Words and images
The power to transmit moving pictures no longer exclusively sets television apart from its rivals in the business of disseminating news about events of importance and interest. Images available across the web improved in definition and clarity throughout the late 1990s. All media have become fused in a kind of symbiotic wedding. Television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the web don’t always get along, but they do need each other to fuse new commercial technology in the decade beyond 2000.
For our purposes we know that Content is All when it comes to transmitting television news. The skills to write a script that works with moving images in any medium are the same. For the newcomer embarking on the acquisition of basic skills to cope with this extra dimension, two major hurdles bar the way. First and most important is the need to develop an instinct for the construction of written commentaries in a way which allows the viewer to draw full value from both words and pictures. Second comes the requirement for at least a rudimentary working knowledge of the technical tools which provide the means to this end.
The lasting influence of an older word – film – is not to be overlooked. By the word film we do not mean a ‘movie’. Film once breathed life into the new form of journalism called television news and set the pattern for what we have now. Producers who may never have used it still talk about ‘films’ and ‘film-making’ because – in Britain at least – the terms ‘taping’, ‘videoing’ and ‘DV [digital video] capturing’ have not widely caught on in the industry.
Film, electronic video, digital tape and disk have their own champions lauding texture and quality, speed and flexibility, and enough has been written about them to keep the keen student occupied for years. But it is important not to lose sight of the fact that while these media use different methods of storing the image, the art of picture-making is common to all.
It is not necessary for every writer to make a full-time study of the subject, but it is clearly important to understand the moving picture as a device which can be employed with great delicacy, even within the large blunt instrument which is the routine television news programme. Many television journalists whose ingenuity and imagination in the use of pictures have outgrown the confines of news have gone on to find success in other areas of television which combine subtlety with qualities of journalistic hard-headedness.
Perspective: the history of the lightweight revolution
The first breakthrough towards mobility in collecting sound and vision came in the 1950s. Until that time the experts were dismissive of anything smaller than the 35 mm film format used for cinema features and what were called ‘newsreels’. Newsreel camera-operators did a brilliantly courageous job during wartime, and the quality of the images they produced was undoubtedly superb, but the equipment for sound recording and filming was cumbersome and virtually impossible to use without a sturdy tripod. This partly explains why in so many of those historic film interviews which are shown on television from time to time the subject has clearly been brought to the camera and microphone, emphasizing the air of stiff formality and self-consciousness that was always so apparent.
The introduction of 16 mm film – by, it is said, American news executives who wanted to find a better way of covering the Korean war – at last made it easier to take the camera closer to the subject. Sixteen millimetre was a format familiar mostly to amateur film-makers. The camera was still heavy, but at least it could be balanced with reasonable comfort on a shoulder or screwed to a monopod and carried into action. The sound was recorded onto a thin strip of magnetic tape attached to one edge of the film during manufacture.
One award-winning veteran camera-operator used to like recalling how the makers of the first 16 mm camera he was issued with were so sure it was for amateur use that the instruction booklet included something along the following lines: ‘Having placed the camera on the tripod, seat the subject at the piano, making sure you are at least five feet away and that sufficient light is available from the window.’ So equipped, he and the rest of the world’s television news camera teams went to war to bring back vivid pictures which made the viewer feel personally involved as never before. He survived many of the conflicts of the late twentieth-century: Vietnam, Biafra, Aden, Cyprus, the Middle East, Northern Ireland and many other trouble spots, only to be killed one night as he crossed the road near his home.
For about twenty years there was nothing to touch 16 mm film. The cameras were reliable and impervious to most of the knocks and other ill-treatment they inevitably suffered in the field. The film they consumed – first monochrome, then colour – was fast and versatile.
Some news organizations did experiment with a format called Super 8, commonly used for home movies, as a way of avoiding problems at airports where the arrival of news camera teams and their unmistakable silver boxes often led to bureaucratic delay or the impounding of equipment by unsympathetic customs officials. So there were some occasions when a camera-operator who would have been denied entry with an Arriflex or Cine-Voice was allowed in on a tourist visa and contrived to shoot a story on what was regarded as a ‘toy’ camera.
