Tips for Better Film Editing...AM

1. Cut Tight - taking out unnecessary pauses between actors' delivery of dialogue lines. This may mean having to tighten the gaps within dialogue sentences or losing redundant lines of dialogue
2. Temp music - people tend to fall in love with the temp score and then it is hard to get real music that feels good and temp music thus becomes a crutch. If a scene can stasnd on its own, the addition of sound effects and a score will make it better - expectation is a visual montage set to music.
3. No 'Dragnet' edits - original Dragnet television series used a certain approach to cutting dialogue scenes - audio and video edits tended to be made as straight cuts betwen actors without overlaps as they delivered their lines. Our brains react better to edits where the change in picture and sound is not always together - split edits 'Lcuts/Jcuts'. Editing in a style where images often precede or follow the dialogue edit feel more natural to our minds and make the scene flow more smoothly.
4. Matching action - Important = matching actors' hand positions, use of props, eyeline and stage position. The greatest weight is given to whether that cut drives out the emotion of the scene or moves the story along. The audience will often ignore many minor continuity differences from one shot to the next if they stay totally engrossed in the story - job as the editor is to cut in ways that they do.
5. Moving camera shots - In an action scene, moving the camera around is a stape of action sequences. This is designed to create a level of tension.
6. Don't cut back to the exact same angle - If you have a choice of several camera angles, do not automatically cut back to the same angle which was used in the previous shot.
7. Cut for the eyes - When cutting an intense dialogue scene, look at how the actor's eyes play in the scene. Do they convey the proper emotion? What is the reaction of the other actors in the scene?
8. Shaping story - It is said that there are 3 films: the one that's scripted, the one that's been filmed and the one that's edited. When editing, pay close attention to the story chronology and don't be afraid to veer from what was written or filmed if it makes sense to do so. Notecards on a story board help create a visual representation of the storyline. This helps to ensure that you reveal things to the audience in the most logical order and that nothing is inadvertently edited out of place.
9. Make your choices, but be prepard for others - The choices you make in cutting tightly or altering an actor's performance all factor into the look and feel of the film. E.g. you can heighten the tension between characters in a scene by cutting their dialogue in a way that one actor overlaps or steps on, the other actos lines. When you make such a choice, it alters the emotion of the scene and should be done only if that serves the story.