Assembling the line: amateur & professional work, skills and practice in digital video editing
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Geosciences
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
Publications
Eric Laurier (Author)
(2008)
Visual Analysis. New Developments in the Interpretative Analysis of Video and Photography
in Forum: Qualitative Social Research
Eric Laurier (Author)
(2008)
Video Analysis: Lessons from Professional Video Editing Practice
in Forum: Qualitative Social Research
Eric Laurier (Author)
(2011)
Dissolving the dog
Graham C
(2011)
New visual technologies: shifting boundaries, shared moments
in Visual Studies
Laurier E
(2015)
Y ou T ube: fragments of a video-tropic atlas
in Area
Laurier E
(2014)
Dissolving the dog: the home made video
in cultural geographies
Laurier E
(2011)
The reservations of the editor: the routine work of showing and knowing the film in the edit suite
in Social Semiotics
Laurier E
(2017)
The uses of stance in media production: A study in embodied sociolinguistics
in Journal of Sociolinguistics
| Description | A three year research project, based at Edinburgh University, funded by the ESRC, consulting with University of California San Diego which examined: -video editing as a form of work -the workplace where editing happens -the diverse practical and creative skills which go into editing together movies The project looked at how editors, professional and amateur, analyse and assemble the audio-visual materials they have at hand. It drew out the lessons for social scientists doing video-analysis can learn from vernacular expertise. This was achieved in part through documenting and describing the forms of dialogue, agreement, disagreement and reasoning that underpin editing. Detailed analysis of video editing practice captured the 'accountability' of cutting decisions in real time as they are done, as well as preceding and succeeding the edit. This revealed the complex skills involved in becoming not only a competent but also an excellent editor, as understood via learning by doing. |
| Exploitation Route | Home Movies • Home movie editing continues a tradition of home production (e.g. sewing clothes, dark rooms in the house). • It makes heavy use of certain editing technologies to do so (e.g. the cross-cut dissolve & pre-made templates). • The sharing of these products has been enabled and transformed by video content sharing sites (e..g Youtube, Vimeo etc.). • Central to the logics of the home movie are desires for and logics of commemoration, recollection and the giving of the movies themselves as gifts. Professional Editing • Editors that have worked across linear tape-based and non-linear tapeless production continue to reflect on and provide insights into transformations in technology, technique & organisation. • Editing traverses conventionalised production (e.g. sports highlights) to creative (e.g. cinema release documentary) that have distinct practices and timeframes. • Institutional asymmetries between director/producer & editor are constituted and drawn upon as resources in organising the work of editing. • Creating the video-to-come draws upon professional imaginations that can see it, in audio-visual media that are opaque to the untrained observer. • Epistemic access to video media relies upon the skills of the editor in marshalling and playing just what is required for the production team to work on the video materials. Social Sciences • Editors are vernacular video analysts and thus we can learn from them what more video analysis might be. • Social sciences can borrow both techniques for video products but also techniques for organising, viewing, sharing and archiving video recordings of social practices. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism |
| URL | http://www.ericlaurier.co.uk/assembling/ |
| Description | The project findings are informing the design of mobile video editing tools. The Mobile Life research centre is starting a spin-off company to commercialise their 'mobile video mixing' software, the design of which drew on the research published for this project. The lead on this project is Oskar Juhlin, listed above. The project has more recently been developing connections with 'Cleverplugs' a London based company that makes software for production teams to create broadcast graphics, particularly in 3D and realtime. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2010 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism |
| Impact Types | Cultural |
| Description | 'Here's one I prepared earlier' : demonstrating editing techniques |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Presented at a video production workshop, The Mobility Studio, Stockholm. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | An overview of video practices, professional and popular |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Video activities in domestic and professional settings are still a relatively new domain of investigation yet a growing one with the increasing spread and varied use of video technologies. At the same time video recording and analysis has been developing amongst researchers of workplaces and everyday life. We are now faced with an interesting meeting between these two in video studies of video activities. In this paper I will sketch out a map of this emerging area and also draw on a number of ethnographic studies of editing settings made during the ESRC-funded Assembling the Line project in order to reflect on where this research might take us in understanding video work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Editing extreme sports videos |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Presented at the video editing workshop, Microsoft Research, Cambridge. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | Mid-cut, between logging and final cut |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | Presented at the 3rd Video on Video Workshop, University of Edinburgh. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | |
| Description | Research with, on and about video |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | An overview of the project, video practices and developments in social science methodologies and analysis of video. http://www.visualdialogues.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=104&Itemid=179 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | The intersubjective work of imagination in film editing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | In this talk I will examine the work of editing a feature length documentary. Drawing upon existing ethnomethodological studies, predominantly of architectural practice (Murphy, 2004) I will pursue imagination as the intersubjective task of seeing the film-that-is-to-come through what is currently completed, what is missing and what can be added. The routine feature of the editing suite that this turns upon are cycles of reviewing sequences and proposing what should be done next with each sequence. The relationship between review and selection in editorial work has previously been studied in newspaper offices (Clayman and Reisner, 1998) but not documentary production. I will present one of these film editing cycles in detail, where the editor and director are discussing the transition between two scenes. Their work begins by reviewing the sequence which the editor has recently completed editing. During their review both editor and director provide assessments of the sequence as it currently stands. Moreover in doing their expert editorial assessment of the sequence they delaminate it into the audio and the picture. Some of the problems raised by the director entail technical solutions which in turn make relevant the workplace identity of director and editor. The fixed interface of Final Cut Pro's layout is less central however to the collaborative workplace editing of film is than video's properties as an animate and audible medium. Video/film is play-able which means that it is also cue-able, roll-able, loop-able, interruptible, extend-able, scrub-able and so on. These properties are realised in, and are constitutive resources, for the analysis and production of sections, clips and sequences. The centrality of the manipulation of video to editing is demonstrated through how both director and editor assess, propose and select what footage to add (and remove) for the next edit of the documentary. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | The intersubjective work of imagination in film editing : |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | (Title continued ) proposals, suggestions, replays, pauses, animations, instructed-seeings, instructed-hearings, directions, rejections, reviews, assessments, formulations and other ways of producing possible sequences |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | The intersubjective work of imagination in film editing : |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Primary Audience | |
| Results and Impact | (Title continued) proposals, suggestions, replays, pauses, animations, instructed-seeings, instructed-hearings, directions, rejections, reviews, assessments, formulations and other ways of producing possible sequences |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |