Chapter 30 — Exercises

Interview editing is learned at the timeline, not on the page — but it starts on the page, with a transcript and a highlighter, and half of these exercises live there on purpose. Do them with any interview footage you have: your Project 2 interview, an old one, or a ten-minute conversation you record this week with a friend on any camera. A phone and a free editor do every one of these.

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 are.

Model solutions and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises 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 and hearing the craft (Eye & Ear Training)

No camera needed — just attention. These train the ear the whole method depends on.

1. ⭐ Close your eyes. Find any short documentary or testimonial online. Play two minutes with your eyes closed. Write one sentence: does the story hold as pure audio? What is it about? (Answer discusses what a working spine sounds like.)

2. ⭐ Sound off. Play the same two minutes again, muted, watching only. Does the picture track still tell a story, or does it collapse into a head and some cutaways? Note which of the two tests (eyes-closed / sound-off) the piece passes. (Answer provided.)

3. ⭐⭐ Count the seams. Watch a 60-second stretch of an interview-driven piece and count how many times the picture cuts to B-roll. For three of those cutaways, name the job each one is doing — hiding a cut, proving a claim, or both. (Answer provided.)

4. ⭐⭐ Find the return. In a documentary you like, find a moment where the editor returns to the face after a stretch of B-roll. Why that line? What was in the person's expression that the B-roll couldn't carry?

5. ⭐⭐⭐ Reverse-engineer the spine. Take a 2–3 minute doc segment and, by ear alone, write down its soundbite spine as a list of one-line paraphrases in order. Then mark where you think the editor reordered the subject's real chronology. You are hearing the radio edit inside a finished film.

B. The radio edit (Cut This — on paper first)

6. ⭐ Mark a transcript. Get a transcript of any interview (auto-transcribe one, or use a published Q&A). Read one page and highlight every self-contained keeper sentence; cross out every non-answer. Count the ratio of keepers to mush. (Answer discusses the typical ratio.)

7. ⭐⭐ Deal the cards. From the keepers you marked in #6, choose five and write each on its own card (paper or digital). Deal them into story order — hook, middle, resolution — not the order they were spoken. Write one sentence on why your hook goes first. (Model answer provided.)

8. ⭐⭐ The late hook. Look through a real interview transcript for a line the subject said late, once relaxed, that would make a better opening than anything they said early. Explain what makes it a hook. (Answer provided.)

9. ⭐⭐⭐ Radio-edit your own. Take your Project 2 interview transcript and build a complete radio edit on paper: mark keepers, write the cards, order them into a full arc. Do not open the timeline yet. Write the resulting spine as a numbered list of soundbites. (This is Production Checkpoint step 1; the model answer shows a strong vs. weak spine.)

C. Selects and the string-out (Cut This)

10. ⭐ Trim on the breath. Take one long interview answer in your editor and pull one soundbite out of it: set the in-point right before the first word and the out-point right after the last, on the breath. Play it alone — does it stand on its own? (Guidance provided.)

11. ⭐⭐ Label by content. Pull five selects from an interview and label each by what it says (e.g. SB_why-i-started), not by take number. Then have someone read your labels and ask them to guess the story. If they can, your labels are doing their job.

12. ⭐⭐ Build the radio string-out. Lay your five labeled selects end to end in your radio-edit order, audio only, no B-roll, no trimming to the frame. Play it with your eyes closed. Does it hold? If not, reorder (don't re-word) until it does. (Answer provided.)

13. ⭐⭐⭐ Kill three keepers. Your string-out has more soundbites than the story needs. Cut it to exactly five by removing the weakest bites — including at least one you love. Watch it again. Is the story clearer or poorer for the loss? Name what each cut bite was costing you. (Model answer provided.)

D. Building the spine (Cut This)

14. ⭐⭐ Cut the question out. Find a soundbite that only makes sense with your question ("How long? ...Twenty years"). Either re-cut it to stand alone or, if the footage won't allow it, write how you'd have re-asked it on set for a self-contained answer. (Answer provided.)

15. ⭐⭐ Snip the "um." Inside one keeper soundbite, remove a filler or a false start. Watch the picture at the splice — does the head jump? Note the exact frame of the jump; you'll cover it in Section E. (Guidance provided.)

16. ⭐⭐⭐ The honest tighten. Take a rambling 40-second answer and tighten it to a 12-second soundbite by trimming and joining within it. Then answer, in writing: is there any point where your cut changes what the person meant? If yes, undo that join. Explain the line you did not cross. (Model answer provided.)

17. ⭐⭐⭐ Diagnose the frankenbite. Read this described edit: a subject said, in answer to two different questions, "I was furious" (about a delayed shipment) and "...but the client was right" (about a design note). An editor joins them into "I was furious, but the client was right." What's wrong, and how would you fix it honestly? (Answer provided.)

E. Layering B-roll (Cut This)

18. ⭐ Cover one seam. Take the jump cut you made in #15 and lay a single B-roll shot on the track above the interview so the audio keeps playing and the picture cuts away. Watch the seam vanish. Write one sentence on what the audio is doing while the picture changes (name the cut). (Answer provided.)

19. ⭐⭐ Match B-roll to the line. For three soundbites in your spine, lay the B-roll that proves each claim — the hands over "by hand," the place over "where I grew up." Then, for one of them, deliberately lay mismatched B-roll and compare. What does the mismatch cost? (Answer provided.)

20. ⭐⭐ Time the handoff. Take a soundbite whose power is in the face and practice the handoff from FIGURE 30.5: hold the face through the line, then cut to B-roll on the tail. Now try cutting away too early, over the line itself. Which serves the moment, and why? (Model answer provided.)

