Stuff That I’ve Noticed #4 – Fast Eyes

Video editing has a lot in common with the most difficult feat in sports. My video editing book, Waiting for Elizabeth, goes into a lot of detail about that skill but here are some new thoughts on the subject.

Many years ago Johnny Carson had three athletes on The Tonight Show discussing the single most difficult feat in sports. Obviously I no longer recall the entire discussion but I do recall the mutually agreed on conclusion: the single most difficult thing an athlete can do is to hit a fast ball.

This piqued my curiosity and I did some research. It seems that studies had been done of people with a high ability to accomplish said feat. Various tests of specific physical skills were given and the conclusion was that the key characteristic shared by these athletes was “fast eyes”. Some people have the ability to see fast moving objects or extremely brief events that lie outside the field of perception for most mortals. One thing I do not remember about my reading on the subject is whether this was found to be 1) an innate talent or 2) a skill than can be acquired.

Based on my unscientific personal experience I’m convinced that the answer is (mostly) #2.

At the age of fifty-seven I unknowingly began to develop this skill; not hitting a fast ball but the ability to see extremely brief events, namely one frame of video (1/60th of a second). In 1992 I began my career as a hands-on video editor. “Hands-on” because I had a fair amount of experience in editing but as a director working with an editor who did the actual editing. This gradually evolving fast eyes skill was not something I consciously pursued but a thing that I discovered. Maybe I had an innate but unknown talent or I developed the skill as anyone could have done. It’s probably a bit of both. Doesn’t matter. This ain’t a scientific treatise.

Anyhow, video editing – whether using linear (tape-to-tape) or non-linear (digital-software based) technique – involves repeated viewing of the same scene in order to make the most effective cuts. Then once the cut (edit) is done it is viewed and re-viewed to determine if it works.

This is the stage of the process where I first became aware of this newly developed fast eye. Watching with a client or partner I would say, “Did you see that?” The usual reply was, “See what?” I would go back to the area of the video where I’d detected something amiss and inch through it very slowly. Suddenly there would appear a flash frame or a misplaced image lasting but one frame. The frame rate in standard video is rounded to 30 fps (frames per second) but for technical reasons that I don’t fully understand each frame of content actually lasts half that time. And when the video is running at normal speed I can detect that single bad frame.

This skill, whether innate or learned, is different from what’s referred to as the photographer/cinematographer’s “eye”. That is a combination of spotting (or creating) something worthy then lighting and framing it to create a thing of beauty or visual interest. I’ve been blessed to have known, worked with and closely observed several world class photographic artists (both still and motion) from Richard Avedon and Nestor Almendros to Jack Churchill, Tom Houghton and John Beymer.

It was with cinematographer Bob Collins, my oldest friend and triple Emmy recipient, that this difference was truly brought home to me. We spent four days scouting waterfall locations in the mountains near Ashville, NC and we both took a lot of photos. We would stand side by side looking at the same vista. We both shot photos. Mine showed locations, Bob’s were art.

Scouting Pearson’s Falls

A couple of weeks after the scout Bob sent me this collection of his shots at the waterfall we selected for our shoot.

The editor’s eye is more akin to that of the fast ball hitter’s than to the photographer’s. The editor does need to be able to recognize the difference between a good shot and a better one but that’s a different subject.

If you haven’t read my books and you’re interested you’ll find them here.