But even if no serious attempt was ever made to replace 16 mm with 8 mm, a complete alternative to the use of any film for straight news work was becoming both an attractive and practical proposition.
Film had its limitations. Until processing was completed, not even the world’s greatest camera-operators could guarantee that they had measured the light correctly, there was not some other fault, or that the images they believed they had captured were indeed on the film in the way they had intended. And since news by its nature happens only once, there was never the possibility of going back to re-shoot it, unlike feature film work, where expensively assembled casts and technicians are kept together until the camera-operator’s efforts have been seen and approved. To add to these hazards, despite the best endeavours of the news laboratory workers and their increasingly sophisticated developing equipment, film sometimes did ‘go down in soup’ (chemical processing) to be lost for ever.
The biggest drawback of all was that even though processing time was being reduced to the point where it took no more than a few minutes to develop each 30 metre length of film, it was still comparatively slow. In news, time is a luxury which can rarely be afforded.
It was for that single reason that television news and some other topical television programmes had already cut out many of the intermediate stages in conventional film-making, so that progress from camera to screen would be as short as possible. Instead of first making prints from an original negative, they took the developed negative material and transmitted that. In adopting this method, television news people had to accept the very real risk that a careless or unlucky film editor, working under deadline pressure with well-worn equipment, might do irreparable harm to precious material, and that in some circumstances an edit once made might be impossible to restore. That in turn put greater responsibility on the editorial staff to ensure the right decisions about editing the film were made first time.
To compound the difficulties, film editors and writers working for stations transmitting only black and white pictures had to make their decisions based on the identification of people and events from film viewed in negative, as delivered by the processing department. After a while, experience taught that it was possible to identify the better-known public figures. But quite frequently an amount of guesswork had to be employed, not always with complete success. Fortunately, the viewer was spared such uncertainties. During the film’s transmission stage all was put right by the use of ‘phase reversal’, an electronic means of changing the blacks to white and the white to black, thus producing a normal positive image.
Much to the relief of every writer, the problems associated with identification disappeared during the switch from mono to colour filming, which began in the 1960s. After much discussion and experiment many news services opted for a particular ‘reversal’ film stock, which meant that once it had been through the processing bath it appeared in the same form as the amateur photographer’s colour transparency, as a positive which was taken directly to the cutting room for editing for transmission.
During the same period developments in recording pictures and sound on to magnetic tape were taking place almost in parallel. The system may not have been originally conceived as one which would necessarily benefit television news, but it seems significant now that the very first broadcast using videotape, on 30 November 1956, was that of Douglas Edwards and the news which was transmitted by CBS from New York, recorded in Los Angeles, and replayed three hours later for viewers on the West Coast of America.
It had long been recognized that some form of recording system for television was extremely desirable, if only to give studios the flexibility to create their productions at times which suited them and their participants rather than forcing them to continue taking all the risks associated with transmitting programmes live. One step towards that end was tele-recording, a way of filming productions or production segments off high-quality monitors. Despite its success, this system had to rely on the conventional photographic technique of chemical processing, with the inevitable delay before recordings could be examined.
The main snag in developing instant playback along the lines of quarter-inch tape sound recordings lay in the very high speed and consequent amount of tape expended to reproduce pictures of sufficiently high quality for broadcasting. The problem was eventually solved by Ampex, an American company which had begun its research into magnetic tape recording for television as early as 1951. By early 1956 the company’s engineers were able to demonstrate a machine on which the speed of a 2 in (51 mm) wide tape was kept down to 15 in (38 mm) a second as it moved past four recording heads rotating about a hundred times faster.
The end result of this quadruplex technique was picture reproduction which most lay people found indistinguishable from the original, and for the name of Ampex a permanent place in the language of television.
