Tuesday, September 23, 2014

EDIT TIP!

I know that Robert Rodriguez is a huge fan of techniques like this. Also, take the time and watch all of his 15 min film schools. He has a number of them on his DVD extras.

When dealing with line of action and more specifically the 180 degree rule. You can run into some trouble in your edits when you are doing guerrilla style shoots. Sometimes you'll grab a various amount of footage from all angle and have no way to properly abide by the 180 degree rule. One method is using neutral shots or cut aways.

For example:
While editing my new short The Hollow Waltz: Sidesteps, I ran into an issue where I had one take that was really good until a camera bump ruined it. I had a second shot that was the same case earlier in the take. I Took the two, chopped them up, and aligned. The problem is, it does not respect the 180 degree rule. What you can do is take shot number one, crop it and center on the fire making it a cutaway shot. Pull the audio and then use the cropped shot as your buffer between the two takes. Ultimately, it breaks up the edit enough giving yourself a chance

Here is what i am talking about. I will actually go back and reshoot this one shot, but for now this is a place marker. If you don't have the benefit of doing so, I suggest trying something like so.


Above is the initial shot. 


Here is the cropped frame that could be used as a cutaway

Then I cut to the the frame with my amazing actor facing me. 

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