21. ⭐⭐⭐ Cover the whole spine. Take your five-soundbite spine and lay matched B-roll over every seam, with wild sound underneath on its own track. Confirm the interview audio never stops. Watch it: is every jump hidden? Find the one seam you missed (there's always one). (Guidance provided.)

22. ⭐⭐⭐ The Café connection. Re-watch your Café Scene edit (Chapters 28–29). Identify where you laid a café cutaway (steam, hands, sign) over the order-exchange dialogue as an L-cut. Explain, in three sentences, how that exact move scales up to cover an entire interview spine. (Answer provided.)

F. Pacing (Cut This & Read the Sequence)

23. ⭐⭐ Reveal and return. Take a 30-second stretch of your covered spine and make sure it (a) opens on the face, (b) roams the B-roll, and (c) returns to the face for one line. Mark which line you chose to keep on the face and why. (Answer provided.)

24. ⭐⭐ Fix the sizzle reel. A described cut: a 90-second testimonial that never once shows the speaker's face — pure B-roll under a voice. List three problems this creates and the specific fix for each. (Answer provided.)

25. ⭐⭐ Give it a breath. Find a place in your piece to hold one exhale — a two-second silent or near-silent beat (a pause, a quiet cutaway). Watch before and after adding it. What did the breath do to the moment after it? (Answer provided.)

26. ⭐⭐⭐ Read the Sequence. Study FIGURE 30.6. Rewrite it for your subject: a 7-shot, ~30-second Described Sequence table (# / picture / dur / audio / why) that reveals, roams, returns for a hard line, exhales, and buttons on the face. (Model answer provided.)

G. Fix the Shot / Fix the Cut (Fix the Shot)

27. ⭐ Fix the hostage video. A described piece: a great interview, cleanly recorded, cut to 3 minutes — but it's one unbroken talking head with a dozen visible jump cuts and no B-roll. Name the single root cause and the fix, and say which chapter it should have been solved in. (Answer provided.)

28. ⭐⭐ Fix the buried spine. A described piece: gorgeous, wall-to-wall B-roll, slick music, and after watching it twice a viewer still can't say what it was about. Diagnose which rung of the pipeline (FIGURE 30.7) failed, and prescribe the fix. (Answer provided.)

29. ⭐⭐ Fix the pretty-shot hijack. An editor built a whole film around one beautiful opening shot and the story never quite reaches it. What discipline was skipped, and what do they do now? (Answer provided.)

30. ⭐⭐⭐ Fix the drag. A described piece passes the sound-off test (the pictures look great) but fails the eyes-closed test (with eyes shut it's confusing and dull). Where is the problem, and what do you not waste time on? (Model answer provided.)

H. Settings and scenarios (Settings Drill)

31. ⭐ Track assignment. For an interview piece, write which track holds what: the interview picture, the interview audio, the B-roll, and the wild sound. Explain why B-roll goes above the interview and why the voice stays on top in the mix. (Answer provided.)

32. ⭐⭐ Single vs. two camera. You're about to edit two interviews: one shot single-camera with rich B-roll, one shot two-camera with almost no B-roll. Write, for each, how you'll hide the spine's internal cuts. (Answer provided.)

33. ⭐⭐⭐ The 90-second CEO. A client hands you eleven minutes of a rambling executive and wants a persuasive 90-second cut. Write your step-by-step plan using this chapter's pipeline, and name the one ethical rule you will not break. (Model answer provided.)

I. Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

34. ⭐⭐ Interview → selects (Ch.19 + 30). Explain how a full-sentence answer (Chapter 19) becomes a select (Chapter 30), and what a fragment answer becomes instead. Use one real example from your own footage. (Answer provided.)

35. ⭐⭐ B-roll → cover (Ch.20 + 30). From your Chapter 20 coverage plan (FIGURE 20.7), pick three beats and name the B-roll you'd lay over each in the spine. Which beat, if any, has no B-roll — and what does that hole cost you now? (Answer provided.)

36. ⭐⭐ Rule of Six on a cutaway (Ch.29 + 30). You can cut away to B-roll on a subject's hard line, or hold the face. Using Murch's Rule of Six (Chapter 29), argue which serves the moment — and which priority decides it. (Answer provided.)

37. ⭐⭐⭐ The mute test on the whole film (Ch.29 + 30). Lay a music bed under your locked cut, then run Chapter 29's mute test and this chapter's two passes (eyes-closed, sound-off). Report which tests your piece passes and what each failure tells you to fix. (Model answer provided.)

J. Synthesis

38. ⭐⭐⭐ Teach it back. In about 200 words, explain to a beginner why you "cut the words before the picture." Use the radio edit, the spine, and one concrete example. Teaching a concept is the strongest test that you own it. (Model answer provided.)

39. ⭐⭐⭐ Lock it. Take your Project 2 documentary all the way to picture lock: radio edit → selects → spine → B-roll → pace → fine cut → lock. Run both quality passes. Write three sentences on what the eyes-closed pass and the sound-off pass each caught. (This is the Production Checkpoint; guidance provided.)

40. ⭐⭐⭐ The honest report card. After locking, write the most useful paragraph a shoot ever gets: where did your selects bin reveal that the interview (Chapter 19) or the B-roll (Chapter 20) fell short, and exactly what will you shoot differently next time? Keep it with your footage.

When you have done these — especially the cutting ones — you have built a film from a stranger's unscripted words, which is the hardest thing an editor does and the thing clients pay most for. Project 2 is locked. Move on to Chapter 31, where the finish begins and your film starts to shine.