Television news, for which perfect picture quality had never been the priority where important news stories are concerned, believed the biggest advantage of video was that it could be replayed in no greater time than it took to rewind the tape, opening up many previously undreamed of possibilities for flexibility within programmes. Many news items which began their lives in the 16 mm sound camera now ended them on the screen as videotape recordings, for film which could be processed and edited at regional or other television stations was then available to be pumped along public telecommunications cables to headquarters. In addition, anything photographed by the electronic cameras in the studio or outside could easily be linked to a videotape recorder. Coupled with the strides then being made in intercontinental communications systems, the development of videotape suddenly opened a new era for the gathering of foreign news in particular, and the whole effect was to extend deadlines until the ends of programmes.
The equipment remained expensive to buy and install, particularly when colour came in. The cost was only partly offset by the fact that recordings could be erased and the same 90 minute tape used over and over again until ‘pile-up’ (thick horizontal lines of interference) showed its useful life was over. Another disadvantage was the size of the machinery. Each quadruplex resembled an overgrown reel-to-reel audio recorder, and together with its ancillary equipment took up the space of a small room. Studio and outside broadcast cameras were even less manoeuvrable than the old 35 mm film equipment.
It was not until the 1970s that real progress was made towards producing a tape which was smaller yet still of a standard high enough to satisfy the exacting requirements of the broadcast engineers. When it came it was of a single size, 1 in (25 mm), and in two technical specifications, because two solutions had been found to the problem of cramming the same amount of audio and video information onto a tape surface half that of the original Ampex.
The appearance of 1 in for studio-based work was followed swiftly by recorders and cameras which allowed more than a degree of portability, but the start of the true lightweight revolution probably dates from the time American broadcasters began experimenting with Sony U-matic, a Japanese system which had originally been designed for industrial use.
The biggest advantage of this format was that it did not use the tape spools needed for one inch: instead, sound and picture were recorded on to a three-quarter inch (19 mm) tape safely enclosed inside a strong plastic cassette. No handling of the tape was necessary. In the field the cassette was automatically threaded when inserted into a recorder which was carried in a leather case and slung over a shoulder.
The rest, as they say, is history. Once Sony had produced a new specification to satisfy the 625-line picture standard used by most of Europe, the way was clear – technically, anyway – for the biggest advance in news-gathering television had seen for 20 years.
The rise of ENG – electronic news-gathering
The first television station to take the plunge and replace its entire film equipment with ENG is believed to be KMOX-TV in St Louis, Missouri. Cameras, processing, viewing and editing facilities were all disposed of in one grand gesture in September 1974. Interest in the system was already spreading among other local American stations which were beginning to appreciate how ideally electronic cameras were suited to their needs for early-evening news programmes.
By 1976 ENG had dominated television reporting of the US Democratic and Republican party conventions and the US presidential election campaign. It was also being used in Europe: Japanese coverage of the London economic summit of May 1977 included ENG pictures which were beamed back to Tokyo by satellite and, as a bonus, transmitted by the BBC as part of their domestic output. But the European services themselves were moving more cautiously, opting for trial periods in which to evaluate the technical and editorial problems, while managements sorted out the changes necessary in staffing and retraining if ENG were to become permanent. NOS of Holland started their experiment using film as a back-up.
The BBC opened their 12-month trial on 10 October 1977, when an interview with Margaret Thatcher, then leader of the Conservative opposition, was recorded at the House of Commons and shown on the lunchtime news. ITN, at that time their only British television news rival, began their experiment during the general election campaign of April–May 1979, a year during which it was reckoned that more than half the television stations in the United States already had some ENG capability and more than 300 had followed KMOX-TV and gone all-electronic.
The final adoption of ENG elsewhere was still by no means automatic. Negotiations with the broadcasting unions were proving particularly difficult and long-drawn-out.
The networks had no doubts about ENG and committed themselves heavily. Within the United States it meant that facilities for processing 16 mm film were rapidly becoming so scarce that foreign-based news services faced the unattractive alternative of either airfreighting their undeveloped material home (with the obvious risk of it being well out of date before it reached the other side of the Atlantic) or buying American electronic coverage off the shelf.
