Chapter 28 — Exercises

Editing is a doing skill, and advanced editing especially so — you cannot feel a J-cut work by reading about it, only by trimming one and playing across the seam. These exercises put the grammar of the edit into your hands. Almost all of them use footage you already have (from your three projects, the Café Scene, or a two-minute grab you shoot for the purpose) and any editor that lets you trim audio and video separately (DaVinci Resolve is the book's reference; any capable free app works — see Appendix E).

Exercises are graded by effort and depth:

• ⭐ Warm-up — a few minutes; locks in a concept.
• ⭐⭐ Core — the real practice; do as many as you can.
• ⭐⭐⭐ Stretch — deeper or more ambitious; where the biggest gains live.

Model solutions and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered items are collected in Answers to Selected Exercises at the back of the book. Try each one before you read its answer — a cut you got wrong teaches more than an answer you only read.

A. Seeing the grammar (Eye & Ear Training)

No editor needed — just your attention, pointed at anything you already watch.

1. ⭐ Hear the lead. Watch any two minutes of a scripted show or a polished documentary with your eyes closed. Listen for the moments where a new sound (a voice, a room, a car) starts before you'd expect the picture to change. Open your eyes; you'll usually find the picture had already changed a beat after the sound. You just heard J- and L-cuts. Write down two you caught. (Answer provided.)

2. ⭐ Count the split edits. Watch a two-minute dialogue scene and try to find a single straight cut — picture and sound changing on the same frame. Note how rare it is in professional dialogue. Write one sentence on what that tells you about how much of a scene's flow is audio timing.

3. ⭐⭐ Spot the cut on action. Watch a scene with physical movement (someone cooking, fighting, walking through doors). Pause and step frame-by-frame through three cuts. How many land during a movement rather than on a still frame? Write down what was moving at each cut. (Answer provided.)

4. ⭐⭐ Find a match cut in the wild. Over a week, hunt for one match cut or graphic match in anything you watch (films, ads, and title sequences are richest). Describe the two shots and fill in the blank: "these are joined because they're both about ___." If you can't fill it, you found a gimmick — note that too.

5. ⭐⭐⭐ Map a cross-cut's rhythm. Find a suspense or chase sequence that cross-cuts two lines of action. Using a stopwatch, jot the rough length of eight successive shots. Do the shots get shorter as tension rises? Graph your eight numbers. You've just measured how rhythm builds suspense. (Model answer discusses the pattern.)

B. Reading Described Sequences (Read the Sequence)

6. ⭐ Read the L-cut. Re-read FIGURE 28.3 (the interview L-cut). In your own words, explain what the room-tone/music bed on track A2 is for, and what would happen to the cut if it weren't there. (Answer provided.)

7. ⭐⭐ Diagnose the Café timeline. Study FIGURE 28.4 (the Café order exchange). Identify which cut is the J-cut and which is the L-cut, and name the exact element that lets the picture cut freely without the sound jumping. Then rewrite THE EFFECT line as if the editor had used only straight cuts. (Answer provided.)

8. ⭐⭐ The empty match test. Look at FIGURE 28.6 (coffee → moon). Invent two more graphic matches — one with a real idea underneath (a keeper) and one that's a pure shape gimmick (a reject). For each, write the "they're both about ___" sentence, and show why one passes and one fails.

9. ⭐⭐⭐ Re-beat the breakfast montage. Re-read FIGURE 28.8 (the breakfast montage, five beats). Design your own five-beat montage of a relationship or a process changing over time (a friendship cooling, a garden overgrowing, a neighborhood gentrifying). Write the five-row table (shot / duration / audio / cut to next), making sure each beat shows a different stage. (Model answer provided.)

C. The core skill (Cut This)

This is the heart of the chapter. Open an editor and work the hinges.

10. ⭐⭐ Build a J-cut and an L-cut. Take any two clips with sound (two shots of yourself talking works). Cut them straight, then make version A a J-cut (drag the second clip's audio earlier so you hear it before you see it) and version B an L-cut (extend the first clip's audio under the second picture). Play each across the seam. Write one sentence on how each feels different from the straight cut. (Guidance provided.)

11. ⭐⭐ Re-cut a dialogue scene, audio only. Take a two-person exchange (the Café Scene, an interview Q&A, or two friends talking) that you've cut straight. Without changing a single shot or its order, stagger the audio at every cut: J-cut into each new speaker, L-cut out of each. Lay one unbroken ambience bed underneath. Compare to the straight version. This is the chapter's central exercise — do it carefully, and do it in this order: first get the straight cut working, then unlink audio from video, then nudge each audio edge 12–24 frames at a time, playing across each seam as you go. Self-review: play the whole thing with your eyes closed and ask whether it sounds like a conversation (overlapping, alive) or a transcript (voice, stop, voice, stop). Keep the "after"; you've just made the single most valuable upgrade in Part VI.

