The Editing Chair - Lester Castro

“I just woke up actually. I was up editing until 3 am last night, so that’s why I woke up now.” Lester said after I had called him for an interview. Lester Castro is one KIPA’s co-found- ers and also our editor. I sat down to talk to him about his editing process, from the very start to the final export. Here’s what he had to say:

BEFORE THE EDIT

“The first thing I do when I start to edit a project is sort the clips. I think it’s really important to sort your clips. So you know, more or less, what you have to work with. I sort the clips into a folder with each athlete’s name. Within those folders I have another set of folders, one for each challenge/line. Usually I also re-name all the files so I know which ones are attempts, bails or makes. For example, Hugo.attempt.1, could be a filename. I have funny clips in one folder, B-roll in another, and action in one as well.”

STARTING THE EDIT

“I tend to adjust my editing after the music choice. I might have an idea of what song I want to use, or it gets suggested to me from the rest of the crew, and from there I start to piece the clips together where I think they fit the song the best. Because I’ve rewatched, sorted and renamed every clip I already have a good picture of what should go where. Some- times you’ll have a funny b-roll clip like in our new Lisbon video, where an old lady says “... Lisbon, full of life”, and you’ll almost know you want to start the video with that. It’s a great advantage to know all your clips before you start editing.”

THE FULL PICTURE

“I think the full picture of how I want a project to look can come at any time. It can come before, during, or after filming. Most of the time it happens throughout the filming for me. Although the vision can always change during the editing phase. For example, we’ve finished filming the video and I’ll have an idea. Then I might look up other videos that have the same sort of feeling to them as we want to display. Those videos can thereafter inspire me, give me new ideas, and change the idea of the video in production. Inspiration can come from anything really, so the project can always change.”

MAIN FOCUS

“My primary focus when editing is to not overdo it. It’s easy to overcomplicate things and most of the time it doesn’t need that much. Like “now we’re gonna add a bunch of clips, cut cut cut, and add effects.” Usually those things don’t turn out so well because it’s too much in my opinion. My rule of thumb is to try to keep it simple. Overediting can be too much to digest sometimes, so I focus on cutting to the music and fixing colors. I used to edit a lot with crispy clips and add crazy transitions, and I’ve definitely learnt from that.”

THE CUTTING

“The music is really important to me. That doesn’t mean I always cut on the beat though. Sometimes I’ll cut on the half beat which I think can make the cut more unexpected. So instead of cutting ‘1-and-2-and- cut-and-4,’ I’ll cut at, ‘1-and-2-cut-3-and-4‘ Other times I’ll base the cuts on the sound from the actual clip. Maybe someone honks their car horn in the background. Then I’ll cut there, but let the sound continue into the next clip and slowly fade out.”

BEFORE EXPORT

“The last step before export is to watch the whole video through and check the sound mixing. I always watch the full edit without any of the songs playing to make sure there aren’t any hard cuts in the sound. I’ll adjust and merge some sounds together to ensure all the audio flows together nicely. It’s a bit nit picky, but I think the background sounds are really important and that you pick up on those hard cuts subconsciously while watching even though there is a song playing over them. After that I watch it again and adjust the colors. I also double check if there are any small details I want to change or if I’ve made mistakes anywhere.”

FINAL EXPORT

“Before the final export I send the piece over to the KIPA group chat and see what they think. I then get some feedback and go into the project again to adjust. Then I’ll export and send it over again, where I might get some more feedback. It goes back and forth like that until everyone is happy with the final piece. After that, I do the final export.”

FAVORITE EDIT, SO FAR

“My favorite piece to edit so far has been ‘UDG 3.’ Although, it was not only the editing that made it my favourite piece to work on. It was the combination of the filming, training and editing that made it so enjoyable. We were driving around in Kevin’s car, setting up construction lights for shots, training in the cold, and I had already been looking for songs while filming. I knew I wanted the project to have this psychedelic essence to it so I already had a good vision before filming. I also animated something for the first time, which was fun! I always find it hard to not over edit the UDG series since they play more with colors and effects than our other pieces. But finding that balance is quite exciting. Those projects let me play around a bit more. I’m quite proud of how the last one came out.”