Abroad, ENG was being used to the extent that the editor of one British television news organization complained that he would be able to use material sent by satellite from London and back by an American crew many minutes before film of the same story shot by his own crew on their own territory was out of the processing bath. To be beaten in his own backyard, he believed, was unacceptable. His argument may not have been the clincher, but by 1980 any remaining opposition was disintegrating, and the switch from film to ENG was going ahead at full speed.
The basis of electronic news-gathering is a lightweight camera and an integrated, detachable or separate video cassette recorder by which picture and sound are captured. Most systems are capable of being operated by one or two people, depending on staffing policy and story circumstances, but the trend is strongly towards the single-piece camcorder (camera-recorder) worked by one person.
Developments by 2000 had been influenced by a progressive reduction in equipment size and weight, together with improved quality, reliability and ease of use. Alongside Beta SP (superior performance) and the camera/half-inch (12.5 mm) tape system used widely since the late 1980s, came DVC, the digital video system now more widely accepted. For the broadcasters it has offered economy and acceptable quality. There is a problem during the shooting stage when human ergonomics and physics mean the very lightness of the camera makes static shots more difficult to obtain. It is hard to keep the shot steady when the camera has such little weight. The biggest change of all now anticipates the replacement of tape altogether, with news-gathering on disk and in some cases on a disk removed from a disposable camera (the camera being no more than a cheap enclosure which holds the disk).
Figure 6.1
The advantages over film seem obvious now. No more delay while film is processed means the pushing back of deadlines: ENG teams can spend longer on the same story, or simply cover more. Coverage can (usually) be checked for quality and content on the spot. Electronic and digital tapes are cheap and reusable.
Most important of all is the flexibility the system offers. At the most basic level, an ENG or digital camera-operator or reporter on location records sound and pictures onto industry-standard video cassettes and returns them to headquarters by hand for editing and broadcasting. Where tape really comes into its own is when signals from the unit are fed back to base by microwave or even secure Internet link, live or already recorded. Some ENG teams travel in customized vehicles carrying their own equipment from which to transmit the pictures home. Others drive unmarked camera cars and have their transmitters installed in separate vehicles (sometimes known as facilities units, fast response vehicles or live links units) with which they can rendezvous at some convenient time and place. The tape is replayed to base by the unit’s own cassette recorder.
As a much-used alternative, the camera signal is relayed from location to the mobile unit over a short-range radio link. Here again the pictures are recorded on the spot or simply bounced onwards using the aerial on the vehicle roof. (If the location is close by, the short-range link is in itself powerful enough to transmit the signal to base.) The aerial is aligned with microwave link dishes sited on the tops of tall buildings or masts which in turn pass the signal to receivers at news headquarters. Another option is to play the tape direct from the telecommunications points dotted around the country.
Many radio stations also have these ‘plug-in’ or ‘inject’ points from which ENG pictures can be played, and other permanent circuits are installed in urban centres. London, for example, has a sound and vision ring-main system which was originally established to feed outside broadcast pictures of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. These metal boxes are still sited near buildings at various places throughout the capital. When they are needed, the engineers open them, plug in sound and video leads, and route them by coaxial cable to the studio.
Figure 6.2 Material can be recorded on the spot then sent or delivered by hand or transmitted back to base directly or via an intermediate microwave link point. It can also be recorded and transmitted live simultaneosly.
In very remote areas, where none of these systems exists or is near enough to be useful, an ENG team carrying its own mobile antenna and tracking equipment is able to transmit its material by bouncing the signal off a communications satellite. Satellite news-gathering (SNG) is now an integral element of news coverage in domestic as well as foreign locations, and without it the coverage of the Gulf War and the fighting in Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s would have been limited (see p. 152).
