does your clip order change significantly after you pick a song?I think I do this in an odd way, a lot of times I'll get bored or antsy before I have music picked out and edit an entire part without music, which admittedly can be sort of painting myself into a corner. But, after I pick a song I definitely start to switch some clips around and edit to the music. A lot of the time, for me, this approach leads to some interesting editing that I might not have consciously chosen to do, had I started from scratch with a song already picked out.
But definitely try to edit to the general mood and rhythm of the song, without over-editing to the beat, as that can get old pretty quickly. Hit the big accents and the broad crescendos/decrescendos of the song but avoid putting a make on every backbeat.
do you approach edits without music differently?I feel like clips without music generally want a little more "space." Slower cuts, longer pauses between tricks.
do you approach montages with multiple skaters differently than a single person's part? do you try to narrativize your editing or is purely aesthetic?I love editing montages, way more than single parts. Transitioning between different skaters' footage is always fun to figure out, and there's more opportunity to create a sense of narrative or place instead of simply structuring the part around a single person's tricks.
So yeah, I do like nice narrative curve, especially for more montage-oriented videos. For example, for the last one I did (a 9-minute edit with 4-5 months worth of footage, no full parts) I started with local clips and went out from there, through a couple midwest road trips, then back to a minute or two of good local footage to close it out.
Just depends on the kind of video you want to make. Personally, I'd rather watch a video that feels like more of a skate session or a trip, than just a straight part-for-part thing.
does b-roll have a deeper purpose or is it just to help align subsequent tricks with the music?In going with the whole narrative thing, I think b-roll is very important. I try and always take some sort of b-roll at most of the spots we skate, and then use bits of that footage, sparingly, as a sort of signpost to create a sense of setting. Using afterthought B-roll that doesn't relate to the footage surrounding it is always where b-roll starts to feel contrived or "too artsy."
In videos with multiple single skater parts, how do you decide the order of the parts in the middle?Depends on the skating around it. Some contrast, but not too much. So if you have a last part full of hammers, maybe the second to last one is a nice mix of bigger and also tech stuff, but also not like a purely ledge-tech-guy -type part.
But also, like cosmicgypsies mentioned above, you may already know the order before you even start editing, just because of context throughout the process of filming.
If your playing fisheye single clips back to back, try to have one go from left to right and then the next clip right to left. It makes the clips seem a bit more dynamic and also your eye is naturally on that side of the screen at the end of the clip, so starting with the action on the same side as where it ended is easier to watch.
I like to have night footage versus day footage grouped together. I feel like the transition between night to night to night or day to day to day is easier to follow. Also if there is early morning, dusk shots, I like grouping those together.
^These are also both great points.