He recorded an hour and twenty minutes with the man, and the talk was good throughout. So he sat down and cut it to ten minutes, and out came a version that was tidy and quick and pleased him. Then he sent it to the man before publishing, and got a one line reply: "I never said that."
He went back to the clip. He had not invented words, but he had joined half a sentence from minute twelve to half a sentence from minute forty, and a conditional opinion had become a flat verdict. Both sentences are his. The meaning is not.
That is the difficulty of editing an interview: you delete four fifths of the talk, and the remaining fifth still has to be faithful.
Start from the transcript, not the timeline
Most people who struggle with interview editing open the software and start listening from minute one. The faster and more accurate way starts on paper.
Transcribe the interview with the timing of each sentence attached. This is one of the biggest jobs worth delegating to a tool, as in AI-assisted editing: what actually saves you time, and what ruins your rhythm?. Then read the transcript with a pen and make three marks: a sentence that goes into the film, a possible sentence, and a sentence that comes out.
An hour and twenty minutes of audio reads as text in twenty minutes. And on paper you see what you do not hear: the repetition, the sentences that say the same thing three ways, and the single sentence that sums up the whole interview.
Five steps in order
| The step | What you do | The output |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Transcript | A full transcript with timings | A page to work on |
| 2. Selection | Marking the sentences that go in | Half an hour of chosen talk |
| 3. Order | Arranging the sentences into a new sequence on paper | The map of the film |
| 4. The edit | Executing the order in the software, then the visual cover | A first cut |
| 5. Cleanup | Audio, on-screen text, levels | The final cut |
Step three is the film. People spend their time on step four and rush step three, and come out with an interview ordered by the clock rather than by subject.
Order by subject, not by clock
An interview is not published in the order it happened. The man mentions the central idea at minute fifty because he needed fifty minutes to reach it. You put it at minute two.
Arrange your sentences into three or four subject stations, and place under each the sentences that belong to it, however far apart they came. That ordering follows the same logic of deletion as Editing Basics for Beginners: Start by Deleting, Not Adding: you build a structure out of existing material that did not exist before.
And before you even start, if there was an interpreter in the room, how to handle their speech is covered in How to Interview Someone Who Doesn't Speak Your Language. Editing is harder there, because you are cutting speech twice over.
Four tools for cutting inside speech
Removing your question. Most of your questions do not belong in the film. Let the answer carry its own question: "People ask me about this, and the truth is…" so you disappear and he remains.
Removing the run-ups. People start with "so", "honestly", "as I told you", and two sentences of arranging before they say the idea. Start at the word that carries the meaning, and you will win three minutes out of an hour with no loss.
Cutting at the end of a sentence. Inside one idea, cut at a full stop rather than mid-sentence. Cutting mid-sentence is what manufactures the false meaning.
Deliberate silence. Do not delete every pause. The pause after a heavy sentence is part of that sentence. A video with every breath stripped out becomes tiring even though it is shorter.
How to hide the cuts
Every cut inside one person's speech creates a jump in the picture. You have four options:
- A cutaway. His hands, the place, the thing he is talking about. This is the best of them, with the detail in Cutaways in Editing: When to Use Them and Why.
- A change of frame size. If you shot on two cameras, move between the wide and the close at every cut.
- A slight digital push. On a single high resolution camera, a cut with a ten percent zoom reads as deliberate.
- Cutting on movement. On a hand gesture or a shift in his seat, the jump passes unnoticed.
Do not use animated transitions to hide a cut. A shiny transition tells the viewer that something was removed here.
The line you do not cross
| Allowed | Not allowed |
|---|---|
| Deleting a whole sentence | Joining two half sentences to produce a third meaning |
| Bringing a late idea forward | Deleting the condition or exception he stated |
| Removing your question | Leaving an answer attached to a question other than the one asked |
| Cleaning out "um" and "you know" | Deleting the "not" from a negative sentence |
| Shortening a long answer | Adding a word with a generated voice or from another clip |
The test is one sentence: if the interviewee watches the film, will he say "those are my words"? If there is any doubt, look again. And with private documentary material, sending the cut to the person before publishing is a habit that protects both the relationship and you.
Audio at the end
An interview cut in twenty places comes out with uneven levels and with noise that appears and disappears at every cut. The fix is simple: run the location's ambient sound under the whole interview at a low level, and the seams vanish. Then set the final levels as in Audio Levels in the Finished Video.
A final review in three passes
Watch the final cut three times with three different senses: once on audio alone, where you hear the unclean cuts. Once with no sound, where you see the jumps. And once in full, asking of every clip: is this what the man actually said?
The ten minutes that come out of that are shorter than the interview and truer to it, because good condensing raises what he said rather than changing it.