I ended Blevis-ian editing, part 3 - Blended Edits with the announcement that the next part of the series would explore editing decisions for an interview. That was August 22nd. Better late than never, I suppose.

Editing doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly, or even moderately stressful. It should be an integral part of the creative process of putting together a great audio program - Podcast or otherwise. That is, there’s a lot more to editing an interview than just cleaning up the “uhms” and “uhhs” so I’ll talk about those last. Depending on your approach, you can be incredibly creative and the results rewarding.

Storytelling

Not all interviews follow a natural evolution. This means that when editing an interview, it’s important to ensure that you have a flow. Each question should build on the last, or explore a new tangent if the previous one has been wrapped up. I like to think of this as the storytelling aspect of the interview and I try to edit my interviews in a way that enhances that natural flow. This means knowing the end point and keeping it in sight at all times during my edit - especially when, on the odd occassion, the interview I recorded is significantly different from the one I had planned. I work with my source recording to make the best show possible.

Focus

Your listener’s time is valuable. You need to make sure that the information you share is relevant, or at least entertaining. While, it may be interesting to explore a variety of tangents with your guest during the discussion, try to be as efficient as possible so that you don’t irritate your listener. If nothing else, be aware of how long the program is going to be.

Cleanup

Cleaning up the “uhms” and “uhhs” is a part of editing that is particularly controversial. Many people insist that the best approach is to remove all of the “verbal pauses” and breaths. Nothing can be more unnatural than listening to a person who never takes a pause or collects their thoughts. In fact, I’ve listened to many interviews where I find myself gasping for air only to realize that the speaker hasn’t drawn a breath in nearly two minutes - sympathetic participation, I suppose.

I’m not saying that verbal pauses aren’t annoying; the same goes with phrases like “you know”. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to wipe your audio clean of natural speech if for no other reason than you may never produce anything because you’ll spend six hours cleaning up ten minutes of audio.

Here’s what I recommend… Leave everything alone unless it’s overbearing. If the speaker says the odd “uhh”, leave it alone. If you find that there is one “uhm” for every ten words, you might consider removing every second or third “uhm” - or scrap the interview.

One thing that’s very important to remember is to let your interview breath, both literally and figuratively. This means that if your speaker draws a breath, leave it in. Similarly, if your speaker pauses to collect his or her thoughts before answering a question, leave a reasonable pause (perhaps one to two seconds) in the interview.

The most important part of interview editing, and I can’t stress this enough, is that you don’t want your audience to know where your edits are.

In part 5, I’ll present something I’ve been doing for a while and just named this morning… Buried Edits.