Ways Transcript Can Speed Up a Video Editor’s Workflow

Transcriptions and video editing

First of all, every movie ever made started with an idea. Someone thought out the plot, characters and the conflict in the main story. Then usually comes the script that tells the plot in detail, describes the setting and usually contains the dialogues. This is followed by the storyboard. A storyboard includes drawings which represent the shots that are going to be filmed, so it is easier for everyone involved to visualize each scene. And then we have the question of the actors, castings are organized to see who is the best fit for each role.

After all the preproduction planning is done, finally we are getting to the filming process. Maybe now to your mind comes the stereotypical image of a movie director on set sitting in his lightweight chair that folds side-to-side. Then he shouts “Action” as the film sticks of the clapperboard clap shut. The clapperboard is used to help sync up picture and sound, and to mark the takes since they are filmed as well as audio-recorded. So, when the filming per se is done we get the movie? Well, not really. The whole process isn’t quite done yet and if you think everything mentioned up until now would take a long time, please arm yourselves with patience. Because now starts the post-production part.

After the movie is shot, for some professionals who work in the movie industry, the job is just about to begin. One of them are video editors. Editors face many challenges during the editing phase of a movie recording. They are in charge of all the camera footage, but also special effects, color and music. The editing process if far from being simple. And their main task is really important: they are supposed to bring the actual movie to life.

As you maybe already know, some movie directors are sticklers for details and maybe that is their secret to success. Some scenes require many takes in order for the directors to be satisfied. By now you might think that movie editing is a time-consuming job. And you are for sure right about that.

Movie editors are for sure happy to know that in the movie industry things are progressing in terms of technology which for them means more efficiency. When we are talking about production, we can say that it is more and more taking place on a file basis and the traditional tape isn’t really used as much anymore. This makes the job for editors a little bit easier, but still, those raw footage files are not stored in order, and the problem is even bigger if more cameras are shooting a scene.

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Television networks, film producers, multimedia companies use transcriptions for a reason. If you are an editor you should try to incorporate transcriptions in your editing process. You will see that you are progressing more efficiently. With all the dialogues in a digital transcript, you will be able to quickly find what you are looking for. You won’t have to go through hours and hours of raw footages, so you and your team will have more time to focus on other things.