TV Technical Operations

Introduction to Video Editing

There is an old Hollywood saying which claims that ‘a good cutter cuts his own throat’, cutter meaning a film editor. What does this mean? Well, simply that the skills and craft employed by the film editor to stitch together a sequence of separate shots persuades the audience that they are watching a continuous event. They are unaware of the hundreds of subtle decisions that have been made during the course of the film. The action flows from shot to shot and appears natural and obvious. The editing skills and techniques that have achieved this are rendered invisible to the audience, and therefore the unenlightened may claim, ‘But what has the editor done? What is the editor’s contribution to the production?’ The ...