. Make sure Field Order is set to None (Progressive).

5. Set the Pixel Aspect Ratio to "Square Pixels."

6. Bitrate Encoding should be set to "VBR, 1 Pass" with a Target Bitrate of 0.5 and a Max Bitrate of 1. If the file is still too large, reduce you may try reducing the Target Bitrate to 0.3 or 0.4.

Alternatively, if you are well under the 10 MB limit, you may try increasing the export dimensions and/or Target Bitrate settings to achieve a nicer presentation!

For your Audio Settings, first make sure to check the Export Audio box. Then under the Audio tab, follow these specs: AAC Codec, 44.1 kHz Frequency, Mono output, Medium quality, and 64 Kbps Bitrate.

Audio Export settings

Remember, you may have to toy with these settings in order to compress your movie to the appropriate size. If you are finding your movie is still too large even after compressing it with these specs, try lowering the audio frequency and bitrate. You'd be surprised how much data is typically in the audio as opposed to the video. Just be aware that you typically should not go below a 22 kHz frequency and a 40 Kbps bitrate to keep the audio from degrading unacceptably.

It is of great help to carefully learn all the steps of this output process since you will repeat this process several times in the course.

Congratulations! You have now completed the most difficult and lengthy exercise. You've shot, edited, and exported an entire interview!

As a reward, and for some inspiration, check out this Quick Crit of a great self-interview project by student Joe Savella.