In an ideal world, every journalist would be able to sit at ease and watch the raw rushes from the camera on a screen big enough to appreciate all the reporting team has accomplished. Unfortunately, on most occasions, writer and editor go straight into an editing booth with their cassettes and find themselves working against the clock, able only to make instinctive decisions about material they may have time to view only once – and that at faster than normal speed.
What they select depends on the nature of the subject, its interest, importance and nominated position within the programme they are working towards. Equally important on occasion is the extent to which the two have briefed themselves, so by the time the tapes reach them they are already aware of the contents and have planned a rough scheme for editing. (Where the writers are also the reporters/producers this knowledge must be assumed.)
At this stage there is no room for clashes of interest or temperament – only teamwork to ensure that what appears on the screen, perhaps only a few minutes later, reflects the successful fusion of separate professional skills. In recent years this has become more possible than ever before, as relationships between picture editors and journalists are less strained than they once were. Most of the old-style cutters who originally left the film industry to join the pioneers of television news have now departed. With them has gone much of the friction which arose with writers who felt that getting the story across was always more important than sticking to some of the more rigid rules of film-editing grammar.
By the time the lightweight revolution had been completed, the old school had been replaced by a new breed of young editors who quickly came to acknowledge that they and the writers shared one common aim: to tell the story in pictures and words, as coherently as possible. The result is modern, streamlined and effective. Not that the younger picture editors are any more keen than their predecessors to break the rules. It is just that for the sake of simplicity they are prepared to dispense with the irrelevant.
It can also be considered fortunate that a few of today’s more experienced editors were still in the early stages of their careers as videotape was taking hold, and so retained a precious knowledge of film techniques. Others who once spent their time working with the early videotape-machine monsters brought with them into the ENG editing suites hard-won technical knowledge which made it easier for them to make the transition to smaller format working.
Much of the negotiation which was necessary at the time of change to ENG concerned film and videotape editors, whose skills and status were reflected in the different ways recruitment and training were structured. The outcome in many news organizations was the creation of a single picture editor category which recognized the need for the practitioners to be able to handle the entire range of material in any format. All this helped to increase the flow of expertise in unexpected directions, and those writers with a developed sense of things visual no longer feel surprised or upset when an enthusiastic picture editor with a feeling for words suggests a possible line for the commentary.
So, in many ways, it has blossomed into a genuine, two-way relationship, in which more is expected of the editor than the slavish matching of tape to editorial orders. And it remains significant that in the best-ordered news services the commentary is planned around the pictures, and not vice versa. None of these valuable relationships can exist where journalists edit their own pictures or where news is merely one ‘customer’ for picture editors handling all types of programme material. In these cases editorial staff may be required to view the rushes on domestic type video recorders, noting the length and placing of each shot to construct a cutting order for the editor to follow at a later stage.
Where the two skills are practised alongside each other, picture editors are able to understand how their main problems are usually identical to those of their editorial counterparts – lack of programme space in which to tell the story and lack of time in which to meet an approaching deadline.
In these days of longer newscasts, an editor is probably asked to assemble reporter-made packages much more often than the bread-and-butter items which writers used to script regularly as an everyday part of their work. But the principles have not changed, and any editor aspiring to more challenging work first has to master the techniques on which editing is based, because it really is remarkable how much can be told in 30 seconds of screen time.
This represents no more than six or seven shots, yet if they are put together skilfully the item will make just as much sense visually if dug out of the archives next year as when viewed as part of a newscast in an hour’s time.
Sometimes the choice of material to edit may be so limited as to make the picture editor’s task one of simple assembly. On other occasions he or she will be overwhelmed. Much depends on the camera-operator who, given a reasonable amount of time on location, aims to provide a series of shots for selection without falling into the temptation of recording everything in sight just because it costs no more to fill up an entire cassette, which is reusable anyway.
Editing usually takes place in any one of a number of special cubicles, the nearer the newsroom and transmission point the better. But although there is no such thing as a ‘typical’ editing suite, there are a few common features, because whatever system is in use the fundamentals of editing remain the same: the raw material from the camera – the master tape – is never actually ‘cut’.