12. ⭐⭐ Cut on action, three times. Find or shoot an action covered in two sizes (a wide and a close-up of someone standing, reaching, or pouring). Make the cut three ways: (a) before the movement, (b) after the movement stops, (c) during the movement. Watch all three. Which is invisible, and which "jump"? Write down why. (Answer provided.)

13. ⭐⭐⭐ Hide the jump. Deliberately shoot two nearly-identical framings of yourself (same size, same angle) that would jump if cut together on a still frame. Now find or add a movement (stand, turn, gesture) and re-cut so the motion covers the seam. Prove to yourself that a cut on action can rescue what would otherwise be a jump cut. (Model answer provided.)

14. ⭐⭐⭐ Build a match cut. Plan and shoot a two-shot match cut (graphic or on an idea): line up a shape, a motion, or a meaning between two shots and cut them so one "becomes" the other. Before you shoot, write the "they're both about ___" sentence — the idea is the assignment; the shapes are just the vehicle. Then frame both shots so the matching element sits in the same spot in each frame, clear the clutter around it, and give the first object a beat of meaning before you cut on it. Constraint: it must survive a stranger going "oh!" — not "huh?" Show it to someone and ask "what did that cut say?"; if their answer is your sentence, you've built a real one. (Answer discusses what to aim for.)

15. ⭐⭐⭐ A six-shot montage. Cut a montage of a change over time (a skill practiced, a room transformed, a trip, a friendship shifting) from six to eight shots under one continuous piece of music, cutting on the beats. Constraint: every shot must show a different stage of the change, and the sequence must still read that change with the sound muted. Do the mute test before you call it done — if you can't tell the story with the picture alone, two of your shots are probably interchangeable; replace them. (Model critique provided.)

16. ⭐⭐⭐ Cross-cut two lines. Take (or shoot) two short lines of action — e.g., someone leaving home and someone waiting for them — and cross-cut them so they feel simultaneous and converging. Shorten the shots as you approach the meeting. Show it to someone and ask: did it feel like these were happening at the same time? (Answer provided.)

D. Diagnosis and repair (Fix the Shot)

17. ⭐ Fix the machine gun. A described edit: a three-minute interview piece where every cut is a straight cut, picture and sound snapping together on every sentence, and the B-roll drops in silently with no voice over it. Name the two specific advanced-cut fixes that would transform it, and say which is more urgent. (Answer provided.)

18. ⭐⭐ Fix the jump. A described clip: a talking-head where the editor trimmed a stumble out of the middle of a sentence, leaving the speaker's head visibly "hop." The framing didn't change. List three different ways to fix or hide this jump using techniques from this chapter (and Chapter 9). (Answer provided.)

19. ⭐⭐ Fix the dragging montage. A described montage: eight shots of a person running, all roughly the same size and angle, laid under music, and it feels endless and boring despite being only forty seconds. Diagnose why it drags and prescribe the fix in terms of selection. (Answer provided.)

20. ⭐⭐ Fix the confusing cross-cut. A described sequence: an editor cross-cuts two characters racing to the same place, but they're dressed similarly, both in cars, both on grey roads, and the viewer keeps losing track of who's who. Name the failure and three specific ways to make the two lines readable. (Answer provided.)

21. ⭐⭐⭐ Fix the empty match. A described edit: a travel video chains together a beach ball, the sun, an orange, a car wheel, and a clock face — five round-shape graphic matches in a row. Explain what's wrong even though each individual match is "clean," and prescribe what a disciplined editor would keep. (Model answer provided.)

E. Choices and trade-offs (Settings Drill)

22. ⭐ Which cut? For each situation, name the single best cut from this chapter and one sentence of why: (a) entering a busy market from a quiet street; (b) laying a shot of hands over an interview voice; (c) showing a character train for a fight over six weeks; (d) a rescuer racing while a victim waits. (Answer provided.)

23. ⭐⭐ Split the edit, on paper. You have a scene: SHOT A (a person at a window, we hear rain) cuts to SHOT B (the same person at a desk, we hear a clock). Write out, as a two-track timeline sketch (video / audio), how you'd J-cut and L-cut this transition so the rain lingers and the clock creeps in early. Label where picture and sound each cut. (Model answer provided.)

24. ⭐⭐ The bed plan. For a montage and for a cross-cut, describe the audio you'd lay underneath to hold each together, and why the choice differs. (One is usually a single music piece; the other often needs a continuous sound bridge across two locations — say which and why.) (Answer provided.)

