Editing to music

Editing to music is something that I excelled at right away. It's something that takes more music knowledge than editing prowess.

The key is to let the music make things happen. Not only the cuts should be to the music, but also the camera movement and the character movement. This becomes difficult, specifically in fiction, to make it cohesive, but you are allowed a few frames to fudge with movement, as long as your cuts are in time.

Now the most obvious place to make a cut is at the end of a musical phrase. But very often the phrase is too long and you want to make multiple cuts within the phrase. Regardless, you should almost always cut at the end of a phrase, regardless of how many times you cut within it. If you let a shot carry over from one phrase to the next anyone who watches it will feel wrong footed.

Inside the phrase cuts should be made on strong down beats. This usually indicates the first note in a measure, or every 2 measures and so on, but it can vary greatly depending on the music. In your typical rock song, it's best to go with percussion or rhythm guitar. Bass is doable on many songs as well depending on how prominent it is, but vocals and lead guitar are typically not going to give good places to cut. A strong down beat for percussion will probably be snare, rim, bass drum, or some combination of those. Rhythm guitar's downbeat almost always comes at a chord change. Different instruments have down beats at different times, rhythm guitar might be every 6 measures while percussion is every 2, so you should pick which instrument you're going to cut to. If you get caught, and say, don't have enough footage to make it to the next rhythm guitar, you can switch to bass. Here is a small diagram to show how you might line up a phrase.



If this had been a real project, I probably wouldn’t have switched instruments so quickly, but assuming this is the beginning of the song, I like to get some quick cuts in to introduce the montage or whatever I’m cutting.

Something that you might run into is not being able to find the downbeat. Sometimes it’s a little hidden in ballads and certain types of electronica, as well as unusual occurrences in other types of songs. Listen carefully to each instrument, and when you hear it repeat, that is most likely a downbeat. If you are cutting to a ballad or something else with a weak beat, be careful how you use hard cuts, fades work much better until the end of the phrase. Quicker music with a stronger beat is another matter. If you’ve ever played music, you’ll be able to find the downbeat without any issue at all, but non-musicians might have some trouble. If you can’t find it by listening to each instrument and hearing where it repeats, try tapping your foot to the music. Listen for what your foot is following and wait for the loudest note. That’s probably your cutting point. It’s not a perfect method, but if you don’t know music, this probably isn’t going to be your game anyway.

Cutting is the easy part. Matching movement to music is much more difficult. If you’re doing straight fiction, you might not want to match movement to music. If you match it too close, it’s called Mickey Mousing, and as the name implies, is only fit for 1920s cartoons. If you’re working with a composer, though, he or she can make sure that doesn’t happen by giving you more subtle cues within the music. Since you’re matching your cuts to the bass, percussion or rhythm guitar, you want to match your movement to something else or things will get ugly. Movement works best with the lead instrument, typically vocals or lead guitar in rock.

It’s difficult to explain exactly how to use movement because for every shot and every song it’s totally different. The only real advice I can give is my music editing motto again: Let the music make things happen. I’ve put an early video I did for Embarq below for an example. Watch how the music makes things happen, turning the lights on, swinging the logo, making the camera flash, etc.



In the spirit of letting the music make things happen, the music can be a little early, but never late. The audience’s brain is more likely to forgive lateness in the visual than the audio (though 3 or 4 frames is all the leniency you’ll get, and it’s best if you’re not early at all). However, the corollary to letting the music make things happen is of course, letting the video create the music. That is where the video would come early, but it leads almost immediately to Mickey Mousing, so unless you’re working for Disney, it’s not a good idea.