News film was viewed and then broken out by hand into individual shots which were joined together in sequence with clear sticky tape or liquid cement. Sound tracks were edited separately in the same way. Electronic images and sound from videotape are rerecorded – to the lay person with scarcely noticeable loss of quality – on to fresh tape, leaving the original intact.
To do this, every editing area needs to be equipped with two linked video cassette players and monitors (television screens), one to display the rushes, the other on which to build up the edited story. Some suites have a third machine, which allows the editor to include mixes, fades and similar effects; multi-format areas can cope with more than one video recording system. There will also be loudspeakers and an edit controller, a slim box by which the picture editor builds up the pictures and sound. All this equipment can be housed comfortably on a single workbench.
Figure 6.3 Layout of a typical suite for traditional electronic editing. Cassette player (1) for the unedited raw material (rushes); recorder (2) on which edited story is assembled; monitors (3) for viewing the pictures; loudspeakers (4) for the sound; edit controller (5) for assembling pictures and sound tracks.
Although the journalist may not be present during the entire editing process, he or she will invariably try to be there when the picture editor starts work. The story may be spread over several cassettes for which there may or may not be accompanying paperwork to help with identification.
The first step is always to view the pictures. The editor will make sure the power is on before inserting a cassette (tape first) into the horizontal slot in the front of the player. Within a few seconds the tape is automatically threaded and a still picture appears on the monitor. From there the tape is viewed at normal speed, seen ‘shuttled’ up to ten times faster, ‘jogged’ gently in either direction using the search dial, or simply fast-forwarded or rewound. A time counter indicates the position of the tape in hours, minutes, seconds and frames. When it is necessary to view another tape the eject button is pressed and the cassette automatically disengages.
The sound from the tape’s two tracks comes from a loudspeaker controlled by the sound mixer, which allows the volume to be adjusted to any desired level. As the writer watches, the editor goes through all the picture and sound material, checking for quality and content.
The editor now turns his or her attention to the recording machine, using the ‘edit/in’, ‘edit/out’ and ‘entry/stop’ buttons in much the same way. Selecting ‘preview’ then allows the edit to be rehearsed. Although the pictures are displayed on both screens, the actual checking is being made on the recorder only. If the picture editor is unhappy with the rehearsal it is possible to go through the whole procedure again, selecting new editing points. If fine adjustment by a few frames is needed the ‘trim’ buttons are brought into play.
Figure 6.4 Although they vary in shape and form a clock or ‘leader’ is at the top of every videotape report to ensure it is inserted accurately into a programme.
If there is merely uncertainty that the edit is correct, ‘preview’ can be used to rehearse the scene once more. But if the editor is completely satisfied, the shot can be recorded from the rushes tape to the new tape in what is sometimes known as ‘electronic splicing’, by pressing ‘auto edit’. When this mode is engaged both tapes roll back three, five, seven or ten seconds from the start of the shot and automatically move forwards again to make the edit.
The first scene should now be safely recorded, but it is possible to check it on the monitor by means of the ‘review’ button. Once that is accomplished, the picture editor goes on to find the second chosen shot from the rushes, lines up the end of the first already on the recorder and plays it across in the same way as before. The process is then repeated each time with succeeding shots until the whole story is successfully assembled. At any stage the editor may replace a shot or add sound (possibly the commentary).
Long and complicated news features, especially those incorporating graphics or several sound edits, may take several hours to put together. The journalist will probably leave the picture editor and return to the newsroom for other chores. At some stage the writer may be called back to give an opinion as editing progresses, but, as often as not, there is no more contact between the two until the editor’s work is completed. Then, after running the story through, a decision is taken at once about whether the cut version comes up to expectations or whether changes are necessary.
Figure 6.5 A tense edit in progress. The edit process is how the ‘grammar’ of television news is applied. The original material is separated into sound and vision and reassembled so that time is compressed to provide the viewer with the story in a neat complete package. In news, editing is usually against a deadline. (Photo courtesy of and © Sky Television.)
