Make Your Videos More Interesting With The L-Cut

A few years ago I wrote a book called The Musician's Video Handbook which outlined the many things that I learned while producing music television shows like Guitar Universe and Desert Island Music (check out my YouTube channel to see some segments). In the book I tried to show some of the common techniques used by Hollywood producers, directors and camermen to make any type of video that an artist or band might need (music, concert, interview, EPK) more professional looking.

Recently I came across a video on reelseo (of all places) that outlines a well-used story telling technique called an L-cut, which is the shape that the edit makes on your video editing timeline. What it means is that the video from a new clip begins to play over the audio from a previous clip, like in the case where you might hear the end of the dialog from an interview from the previous scene but see the band on stage. There's also an opposite of this called a J-cut where you hear the audio from the next clip while you see the video from the previous one.

While these cuts won't help you too much in a music video where there's music over the top, they can make any interview footage seem to move a lot faster and feel more professional. Here's the video that shows how it's done.

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