Lesson:Narrative dialog editing:Penny and Eggbert:Intro

The Story of Penny and Egbert Let's take a look at an extremely simple example of a scene which needs editing. It is an animated movie called "The Story of Penny and Egbert". I hope you will find it fun! The purpose of this example is to study creating "L-Cuts" and inserting narrative film music. If you already know all the basics of film editing skip all the pages up to the lesson page on "L-Cuts". The two most difficult concepts in film editing The two most difficult concepts in dialog editing are "L-Cuts" and inserting narrative music. 1. "L-Cuts" When you edit a conversation, you will always create "L-Cuts" if you use the editing method taught here at Wikiversity Film School. It is very easy! Note: This is also called rolling the picture edits while the audio is locked. 2. Narrative film music Sometimes it is useful to insert narrative film music between the sentences of dialog. This is similar to adding "L-Cuts" but much more challenging. Note: This is also know as adding music which tells a story to a conversation.

The story of Penny and Eggbert Intro: Penny & Egg Introduction Page #1: The story and script Page #2: The camera setups Pop Quiz: Penny & Egg Pop Quiz #1 Page #3: The dailies Page #4: The rough edit Page #5: "L-Cuts" Page #6: Creating "L-Cuts #1" Page #7: Creating "L-Cuts" #2 Pop Quiz: Penny & Egg Pop Quiz #2 Page #8: Planning the film score Page #9: How to insert narrative music Homework #1: Create the film score Homework #2: Editing the scene

Note: Penny and Eggbert are 3D Poser models created by 3D Universe. For this lesson, these characters were posed and rendered with the free DAZ Studio.

Why I wrote these instructions

One of the best ways to learn film editing is to purchase the film editing disks from the Star Movie Shop. You will learn a lot from these disks. (Note: These disks are free if you earn enough points at Wikiversity.)

Disks without instructions

However, there is a problem with the disks from the Star Movie Shop. The problem is there are no written instructions except for the first disk ("Follow Dave?" Editing Workshop CD-ROM).

Therefore, I created these instructions in this lesson which hopefully will help you understand the theories covered in the disks. This lesson your are beginning now is totally separate from the disks of the Star Movie Shop. You will not find this lesson on any of their disks so pay attention!

The disks from the Star Movie Shop

I think these disks are helpful for learning the basics of editing a dramatic scene.

• 1. "Follow Dave?" Editing Workshop CD-ROM gives you an overview of narrative film editing.
• 2. "24 Unedited Scenes" gives you a tour of the movie sets of Hollywood.
• 3. "Fireworks Display" explains the theory of "L-Cuts"
• 4. "Hearing Voices" shows you a simple example of both "L-Cuts" and cut away shots (or insert shots.)
• 5. "Blindman's Bluff Production" gives you a quick look at film scoring (and editing for film scoring) for narrative productions.

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This is lesson separate

Note: This lesson is completely separate from the disks from the Star Movie Shop.

You need both this lesson and the disks from the Star Movie Shop to understand the whole concept of narrative dialog editing.

A super simple scene

To help you viualize "L-Cuts" and inserting narrative music, I have created a very simple scene called "The story of Penny and Eggbert".

I also created instructions showing how this scene can be edited.

I use lots of pretty pictures of each for the steps so I hope that everything is clear. If not, email me.

Before you start

Get the first two disks from the Star Movie Shop. These are:

1. "Follow Dave?" Editing Workshop CD-ROM
2. "24 Unedited Scenes"

Free

These disks are free if you have earned enough Wikiversity Film School points. Simply complete the first few lessons of the basic filmmaking course and you will have enough points to get these disks for free. (Void where prohibited by law. Offer can be canceled at any time.)

Then before you begin this lesson, you should watch the 11-minute animated instructional movie on "Follow Dave?" Editing Workshop CD-ROM called "Start Here" and then look at all the overview movies of the film dailies on the DVD-Data disks called "24 Unedited Scenes".

These two disks will give you the background that you need to understand this lesson. "The story of Penny and Eggbert" will be much easier to understand once you have seen the movie about the basic theory of dialog editing and look at real film dailies.

Note: These are the same two disks described in the first two lessons of the course on narrative film editing.

Inside your editing program

On the timeline of your editing program, you work with film clips.

Each film clip consists of a picture track and an audio track which are synced together.

To the right, you see a short film clip of Eggbert saying "Quack, quack, quack." You see Eggbert's mouth wide open and you see the audio waveform of his conversation. For this clip, there is a slight pause before Eggbert begins to speak and a slight pause at the end. Do you see this?

The Rule: Remember that the picture and the audio must never go out of sync. That is the rule you must follow always while you create "L-Cuts" and insert narrative music.

A film clip

This is my drawing of a film clip. This shows one piece of dialog from the scene called "The story of Penny and Eggbert".

1. The picture and the audio tracks are in sync.

2. Editing is never destructive. It only hides the unwanted frames at the beginning and end of the clip (as shown here).

3. Even though the audio and picture are locked together, you can trim the ends of the audio and the picture separately. The clip still remains locked in sync even if you roll the picture edit separate from the audio.

The next page

First, you should take a quick look at the script. This script is extremely short and simple. Click here to go to the next page.

Contact your instructor

Your instructor for this film editing class is Robert Elliott. You can email me by clicking here.