The writer must also take what may be regarded as the most critical step in the entire operation to ensure that the written commentary matches the edited pictures. Reporters usually lay down their commentary as the editing takes place, one sequence at a time, or, if they are very confident about the material, record the entire report and work with the editor to make the words and pictures fit.
It depends on the nature of the news report. It really mostly depends on whether the journalist knows exactly what sound and vision is available. In all cases, to make good television news the journalist cannot write a single word without knowing exactly what the viewer will see or hear at a given point. For good visual material the best way to ensure that the journalist’s words work well with the sound and vision is to do what’s known as shot-listing. This consists of noting details of the length, picture and sound content of every separate scene in a sequence. How this shot-list is used depends on many factors: the length and complexity of the edited item, or whether there is time to edit the pictures and then record the commentary before transmission deadline.
Shot-listing procedure is simplicity itself, however long the edited tape, although for this example we shall take an imaginary, typical 30-second story about the arrival of a party leader for a political conference.
The picture editor sets the counter on the cassette player to zero. At the end of the first edit the machine is stopped so the writer can put down on paper everything the scene contains, together with the clock time at the end of the first shot, say three seconds:
| GV [general view] exterior of conference hall | 3 sec |
The machine is restarted and the pictures allowed to run on until the next shot, which lasts four seconds. The writer makes a note of the details and the cumulative time:
| MS [medium shot] delegates arriving on foot | 7 sec |
This operation is repeated until the end of the edited story and the writer’s shot-list looks like this:
| GV exterior of conference hall | 3 sec |
| MS delegates arriving on foot | 7 sec |
| CU [close-up] crowd waiting | 10 sec |
| LS [long shot] leader’s car turns corner | 15 sec |
| MS motorcycle escort dismounts | 18 sec |
| CU car door opens, leader gets out | 24 sec |
| GV leader walks up steps into building | 30 sec |
Armed with these details back in the newsroom, the writer will be able to time a reference to the party leader to the precise moment, 18 seconds from the start, when the car door opens and that familiar figure appears. Without that information to hand, accurate scripting would be impossible.
In many ways non-linear editing (NLE) marks a return to a flexibility which disappeared with the introduction of video. Many years ago one of the benefits of film was that editors were able to join picture sequences into the desired order with sticky tape, and it was equally simple to rearrange them after undoing the joins. Because of the technology, video sequences could only be put together sequentially and any subsequent changes made by repeating the process of transferring shots from one tape to another.
Computer-based non-linear editing machines store the original material on to hard or optical disks, from which shots can be chosen in whatever order is required. When the selection is replayed as an ‘assembly’ the computer picks out the shots from wherever they happen to have been saved on the disk. Any rearranging, deleting, adding and trimming is carried out without the need to reassemble all the footage, as with tape-editing methods.
The product of a non-linear editing session is the edit decision list (EDL), which is then used to re-create the item from master tapes in a process known as conforming.
Other advantages of the modern system include a compatibility with DV camera and transmission equipment, reliability, and economical maintenance costs compared with broadcast-quality video recorders, whose replay heads wear out more quickly.
Figure 6.6 Digital and disk-based editing. For picture editors or operational editing journalists it brings the flexibility to assemble shots non-sequentially and to make changes without reassembling the entire item. Edits made directly onto high-speed disk drives are available for instant playback. Avid Technology’s ‘NewsCutter’ has two video monitors, a user interface monitor displaying menu bar and editing windows, and a fullscreen playback facility for displaying footage. (Photo courtesy of Avid Technology.)
The principal use of machines made by the leading manufacturers has been in the ‘off-line’ state. The cost of these machines has become economical enough for direct on-line use by news programmes as a matter of course, without the need to go through the conforming process, so saving hours of post-production work. Although the raw videotape rushes are transferred to the non-linear editor in real time, the speed of the editing process itself is seen as unbeatable in its ability to produce different versions of the same story in seconds or to vary its length according to individual programme needs.