I am taking a little time out from editing a podcast for a client. This one is comprised of “streeters”, what we broadcasters call a piece made up with “person the street” snippets of information.
It is supposed to be 90 minutes long, and I am reminded about how much more difficult and time consuming it is to do short-short format pieces.
You might think that short takes less time. I remember back to when I used to do Arts Reports for CBC Radio .. and the maximum story could only be 90 minutes. Some of them even had to be shorter. And you still had to work in background sound and 1 actuality in the mix.
The challenge is that you don’t have much time to tell the story. Which means that every single word has to be there for a reason … and there are lots of other words that have to be cut out. Making the editorial decisions about what to leave in and what to take out is a big job.
And then, there is the pacing. The short-short form piece has no time to sit still. It has to move. In the case of this particular streeter, there are several voices to integrate. Rhythm becomes important … give one person too much time and it starts to sound unbalanced. You don’t want one or two people to dominate. Yet some people have more valuable information to share with the listeners.
So it’s a process filled with many judgements, much playing around with the material.
In the end, I spend as much time editing a 90 minute piece as I do a five minute piece. Shorter in not necessarily easier.
