Part 4 of this series dealt with the creativity of editing interviews. In this installment, I am returning to applied editing.

When I first mapped out this series, I figured I’d be done by now. I had a neatly compiled list of the types of edits I do and some soft skills I wanted to share. As it turns out, I left out a number of really interesting ideas and techniques - so the series continues.

One of the techniques I had overlooked is one I’ve dubbed Buried Edits. It’s an easy one to forget because I use it so rarely. However, it is a very powerful way to unite two different recorded elements, and disguise the edit in the process. For the purposes of this entry, I will present in terms of spoken word recordings even though the same concepts can apply to music - or any other recording.

First of all, what’s the trick?

In a Buried Edit, I unite the same sound that appears in two different recorded takes using a Clean Edit.

What???

The spoken delivery of two recorded elements may have been significantly different in each take while still having a common delivery element in each. I call this common element the “pivot”. In a Buried Edit, you find a pivot inside a particular word in each take and make your cut inside these pivots, then marry the two desired pieces together.

An example, please.

The word “so” is a really good word for a pivot. The “ess” sound is nice and static. You can cut that sound in half from two different sentences and marry them in a way that noone would ever know, as long as the audio quality is similar, and the thought is continuous. Even if the delivery by the speaker has a different cadence in each sentence, it’s a very forgiving sound.

When to use Buried Edits

In all cases, the speaker in the recording I am editing has run words together which makes it difficult to have a transparent cut between words. I have used Buried edits in the following situations with great success:

• The speaker has gone on a tangent and I need to remove a large section of talking. I find a pivot within each of the first and last thoughts and eliminate the thought process. Having a pivot means that I was able to make the speaker’s comments more efficient and fluid.
• The speaker records several takes in a row, sometimes without a pause. Different elements of each take are great while each full take has its problems. I will take the elements from each take that work well and make them into one stream. Buried Edits work well here because it isn’t the insides of the words that pose a problem, it’s the first and last sounds of the words.

In part 6 I’ll talk about something I call a Staggered Edit to disguise an edit in a multi-track recording of two speakers.