Avid to help editors

Avid’s Angus Mackay and Michael Phillips discussed with Miguel Gonzalez the future of editing software and how technology has impacted the craft of editing over the last couple of decades.

The most notorious change to editing was the transition to non-linear editing. How did that impact the craft and the skills of editors?

Michael Phillips, solutions marketing manager: Editing has changed from a more horizontal style editing (cuts) to both horizontal and vertical (layers) where VFX need to be edited to tell the story, be it obvious or corrective type effects. This in turn affects the style of the cut such as the 3-4 storylines we see in a television series like 24. Pace and rhythm has certainly changed, the viewer has adjusted to short and very fast cuts, flash forward, flashback and “sideways” flashes are now common and easily understood by the user. Non linear has allowed for more experimentation due to either more time available to explore, rather than justify the time it would take to not explore due to the time it takes to do so. The ability to quickly duplicate timelines for versions also encourages this as physical mediums like film and tape did not allow this without a penalty of cost or time.
Previews are quite complete, nothing is really left to the imagination as it can be done in the system. Be it visual effects or very complete mix tracks with music, effects, and dialog smoothing all available. The ability to quickly explore a story has changed the way an editor works with their director – no more is it notes and leave the editor be, but the two now sit side by side with interaction happening as quickly as they can think.

We are now seeing editing in depth with the resurgence of stereo 3D. The language of 3D stortelling will evolve as both the tools and the editor push and explore the boundaries of the user viewing in Z space (depth)

To answer how that’s impacted editors…. Editors have become more complete storytellers with picture and sound. Stories are not only told from one set of frames to another, but within the frame. The future will tell stories across multiple screens and multiple mediums. NLE has extended the careers of editors by decades due to the elimination of the physical demands of film editing. The feature set of NLE encourages exploration through the ease of manipulating picture and sound. Sound editing enhances the picture and can make a cut work where it didn’t before. Having more tools to make these decisions make for a more powerful storyteller.