A couple of weeks ago I was trained to use the new Channel 4 News editing system, Avid. I’ve cut a couple of little sequences and things before, but my first full length package was broadcast today. Here it is.
It’s a follow-up report on the collapse of First Solution, a Bangladeshi money transfer agency which collapsed last year. There are still no laws to prevent it happening again, and while some are in the pipeline they won’t cover the myriad of tiny money transfer agencies around the country with do less than E3m a month - that’s an estimated 2,700 agencies.
It used to be that producers would just be responsible for research, finding pictures, doing some of the interviews and generally making sure that the whole thing happened. A specialist editor would be the one sitting in a chair in front of the editing system making everything happen.
But with better technology (and falling budgets) producers are now doing some of the simpler edits themselves. I don’t think they’ll ever replace proper ‘craft editors’ - as we call them. They’re amazingly skilful people. I’ve watched in admiration many times as they’ve turned a pile of scrappy rushes into a decent three minutes of television.
There’s a fear that craft editors will be phased out altogether to save money. I hope that doesn’t happen - it would be madness. But a project like this isn’t big enough to justify a craft editor’s time, so it probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t had the new editing system, Newscutter. (Or ‘costcutter’, as the newsroom wags call it).
Luckily I had a couple of weeks to play with piece, so I could play around as much as I liked. I don’t think this would be so much fun to do in a hurry. But at leisure, it’s really enjoyable, and surprisingly creative. The tool is pretty powerful, so it’s a battle to resist the urge to put all sorts of cheesy effects all over the place.
Anyway, check out the results… not too bad for a first go. No silly effects, alas - but one bit of footage is craftily looped backwards.