25. ⭐⭐⭐ Invisible or exposed? Given a piece (choose a fast-paced vlog, a wedding film, and a corporate testimonial), decide for each whether its cuts should mostly be invisible or partly exposed (jump cuts), and defend each choice in terms of the story and the audience. There's no single right answer — grade yourself on the reasoning. (Discussion provided.)

F. Homage and imitation (Recreate It & Five Ways)

26. ⭐⭐ Recreate a graphic match. Reproduce the spirit of a famous graphic match (the 2001 bone-to-craft, the Lawrence of Arabia match-to-sunrise) with your own two shots and your own subject. You're stealing the technique (match on shape + idea), not the footage. Write the "both about ___" sentence first. (Answer discusses evaluation.)

27. ⭐⭐ Five ways to leave a scene. Take one shot that ends a scene and cut out of it five different ways: (a) straight cut, (b) L-cut (its sound lingers into the next), (c) cut on an action, (d) a graphic match to the next scene, (e) a hard cut to silence. Watch all five. Which serves the story, and which is just showing off? (Model answer provided.)

28. ⭐⭐⭐ Recreate a cross-cut climax. Study a chase or rescue you admire, then build your own 20-second cross-cut of two converging lines, matching how the shot lengths shorten toward the collision. Compare your rhythm to the original's by timing both. (Answer provided.)

G. Interleaving (mixing prior chapters)

These deliberately braid this chapter with earlier ones, because skills you can only use together are the ones you actually own.

29. ⭐⭐ Shoot-for-the-edit audit (Ch.9, 15, 20). Take a scene you shot before this chapter and audit it: could you not make a J-cut, an L-cut, or a cut on action because you didn't capture room tone (Ch.15), B-roll (Ch.20), or the action's overlap (Ch.9)? List every advanced cut you're now blocked from making, and write the one-line shooting note that would have unblocked it. (Model answer provided.)

30. ⭐⭐ Coverage → grammar (Ch.7). Take the wide/medium/close-up coverage of any moment (Ch.7). Cut it once as plain straight cuts, then re-cut it using at least one cut-on-action and one L-cut. Note how the same coverage becomes a scene once you apply grammar. (Answer provided.)

31. ⭐⭐⭐ The Kuleshov callback (Ch.1). Re-read FIGURE 1.3 (same three shots, two edits, two meanings). Now extend it: using the same neutral-face-plus-object idea, build a match cut and a montage from three or four shots that create a meaning none of the shots hold alone. Write what the viewer "reads" that you never showed. (Model answer provided.)

32. ⭐⭐⭐ The full Café pass (anchor, Ch.6–26). Assemble everything you've built of the Café Scene across the book and cut the order exchange the way §28.1 describes: J-cut into the barista, L-cut back to the customer, cut on the action of the coffee being handed over, all on one unbroken ambience bed. Then write three sentences comparing this to your Chapter 26 straight-cut assembly. The scene never changed — has your command of it? (Model critique provided.)

H. Synthesis

33. ⭐⭐ Name every seam (the master question). Open any scene you've cut and step through it one cut at a time. At each seam, write one word for what carries the viewer across: sound (J/L), motion (action), form (graphic), idea (match), rhythm (montage/cross-cut), or nothing (exposed / accidental). Count how many seams have a bridge and how many are bare. Then fix, or deliberately keep, every "nothing." This audit — done on every project — is the whole craft of §28.6 turned into a habit. (Answer provided.)

34. ⭐⭐⭐ Teach it back. In about 200 words, explain to a beginner why "a cut is a hinge, not a wall," using at least two techniques from this chapter and one concrete example. Teaching a concept is the strongest test that you own it — and if you find yourself reaching for the phrase "it just flows better," push past it to why it flows (what continuous thing carries the viewer across). (Model answer provided.)

35. ⭐⭐⭐ The before/after reel (self-audit). Take the "before" (straight-cut) and "after" (advanced-cut) versions of a scene you re-cut for this chapter and keep them side by side. Grade the "after" honestly on four things: did the B-roll get a voice (L-cuts)? did new places/actions arrive at the ear first (J-cuts)? did the actions cut on motion (no jumps)? did one bed hold it together? Whichever scored weakest is exactly where your next edit should focus. Keeping this before/after pair is the clearest possible proof of your own progress — revisit it after Chapter 30 and you'll want to re-cut it again. (Discussion provided.)

When you've done these — especially the Cut This ones — you will have felt the single most valuable thing in the edit room: that the boundary between two shots is not a wall but a hinge, and that working the hinge is where footage becomes film. Take that instinct into Chapter 29, where we stop asking whether a cut is smooth and start asking whether it moves anyone.