Here’s a simple little trick that I call “The Ear Tricks the Eye.” It’s probably more familiar to you pros then you newbies. It is used mostly in narrative scenes to help suspend disbelief for the audience. So, if you’re editing a scene and find that there are two shots you need to put together where the actors do not match their action, but you must make the edit in order for the to scene play–here’s what to do–try to get the edit to match as close as you can for continuity, and then build a background sfx track straight across the edit–a car by, a distant police siren, an airplane flyby. The end result is that the ear tricks the eye into believing that everything seems normal–even if the physical action of the actors does not exactly match. Sometimes you even can make the same edit as above work without using the background sfx trick. This is called a “right time, right place” edit. If you have the same continuity problem, but you can make the edit at the right time when you think the audience will emotionally expect it, and in the right place where they will expect it–everything will also seem normal also.
-Warren Workman LFO E-Structor
-Warren Workman LFO E-Structor
